Ok, so I have mentioned these ideas before, but I think they bear repeating.
Our public education system sucks. I am not just talking about the US education system, which is one of the worst in the world. All of our educations systems suck. Japan has one of the best education systems in the world, and it sucks.
Long ago, we had universities that actually cared about learning. They did not have classes, grades, or degrees. People came to these universities because they wanted to learn. They were not looking for diplomas certifying that they knew things. They wanted knowledge. Instead of classes, these universities had lectures and forums. The lectures were open to all students who wanted to attend. A professor (literally, one who professes) would give a lecture on accepted theories, which were attended by fairly new students, or on new theories he or others had concocted. The forums were open discussions that any student could attend (there were also sometimes closed forums limited to specific disciplines or specific people). A forum would have a topic which would be discussed in depth. Students who had difficulties understanding a topic would attend these forums and ask questions to improve their understanding. The goal of these institutions was to spread knowledge and gain new knowledge. Many of the students conducted research in new fields to improve their knowledge of that field and to contribute to others studying the same things.
Now, we have very formalized educational systems. We have each subject divided up into a number of classes. Each class runs for a limited duration. We assign grades based on students' ability to learn the required material within the allotted time. Classes are sometimes all lecture and other times part lecture part forum. The time given for a single class period is usually fairly short. Students are required to learn 4 to 8 subjects at the same time, attending several very short classes each day. Each class hands out homework or other assignments, often with little regard for the limited time each student has to do all of the assigned work. If a student fails to grasp a concept, they are left behind. Sometimes tutors are available, or professors are willing to work with the student, but if the student needs even a week to grasp a new concept, the class leaves him behind. Students that already have proficiency in a subject must still slog through all of the work at the slow relative pace of the class. The result is that there is no class that even satisfies the needs of the majority of students, let alone all of them.
This highly formalized education is failing. It has been failing for several decades, and still we cling to it. Our government had introduced legislation with the hope of improving the situation, but instead they have further alienated the students who are struggling. New educational requirements force teachers to try to teach subjects that some students find very difficult in even less time than before. Many students in public school hate learning because our educational system makes effective learning impossible for them. Most students in college care more about getting passing grades than actually learning the materials. Some even feel compelled to cheat to relieve some of the absurdly difficult tasks set before them. Was this our goal? Do we really want surgeons, politicians, and mechanics that got through school only learning 75% (a grade of C) of the material, or who felt forced to cheat to get through? An education system that rewards cheating is a very poor system indeed. (Right, there is no reward when they get caught, but do you seriously believe that most cheaters get caught?)
We need a system where the natural consequences of cheating are bad, not good. We need a less formal system that is flexible enough for both fast learners and slow learners. We need a system that is flexible enough for students that learn some things quickly and other things slowly. Most students have difficulties with some parts of a subject but not others. This means that most students during the course of a typical class will have some parts where the pace of the class is too fast and others where the pace is too slow. The problem with the class model is that few students find the same parts easy and the same parts hard. A class design that gives more time for a topic that some students have difficulty with and less time for topics that those same students find easy will be much more difficult or even impossible for the majority of the students.
Grades are a major problem. Grades are one of the things that encourage cheating. Students on financial aid, or scholarships may even be more inclined to cheat in difficult classes, because their financial stability depends on their grades. Grades encourage students without these problems to be lazy. Why work hard to learn something you don't care much about when you can get by only learning 75% to 80% (C to B- in most schools) of the material? Even if you do care about it, if you are taking another class that is especially difficult, why not slack on the easier class so you have more time to get that minimum passing grade in the hard one? In addition, while grades are intended to be a measure of proficiency, they are often misused as a measure of how compliant a student is with the professor's policies. Some professors give tons of meaningless homework intended to improve proficiency, but then they grade based on how well the student did on that homework. If the homework is intended to improve proficiency, then shouldn't the measure be taken after the homework, not during or before? Further, if a student is already proficient, should that student really be penalized because they did not need to do the homework? How is how much time you have for pointless busy work a valid measure of proficiency in a subject? I recognize that there must be some measure, but professors should not force students to waste their lives doing absurd amounts of unnecessary homework to get that measure.
