Why do we still educate basically the way we did in the 1800's? Yes, we have our computers that students get to use, but students are still expected to sit for 7 hours a day in hard wooden chairs in some of the most institutional types of buildings, listening to a teacher lecture in pretty much the same way teachers have lectured since "mass" education made its premiere in the 1800's. At that time there was a need for basic literacy. Until the post-WWII era, basic literacy assured a workforce for the agricultural-industrial needs of the economy.
We now require "scientific-technical" literacy to enter into the 3rd millennium workforce that is now global. Unfortunately, in the USA most schools of education continue to "educate" the new generation of teachers in teaching metohodologies focused mostly on how to manage the behavior of bored students. The lecture, paper-pencil, textbook reading is a verbal-linguistic way of conveying knowledge. Yet, we now know that many individuals do not learn that way. It isn't that classical education of literature and the arts is not important, but it is that these areas are disproportionately represented at a much higher level than our current culture needs. Math and sciences are a small part of the pie of education because of the lack of willingness to change how we educate our students and the teachers who will teach them. We have many soft-ware engineers and other types of engineers who would love to have a second career of teaching, but school unions keep them out.
The solution appears to always be more money. Yet, it has been shown time and again that a dedicated teacher, with creativity can achieve amazing heights with their students with little money. Where are our engineering classes for primary students? Where are our hands-on scientific research classes for our primary students? We are now competing and losing jobs to India, China, Taiwan, Middle Eastern Countries because of a bureaucratic educational system that keeps the masses shackled.
With the exception of maybe 10% of our students who are fortunate to get into a special program that provides unique instructional models, the majority of students, who are quite independent at gathering knowledge via the Internet and other knowledge reservoirs, who are going 100 mph in their gathering of knowledge, and who are suddenly tossed into school prison for 7 hours to endure lectures, worksheets, even poorly designed computer "learning" modules, are simply tired of being caught up in this traffic jam of knowledge acquisition.
Think of speeding down the most open highway in a Ferrari (or pick your hot conveyance) at 100 mph. All of a sudden there is a traffic jam. The traffic jam last for 7 hours in the heat of the day. You move only 10 miles in 7 hours. After the 7 hours, suddenly the highway opens up and you are going 100 mph again. This is what is happening to our 3rd millennium students. Once they are let out of prison-like schools they run with the technologies available to them.
Our educational system is making itself obsolete. One promise of America is it is always reinventing itself. Revolution is painful but necessary.
