Well I think as a general matter that a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative, because everybody can picture the status quo, but few will guess what your alternative looks like.
There’s been a plethora of essays denouncing the school system already, and I haven’t seen any major change except more restrictions on alternatives to public schools. A difficulty IMO is that good teaching is hard to scale. To keep motivated, young people need models to look up to, and the most relatable are the ones they can interact with IRL. An alternative would be teaching parents to be those role models, but your mileage would vary.
Have you heard of the monitorial system—bleh, this sounds carceral in English - ? When public education appeared, a lot of leeway was left to teachers. To manage large numbers of students, the school didn’t batch students by age. Students who had learned a topic would teach it in return. This seems like a clever way to form role models, personalize learning, teach responsibility and reinforce the learnings, all with minimum investment.
My current best plan would be to get rich, fund multiple private schools based on alternatives, rate them, keep the best, open more. I’m far from milestone 1.
a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative
“A case against status quo” is ambiguous in this context. The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have one. A formulation of a problem is a perfectly adequate thing on its own, it lets you understand the problem better. It’s not incomplete as a tool for understanding a problem.
Well I think as a general matter that a case against status quo is incomplete without the case for an alternative, because everybody can picture the status quo, but few will guess what your alternative looks like.
There’s been a plethora of essays denouncing the school system already, and I haven’t seen any major change except more restrictions on alternatives to public schools. A difficulty IMO is that good teaching is hard to scale. To keep motivated, young people need models to look up to, and the most relatable are the ones they can interact with IRL. An alternative would be teaching parents to be those role models, but your mileage would vary.
Have you heard of the monitorial system—bleh, this sounds carceral in English - ? When public education appeared, a lot of leeway was left to teachers. To manage large numbers of students, the school didn’t batch students by age. Students who had learned a topic would teach it in return. This seems like a clever way to form role models, personalize learning, teach responsibility and reinforce the learnings, all with minimum investment.
My current best plan would be to get rich, fund multiple private schools based on alternatives, rate them, keep the best, open more. I’m far from milestone 1.
“A case against status quo” is ambiguous in this context. The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have one. A formulation of a problem is a perfectly adequate thing on its own, it lets you understand the problem better. It’s not incomplete as a tool for understanding a problem.