We need mechanics that will allow students who can demonstrate proficiency in a subject to skip the work that is intended to give them that proficiency. You might say that most colleges already have test out mechanics in place that do this, and you would be right. There are a few problems that this does not not cover though. Students in the public school system do not have this option. No matter how good I was at algebra, I did not have to option to test out of high school algebra. Worse though, while most colleges have a test out option for many classes, they still charge full price for taking the class. This is extremely dishonest. If I test out, I am not using the full services of the professor. I am not using the facilities of the college for an entire semester. Really, the most I could be using is an hour or two of the professor's time to make and grade the test, if that, and for a subject that requires a computer, I might use the computer lab for a couple hours. If the lab fee is $50 a semester (I have not seen more than $20), a couple hours should not cost more than 6 cents ($50/4 months/30 days/4 hours * 2 hours; assuming the average student uses the lab 4 hours a day). A class that costs $500 a semester should come out to $20, presuming that the class meets for an hour, 3 days a week, and that the professor does not spend any out of class time for grading or preparing (if he does, the time is less valuable, and thus the cost should be decreased). So, an average 3 credit class that meets 3 times a week for an hour, over the entire semester, that normally costs $500 (colleges that I have seen that charge on a per credit basis do not usually charge more than this) should cost no more than $20.06 to test out. More prestigious colleges may have higher per credit charges, but even at $2,000 for a 3 credit class, this should not be more than $80.24. Instead, US colleges penalize students who have the sense to study what they are interested in before they go to college.
This is as much an ethical issue as anything else. Many schools (public schools and colleges) don't actually care about education. A friend in Washington State recently discovered that a local school was intentionally doing a poor job, because it would get them more funding. Now, I recognize that this is a flaw in the funding system, but dishonesty is wrong regardless of the money involved. Do you want your children taught by educators who care more about money than how well they educate your children?
With modern technology, we can go back to the old ways, but still have means of measuring proficiency. Instead of classes, we could have lectures and forums. Neither the lectures nor the forums would have any assignments or requirements associated with them. Any student could attend either (if seats are limited, students might be required to sign up for specific times; some forums might be limited in size as well, to facilitate good discussion). Instead of typical class assignments and home work, the school would have study exercises on the internet. Anyone wanting (or needing) credit for a specific topic of a subject (see my Milestones article) would work on these exercises, attend lectures and forums as needed, and when they felt comfortable with the material, the would take some kind of test. This might be a written essay, a multiple choice test, or an oral examination (or a combination), that would be intended to determine the proficiency of the student. This would not be graded; it would be pass/fail. If the student fails, there is no penalty, besides maybe an amount of time that must pass before trying again. Once the student passes a specific proficiency, they can move on to more difficult material in that field (proficiency tests might require that proficiency in a previous subject already be established). When a student established proficiency in certain collections of subjects, they can receive a degree in that subject. There would be no limits on what a student could get a degree in. For instance, where I currently go to college, I cannot use the same classes for a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degree, even though there is a huge overlap. In the system I am suggesting, this would not be the case. If I could demonstrate proficiency in all of the subjects required for an Electrical Engineering degree, it would make no difference that I had already used some of those same proficiencies for my Computer Science degree. The idea here is that my degrees indicate what I am proficient in. There would be no rules restricting what degrees I can obtain based on what other degrees I already have.
This system would encourage students to learn what they want to learn. There would need to be no declared majors. Really, employers might even look at specific proficiencies not related to a specific degree in hiring, when trying to hire people with very specific skill sets. A person might not even need to officially graduate, or have a degree to get a good job, if they have the specific proficiencies that an employer needs. This means that school could be much more streamlined for people that need it and more complete for others who need or prefer that. Instead of being job training centers that require a bunch of extra unrelated things (generals), they would be true centers of learning. Those who want and can afford well rounded scholarly educations would be able to obtain them, while those who only want (or only can afford) marketable job skills can obtain them there as well. It would be easy for those who want continued education, but who work full time jobs, to continue learning. For those on any kind of financial aid, there might be requirements of progression, for instance, they might be required to maintain a specific average number of proficiencies gained per semester to continue to receive aid. For those paying their own way, there might be no restrictions at all. For instance, I might have a well paying job and have no reason to get credit for additional proficiencies, but I could still benefit personally from attending lectures and forums in my free time, without ever needing to do skill building exercises (the equivalent of home work) or take proficiency tests. This system is very conducive to continued education. For people who want higher degrees, this would also give them a means of doing it as they have time and resources. It might take them 10 or 20 years of spare time to develop the levels of proficiency required for a Masters degree in a subject, but it would be possible, even with a large family or a demanding job.
I don't know if this system is perfect. In my mind, it works very well, and it would be hard for any system of education to be worse than what we are doing right now. I think this system would be more likely to train people in what they enjoy and what they are good at. For many people, it would result in more rounded educations, even if they did not ever pass the proficiency tests for some of the subjects that they attended lectures and forums for. This open, casual system would result in many, of not most, students progressing through college in much shorter time than our current system. We would not have so many students who graduate with only 75% of the needed knowledge learned. Without graded homework, or even traditional grades, we would not have so many people cheating (if the proficiency tests were well proctored, cheating would be reduced to almost nothing, since no other school work is graded). We would not have surgeons who cheated their way through school, or who passed with only a C. Those who could not demonstrate true proficiency in a subject would not get a degree in it. This is dramatically better than what we currently have, and I urge those with the power to affect change to push government and institutions of education to at least try this system.
Lord Rybec
