students submit to certified teachers in order to obtain certificates of their own; both are frustrated and both blame insufficient resources--money, time, or buildings--for their mutual frustration.
This is still true throughout the system from K-college. Students feel required to be there to further their qualifications, and teachers feel stifled by seemingly arbitrary 'guidelines' and requirements.
This network of tape recorders, of course, would be radically different from the present network of TV. It would provide opportunity for free expression: literate and illiterate alike could record, preserve, disseminate, and repeat their opinions. The present investment in TV, instead, provides bureaucrats, whether politicians or educators, with the power to sprinkle the continent with institutionally produced programs which they-or their sponsors--decide are good for or in demand by the people.
Network TV vs. Youtube Establishment curated content, or algorithm curated content.
Things, models, peers, and elders
In order to be satisfied a person needs Something to do Someone to care about Someone to care about them Something to look forward to.
It should use modern technology to make free speech, free assembly, and a free press truly universal and, therefore, fully educational.
I'm not sure that those things follow logically together. If everyone can say anything always then how do you become fully educated if you can figure out which truth to listen to?
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and, finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
There's an online course site called Udemy, it's one of many that aggregate video courses for low cost. It's not accredited the only thing you get when you buy the course is the opportunity to learn and if it's not a good presentation you can complain on a public forum. That being said I would add one more requirement to the purposes of a good educational system it should be effective in teaching the skills or knowledge it claims to convey. In that way it has to be more dynamic than your standard video course because everyone learns differently and there's the rub. How do you differentiate for different learners when all you can present is static content?
Invariably, it shapes the consumer who values institutional commodities above the nonprofessional ministration of a neighbor.
Truth. We trust corporate entities more than our local vendors.
meant to serve a society which does not now exist,
The inverse is also true in that the current model of school is still at it's core focused on producing service or factory workers and at the higher level middle managers and administrator. Cogs for the great industrial machine that grinds along in a very different manner these days and in some case in a completely different country.
In this chapter I intend to show that the inverse of school is possible: that we can depend on self-motivated learning instead of employing teachers to bribe or compel the student to find the time and the will to learn; that we can provide the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all educational programs through the teacher. I shall discuss some of the general characteristics which distinguish schooling from learning and outline four major categories of educational institutions which should appeal not only to many individuals but also to many existing interest groups
Tall order.
Many teachers and pupils, taxpayers and employers, economists and policemen would prefer not to depend any longer on schools.
This goes to the idea that to change a system it is sometimes preferable to destroy it and rebuild from scratch. That would of course require us to agree on what to build after the current system is gone. My understand is that a consensus has not be reached.
some new device which "makes" people learn
Experience teaches but the point of formal education is to teach to a specific area. Unfortunately we've so complicated the ideal of a standard education to the point where at times neither student or teacher is really invested in the process. Is it then a wonder that there is a search for the device that will 'teach' or in this context force the knowledge on the student in the most expeditious way?
Their knowledge of facts, their understanding of life and work came to them from friendship or love, while viewing TV, or while reading, from examples of peers or the challenge of a street encounter.
There's something to be said for the random acquisition of knowledge.