Transportation is the movement of people or things from one point to another. Animal power in transportation was replaced by machine power. Education is the transfer of information to people. Although we seem not fully aware of it as yet, the transfer of information by traditional means has been replaced by the computer.
In the urban area in which this writer grew up in the 1930s – while electric public conveyances and automobiles transported people – milk, bread, ice and other domestic consumables were delivered by horse-drawn wagon. As regards education, we do not have the luxury of a three-decade transition for overhauling our buggy-whip educational systems. The plain fact is that we cannot afford the time – it must be done now!
Some estimates have the college loan debt reaching an obscene trillion dollars. With country-sized California, along with other states and municipalities within the United States approaching bankruptcy in the attempt to fund public education, the time is long past for altering our outmoded means of information delivery.
Following is an extract from a previous posting by this writer on the same subject:
For starters, the maintenance of brick and mortar facilities for middle and high schools is a waste of money. Gradually, they should be phased out, with the 7-12 students repositioned to utilize home-based, school-provided PCs or laptops. They would pursue regularly assigned courses, digitally monitored by highly qualified master teachers.
Physical campuses would be reserved for K-6 students who, together with the basics, would be thoroughly prepared for individual, computer-home study by the time they reached graduation therefrom. Those very same physical facilities would be equipped for lab studies and other hand-on requirements of the 7-12 students. Those sessions would be scheduled in coordination with the attendance of the K-12 students.
An enormous saving byproduct of this system is one of which we should be taking advantage right now: digital books! The exorbitant amount expended on text books – for schools and universities – is shamefully obscene! – Especially as seen through the narrow, bigoted lens of the Texas School Book Depository.
Mary had a smart iPad;
Its lights would blink and glow.
Everywhere that Mary went,
iPad was sure to go.
It went with her to school each day –
It was not backpack-cruel –
It caused the children all to say:
“We need iPad at school!”
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