Rethinking Education for the 21st Century
Education is how we transfer knowledge, skill, and wisdom from one generation to the next. But as families trend toward fewer children, the burden of a growing human knowledge base must be transferred to an ever fewer number of individuals. Maximizing the transfer of knowledge, therefore, is increasingly vital to sustaining civilization itself. But the education systems of today are shackled to the past. Education vouchers and other innovations may offer a path toward freeing them.
Shackled to the Past
There is a saying, it’s easier to land on Mars than it is to change the education system. When it comes to schooling, there are many stakeholders: parents, teachers, unions, local districts, government…etc. Change comes slowly, if at all. The consequence is that education today looks very much as it did in the early 20th Century. This fact should be terrifying.
It is this bureaucratic inertia that allows summer vacations to continue, despite mountains of evidence that students forget over the summer what they learned in the prior year. Students still shuttle from classroom to classroom, subject to subject, as if they were on an assembly line. Grade levels are based on age, not skill, competency, or merit. Education in the era of the Model T, while we live in the age of Tesla.
Breaking the Shackles
The ideal education system would allow students to pass grades through merit, not age. And it would adapt, perhaps using AI, to each individual student’s learning style and preferences. It would also make learning fun and interactive, where possible. Competency-based, flexible, and engaging is what is needed. We have the technology to do this today, all that stands in the way is bureaucracy and perhaps a lack of imagination.
A voucher system may provide a key piece of the puzzle. School vouchers are a simple concept. Every child of school age receives a voucher from the government that is worth a set amount of tuition. Parents/students can use that voucher at the school of their choice. They are no longer bound to the whims of arbitrary district borders.
