FOREVER CHANGING THE WAY AMERICA EDUCATES: THE NEW MULTI BILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY

[Morpheal]

Here is the economic proposition that needs to be considered.
The cost / benefit studies would indicate an enormous potential.
Massive, even if gradual, reduction in the need for jails. A major downturn in the American jail business sector.
Massive, even if gradual, social benefit, with tangible and intangible savings and gains some of which can be quantified.
A huge boost to a segment of existing industries, in America and most probably with its trading partners in China in terms
of relevant technology design, production, distribution, as to both hardware and sofware, with adaptation of infrastructure
a potential expansion to create a more networked system as the technology and its implementation are evolved.

And it is all for good, not evil.


Preamble to the Chinese posting of the Usenet article:

This article was published today in a leading democratic party forum, and in several United States oriented newsgroups on the internet. It is, however, relevant to others in the world. How the western world has measured educational effectiveness, its methods in education,
and its solutions to serious educational problems need reconsideration. While it continues to teach its own errors to the world, the western educational system is as much in need of rethinking and radical change as are certain things about the eastern system and its ways. Dialogue between systems, as to potential problems and solutions, in a world that must become more rational, more scientific, giving priority to true facts, freed from beliefs, and truly progressive, scientific reason based solutions to human problems, is important.

Point 1 is about measurement and purpose. Education is for the betterment of society.
Progress and achievement of the good, of true values, depend on the quality of education.

Point 2 is about using new technology to better education. It is a massive leap, not a small
step and it is practical today. I am thinking of the massive electronics factories that America
helped build in China that now stand significantly idle. Here is a way to use some of that capacity for good, rather than evil. Billions of dollars of business, for the sake of good, producing new, better designed and built, educational technology, at economical cost for the world market, including America, is possible. It could begin as soon as a major country chooses to pursue this most worthy cause and begins to implement the use of such technology. Why not China ? It has a large population of adults and children to educate. It has the means to build the machines and reproduce the software economically. It has intellectuals at home and abroad capable of helping create the much needed programs. It depends on the Chinese government as to what is now done, and what good is to come for the future.

Point 3 refers to a problem in the western world that teachers, and senior educators are failing to comprehend and find solutions to. Often those who cannot learn properly and who lack discipline in life are affected by various forms of illness, which needs professional help. Some suffer from social illness, such as gangs, peer groups, that promote use of illegal drugs, that prefer violence and that encourage crime. That too is illness. Removing children from such situations to treatment facilities, for proper care, and special education before they become lifetime criminals and total misfits in society is a necessity. Teachers cannot handle the problem themselves. They need legal help from legislation that does not yet exist in most of the western world. America's adult jails are full of prisoners. Criminals who were not educated properly. Who were not treated for their illnesses while young. They are victims of the American system, and most should never have ended up in prison. They should have been educated, identified as problems and corrected before ending up in adult penitentiaries. The western system of victimizing the victims of what is mostly inadequate medicine and inadequate education is one of the western world's most ignored and most shameful institutions. It might be that the western world's unwillingness to address that problem with a more rational and scientific approach means that other nations, such as China, must consider the problem and enter into the proposal of better solutions as to how to build a better society where jails are more a thing of the past and no longer so necessary as they have become in an extremely dysfunctional and extremely poorly educated America. America is not the only nation that is guilty in that way. China is also far from perfect, and in need of reforms. Let it be a competition for the achievement of a good society, for the good of humanity, for the sake of eliminating the tradition of victimization that has gone so long unquestioned and unrectified.

Following is the usenet article as originally presented:


FOREVER CHANGING THE WAY AMERICA EDUCATES

Education has long been inadequate, particularly in the earlier years.

There isn't a bright child who does not come home complaining of boredom.
There isn't a slower child who does not come home in pained frustration.
Often they do not really get to voice their thoughts about their own suffering.
The bored suffer at least as much as the otherwise challenged.

Children want to learn.

We see that in how many those who have access to complex video games master
them, very often readily exceeding their elders in a fraction of the time it takes them
to learn the game.

There are several things wrong with education.

1). It fails to provide a common standard, across the country, for quality in terms of results.

