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RE: Why the worlds education system is totally wrong.
An example of a possible solution would be putting much less value on marks. It has been done in countries like Finland with significant success.
Another thing that should be changed in my humble opinion would be removing some of the emphasis from knowledge and placing it on skills and abilities.
Montessori schools frequently take that approach, and it's the most effective form of education (properly applied) for children I've come across.
I think the single thing with the biggest impact would be privatizing education over a period of time. There is no competition in U.S. schools, unless you count the competition for federal funds by manipulating numbers or lowering standards to artificially raise graduation rates.
Privatization allows choice, choice promotes competition, and competition continuously raises the quality of schools. This is particularly the case when attendance isn't compulsory and students leave schools that are ineffective.
If you look around the world, you'll notice that the countries producing consistently the best results in terms of education actually rely pretty heavily on properly built public education systems.
There are public interest issues that are much harder for the private sector the handle efficiently. I believe education is one of them and if you look around the world and at the countries with the best results with that, the data seems to support that. All the countries leading the way on that are relying heavily on their public education systems. As anything else, it needs to be done right.
I think privatizing education in the U.S. would lead to even worse results in the US compared to other developed countries and I don't see why market pressures are supposed to actually raise the standard of education in the country.
Absolutely. I agree that those are the prime examples right now. However, you can't forget the deplorable state of education in the United States right now. Better in comparison to deplorable still leaves a lot of room for improvement.
I understand the challenges to privatizing education, and it would have to happen over a significant period of time (perhaps as many as 25 years), but id be happy starting with removing regulations on private school curriculum and allowing families to receive tax breaks when not using public schools.
A lot of this comes down to ideals and what is proper of government, which you'll see more of in my future posts.
The moment you deregulate the curriculum, you'll get a bunch of religious schools teaching creationism and all kinds of objectively wrong anti-science BS. Do you think that would be any improvement on education US children are currently getting?
The problem is not having curriculum, the problem is not having the right curriculum.
I can agree with your conclusion, though I do not believe curriculum should be controlled by the government, But that's another issue.
Your comments about religious schools are inaccurate, though - religious schools are not bound by the same laws as other public and private schools, nor are they held to the same standards.
Who else?
Aren't they still held to some kind of standards? I meant this more of an example of how all kinds of kooks are going to be operating schools teaching all kinds of BS as fact. But I'd appreciate a more thorough correction of the inaccuracies you see in what I've written.
Also, followed for future interesting discussions!