What percent of the population should be teachers?
While I agree that small classes are generally better, there are simply too many students, so if we make small classrooms, too many teachers will be needed. Everything has a cost, and at some moment we have to say something like “no, we can’t have 20% of adult population working as teachers; and we definitely can’t have the smartest 20% of adult population working as teachers, because smart people are needed in other professions, too—or would you perhaps prefer to have a stupid surgeon operate on you?”.
Education does not scale well, at least the way we do it now. Small classes just make it worse. What are the possibilities?
better use of books, movies, computers. A teacher standing in front of the blackboard explaining stuff, could be replaced by a book or a movie telling the same thing. (But what if you have a question? Okay, so replace half lessons with books and movies, and the questions can be asked during the remaining half.)
some kind of pyramid education, where older kids would teach younger kids? Again, let older kids teach younger kids half of the lessons, the remaining half would be with the adult teacher.
maybe just… teach less? If kids don’t pay attention, maybe just let them go (to a room where babysitting is provided without education).
And definitely decouple teaching from certification. You should not get diploma for “being there”, but for having the knowledge (regardless of whether you obtained it at school, at home, or anywhere else).
In my vision, a school would be a huge babysitting center, where parents can leave their kids between 6:00 and 18:00, with voluntary classes—some of them taught by teachers, other by students, or external people. Places for silent study, reading books. Computers with educational software and automated tests. Students can take an exam on any subject they want, at any moment. You get a diploma for completing a certain set of exams. You could spend N years at the school without getting the diploma. Or you could learn at home, and then just come to school to take the exams and get the diploma.
What percent of the population should be teachers?
In some sense, 100% - it takes a village and all that. More reasonably, maybe 5% or so to have pre-college teaching as their primary occupation. 22% of the US population in 2020 was under age 18, so this would give a comfortable class size of 5-15 (varying by subject), with some slack for admin and supervision.
You’re right, of course, that scale is the big problem—most people don’t WANT to spend the resources (money and human productivity) that is implied by universal good schooling. But they don’t want to admit that either, so they just complain. There are correlates here to cost disease in health care—the appearance of helping being more important than actually helping, and the political infeasibility of providing less service to the less-able-to-pay.
I have this vision in my head of teaching being primarily the responsibility of retired folks.
In that society, “retirement” (and perhaps more importantly retirement benefits like Social Security, Medicare, etc.) involves spending a few hours to a day (or more, if you want) at a local school, teaching.
This:
Keeps the older generation more involved, while giving them a platform to share their knowledge/experience with the young (which is arguably the a large fraction of the value of keeping them around to begin with)
Gives students (K-12 mostly, but no reason it couldn’t include college) the chance to interact and learn from people who’ve had lives and careers already, exposing them to more options, opportunities, and cultures
Helps pay for retirement benefits by having retired folks work in the public sector (perhaps with a small additional stipend for doing so?) And we’re also only talking about ~1 class a week, unless they wanted to do more
I do quite like most parts of your vision, though it would likely need to be supplemented with a set of specialists for learning disabilities or counseling, and so on.
I like this. Mostly because my idea of perfect education is “everyone uses something like Khan Academy”, where the usual response is: “but what about the small kids who can’t read yet?” Your proposal addresses this part.
What percent of the population should be teachers?
While I agree that small classes are generally better, there are simply too many students, so if we make small classrooms, too many teachers will be needed. Everything has a cost, and at some moment we have to say something like “no, we can’t have 20% of adult population working as teachers; and we definitely can’t have the smartest 20% of adult population working as teachers, because smart people are needed in other professions, too—or would you perhaps prefer to have a stupid surgeon operate on you?”.
Education does not scale well, at least the way we do it now. Small classes just make it worse. What are the possibilities?
better use of books, movies, computers. A teacher standing in front of the blackboard explaining stuff, could be replaced by a book or a movie telling the same thing. (But what if you have a question? Okay, so replace half lessons with books and movies, and the questions can be asked during the remaining half.)
some kind of pyramid education, where older kids would teach younger kids? Again, let older kids teach younger kids half of the lessons, the remaining half would be with the adult teacher.
maybe just… teach less? If kids don’t pay attention, maybe just let them go (to a room where babysitting is provided without education).
And definitely decouple teaching from certification. You should not get diploma for “being there”, but for having the knowledge (regardless of whether you obtained it at school, at home, or anywhere else).
In my vision, a school would be a huge babysitting center, where parents can leave their kids between 6:00 and 18:00, with voluntary classes—some of them taught by teachers, other by students, or external people. Places for silent study, reading books. Computers with educational software and automated tests. Students can take an exam on any subject they want, at any moment. You get a diploma for completing a certain set of exams. You could spend N years at the school without getting the diploma. Or you could learn at home, and then just come to school to take the exams and get the diploma.
In some sense, 100% - it takes a village and all that. More reasonably, maybe 5% or so to have pre-college teaching as their primary occupation. 22% of the US population in 2020 was under age 18, so this would give a comfortable class size of 5-15 (varying by subject), with some slack for admin and supervision.
You’re right, of course, that scale is the big problem—most people don’t WANT to spend the resources (money and human productivity) that is implied by universal good schooling. But they don’t want to admit that either, so they just complain. There are correlates here to cost disease in health care—the appearance of helping being more important than actually helping, and the political infeasibility of providing less service to the less-able-to-pay.
I have this vision in my head of teaching being primarily the responsibility of retired folks.
In that society, “retirement” (and perhaps more importantly retirement benefits like Social Security, Medicare, etc.) involves spending a few hours to a day (or more, if you want) at a local school, teaching.
This:
Keeps the older generation more involved, while giving them a platform to share their knowledge/experience with the young (which is arguably the a large fraction of the value of keeping them around to begin with)
Gives students (K-12 mostly, but no reason it couldn’t include college) the chance to interact and learn from people who’ve had lives and careers already, exposing them to more options, opportunities, and cultures
Helps pay for retirement benefits by having retired folks work in the public sector (perhaps with a small additional stipend for doing so?) And we’re also only talking about ~1 class a week, unless they wanted to do more
I do quite like most parts of your vision, though it would likely need to be supplemented with a set of specialists for learning disabilities or counseling, and so on.
I like this. Mostly because my idea of perfect education is “everyone uses something like Khan Academy”, where the usual response is: “but what about the small kids who can’t read yet?” Your proposal addresses this part.