Completing the title’s SAT question is the conundrum. The billion dollar conundrum. Schools are not yet truly obsolete, despite Bill Gates and my claims to the contrary. Something obsolete is no longer in use, no longer fashionable. Typewriters are obsolete. Schools aren’t there yet. but the day is coming and I think coming sooner than most people think.
I’d promised quite some time ago to get back to this general idea and to share my hunches about what might go on the blank. I don’t think it will be something simple enough to fit on a single blank, though if a term is crafted for the class of institutions and experiences then we might have something.
I see the educational system as akin to the ecosphere. As the ecosphere is made of countless interconnected ecosystems, the edusphere is made of countless interconnected eduspheres. That’s already the way it is, of course, but let’s be mightily presumptuous and rebrand. Presumptuousness is a strength and I should, after all, go with my strengths.
What might different edusystems look like?
- Schools actually do work ok for some minority of kids, so they’ll linger on.
- Homeschooling is already on the scene and making a growing difference in the edusphere.
- Apprenticeships are proven to work pretty well for different vocations. I expect that there will be some broadening of apprenticeship that will not only spread to other occupations but also to non-vocational use. How, for example, do we (or should we) apprentice citizenship?
- Microschools. What? Eh, I don’t like the name either, but it’s the best I’ve come up with so far. This would be groups of something like 10 or 20 students with some range of ages where they would have a van or two and would go out and explore the world. It would need to go beyond simply looking, but also making sense of the world and reporting about it to others.
I could go on at some length about microschools, but will save that for an a later post. I want to hear more from other folks.
