Monday, October 27, 2003
Education “Do Over” What is it?
I got this idea from a post at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler. The question was raised (regarding public education):
My response was this (edited version):
It cannot be fixed.
It took me years to come to that--and not without a lot of false attempts and hopes that I could make a difference.
Last week one of my kids bought a Slinky. He did something, not sure what, that caused a slight tangle. We tried for about an hour to untangle the blasted the thing (I am sure nearly everyone has had a similar Slinky memory). My daughter tried for another couple of hours. At some point, you have to accept the futility of the effort--You reach a point where the effort to untangle causes more damage to it. It’s bent, unstable, and out of alignment. The only solution is to give up. Throw it away and buy a new Slinky. It’s an admission of failure, but it’s also an acceptance of reality.
We’ve gotten so far away from Jefferson’s goal of public education that is it futile (wasted effort, good money after bad, etc.) to try to FIX it.
We need to scuttle it and start over.
I don’t think we’re at that point yet. I don’t think there are people willing to do what it takes to scuttle that disaster.
We should not spend anymore time on trying to REPAIR and should be focusing on how to REPLACE. I’d be more than happy to keep a running log on ideas/suggestions on what that replacement should look like, and post the progress of that work on my website (or setup a new site for that purpose).
If this becomes unwieldy on this site, I’ll setup a separate URL to maintain it.
Email me your ideas, suggestions, brainstorms, thoughts, etc. at: do-over -at- mrs du toit dot com or post your ideas/suggestions as a comment to this post.
