Some of you are aware that my career (and a large part of my expertise) is currently focused on perfecting education, however I almost never write about it in my blog, or discuss it in normal conversation. The reasons for this are many, but it mainly boils down to the fact that almost any discussion ends up blaming trivial concerns (such as the number of teachers) for the problems with education, when the core problem is much more fundamental. And while I could debate all of those trivial concerns with people ad infinitum and possibly change an opinion or two, it would ultimately amount to nothing, because discussing the problem, even on a grand scale, isn’t going to fix it. Solving the problem is going to take a paradigm shift, and that is going to require a demonstration.
Interestingly enough, while my colleagues and I are working on such a demonstration, we happened to run across a book that does a very good job at describing the fundamental problems with the education system in the US. In this book, a very smart fellow by the name of Dr. Frederic Lister Burk examines educational statistics and the teaching methods employed, and makes some very astute observations. This is even more astounding when you realize that he did this in 1913.
I advise anyone who is even marginally interested in the plight of education, and anyone who has school-age children, to read this book. It is available for free here, in every imaginable format (you can even send it to your Kindle), and it’s only 25 pages long. Once you read it and realize that 100 years have passed and we are still doing the same ineffectual things in school and getting the same results, you will realize why I find discussion of the problem mostly pointless.