What is quality in education ? It is more than learning facts and basic skills.

Ultimately results are the effects on society. Does education foster true achievement, decrease
the crime rate, create better lives and improve society, by the values, discipline, ability to think
clearly, and act progressively and effectively. Does it serve social functionality rather than add
to the dysfunction and failure that plagues society as its statistics. Where that measure indicates
a failing grade, it is the fault of senior educators, and they should be replaced with competence.
When schools cannot teach citizenship, discipline, good conduct, ethical action, progress,
the quest for scientific and social truth, cannot better human lives adequately, educators need to
be fired out and replaced. These are measurable standards and can be upheld.

They are as measurable as actual testing for acquisition of cognitive skills and fact based knowledge.

We can measure results in terms of how society is faring. Whether it is improving or in decline.
Where crime rates are rising educators need to be replaced with competency. They are incompetent.
We must begin to rethink how we look at the role of education and its purpose in society.

2). Modern technology provides the means for giving each child a device for programmed learning.
An electronic tutor with a standardized program of study that provides consistent, thorough,
learning of the fundamentals of the major subjects while making them enjoyable and teaching basic
motor skills. Such devices were a dream twenty years ago when I first discussed it, on the net, with
a black educator in America, who thought the idea was a perfect solution to individualized education,
but worried about the costs. The costs are no longer the problem. We can do it. Great strides have
been made as to interactive software, for learning, that reinforces concepts, according to the best
psychologies of learning, in a more scientific way than any individual educator can hope to do for
a whole classroom of students. Children each learn in different ways at different paces, but the
program rectifies the short comings of each, helping them across their individual hurdles, and aiding
memory of key information and concepts.

It is time to bring technology to each child to supplement what teachers can do, and to create a
common, nationwide, program of learning where every child is equally advantaged. Where there is
truly some educational justice being implemented. Where every child has personal tutoring and
where every child can accelerate or catch up according to their individual natures, but no child
needs to be left to fall behind and perish. The brightest could accelerate far beyond their pained
frustrated boredom serving genius as well as the average. We need not hold back the brightest.
All we need is the new technology and it is available at a very affordable cost.

3). Education must teach a non sectarian ethics and morality. It must inculcate discipline.

To do this educators must be able to discipline. This has become a problem with insufficient and
ineffective penalties for the persistent and sometimes dangerous violators. Teachers often feel
helpless as to what to do, and the problems of classroom discipline have failed to adequately come to
government's attention. Where teachers cannot use corporal punishment in today's education
system as they could in the past, their only choice is to remove students who are unruly and
disruptive. This solves nothing for education or society. It is a failure of the purpose of education.
Ultimately that education fails in its responsibility to society.

What then can be done ?

Where behavior problems exceed the ability of educators to cope, the legal system must be given
a method for dealing with the problems before they become uncorrectable problems for society.
Removal of the offender from the classroom, appearance in court, and sentencing to a reform
school type correctional facility, where expert help and special discipline can be provided to correct
the problem when it is discovered in early life. Such expertise and taking away of privileges as
punishment can only be accorded by legal means, by legal process, not by a disempowered
educator hard pressed to keep order in an urban classroom. It also requires the application of
medical, psychological, diagnosis and treatment resources, as well as special methods not
applicable to other children, in order to properly rectify the root cause of the problem. Without
that type of empowerment, and without special facilities capable of providing the necessary
care for offenders, education cannot cope. We need to realize that there is an ever growing
problem in our schools, which requires immediate legislative change to provide for adequate
recourse, to correct the problem and restore educational effectiveness.

Education cannot be held responsible to society if it is not suitably empowered.
Only a rethink of the relevant legislation will adequately empower it

Robert Morpheal

[midnight]

1. Several years ago. I had the worst need to understand

the loss of learning at our schools. My children were in one of the best school dist. in this country as far as funding goes. Teachers had lots of special perks. The parties that were thrown for them by the wealthy in the community was obscene, but the point is the focus and respect for education was secondary. There was a strange social dance going on that was dumbing down my kids. What my experience taught me was that from top down silencing was going on. Bush said a mouth full when he said money trumps peace. It also trumps education.