This Company starts in the United States and ties into existing home school regulations with a self-driven web learning program that requires minimum parental involvement and results in a high school degree.
The nice thing about this is that it works on an existing market, while leveraging the successful tactics discovered through hard work by Coursera & the like to bring advances to the domain.
Of course, techniques designed for university courses may not precisely transfer.
I’m skeptical about ‘leveraging’ videos from Khan Academy for a for-profit education system. Makes it sound half-baked.
This idea may fit with the general spaced-repetition enthusiasm I am seeing in other proposals.
It cloaks itself as merely a tool to aid homeschool parents, similar to existing mail-order tutoring materials, hiding its radical mission to end high school as we know it.
I’m skeptical about ‘leveraging’ videos from Khan Academy for a for-profit education system. Makes it sound half-baked.
Some selected public or private schools are already doing this, with great results from what little data I’ve seen. The feedback from the children themselves, at the very least, is impressive—the vast majority of them allegedly report (in less sciencey words) a vast improvement in their reasoning skills and their enthusiasm, motivation and enjoyment of mathematics, sciences, and studying in general.
Unfortunately, this is still on an extremely insignificantly small scale, with only a handful of teachers spread out over 4-6 schools doing this, some of them with direct collaboration from Khan Academy IIRC.
...you just jinxed it! Now congress is going to pass a new bill forbidding online aids to count towards compulsory education requirements for home schooling, and otherwise hamper the idea by whatever means necessary.
After all, what better propaganda system is there than a bunch of gullible “teachers” who regurgitate everything you tell them to and whom children look up to as absolute authorities?
The nice thing about this is that it works on an existing market, while leveraging the successful tactics discovered through hard work by Coursera & the like to bring advances to the domain.
Of course, techniques designed for university courses may not precisely transfer.
I’m skeptical about ‘leveraging’ videos from Khan Academy for a for-profit education system. Makes it sound half-baked.
This idea may fit with the general spaced-repetition enthusiasm I am seeing in other proposals.
...And you just blew your cover. :)
Some selected public or private schools are already doing this, with great results from what little data I’ve seen. The feedback from the children themselves, at the very least, is impressive—the vast majority of them allegedly report (in less sciencey words) a vast improvement in their reasoning skills and their enthusiasm, motivation and enjoyment of mathematics, sciences, and studying in general.
Unfortunately, this is still on an extremely insignificantly small scale, with only a handful of teachers spread out over 4-6 schools doing this, some of them with direct collaboration from Khan Academy IIRC.
Nobody of any importance reads Less Wrong :)
...you just jinxed it! Now congress is going to pass a new bill forbidding online aids to count towards compulsory education requirements for home schooling, and otherwise hamper the idea by whatever means necessary.
After all, what better propaganda system is there than a bunch of gullible “teachers” who regurgitate everything you tell them to and whom children look up to as absolute authorities?
Fortunately, the United States has a strong evangelical Christian lobby that fights for and protects home schooling freedom.
Good point. I have a tendency to forget about them. Mind projection and all that.