Elegant Solutions
There are many problems that our education systems currently globally face. One big problem is that we're unable to come up with elegant solutions to them. We try using duct tape instead of actually fixing the problems. So here are some suggestions as elegant solutions.Problem 1 - Lack of education
There are currently about 120 million children out-of-school according to UNESCO report. In the first world countries these children probably attend to some alternative education, like homeschooling, unschooling or some other unregistered means of basic education, so there's no real problem there. The problem is mainly focused on developing countries and third world countries.As I stated in my earlier blog writing, there are many problems related to modern education, and maybe we shouldn't keep on pouring money into it anymore. With the modern information technology the schools have become obsolete. So what would be an elegant solution?
Basically, quit funding schools and give the money directly to the children.
In modern societies with modern technology the children don't need no education, they can educate themselves. What if instead of pouring our money to the inefficient schools, we gave the money directly to the children? Children would show their knowledge of reading, writing and some other basic knowledge that the local government sees necessary for successful citizenship. After all, the aim of the schools should be to produce well functioning and participating citizens, who maintain or develop a peaceful and productive society.
In Finland the government pays approximately 6 000 euros per student per year to the school which provides the education for that child. The mandatory elementary school lasts usually nine years, which makes the total amount of money given to a school 54 000 euros. If you gave that amount directly to a child which proves the knowledge, I think that would be enough incentive to motivate any child to learn the basic knowledge. You could even make the scale progressive so that the better you achieve the more money you get. This same solution could be used also in developing countries, where the money would of course be less, but the incentive and motivation might be even greater.
Of course this solution would create some other problems. The function of the schools isn't just to educate, but also to take care, keep track of and to "store" the children in a safe place while the adults are working. There are several elegant solutions to solve this problem depending on the situation. In many cases the children could be taken to the adults working places and the children could figure out things to do together there, while also learning about the professions of their parents. In many cases one of the parents is not working so the children could stay at home, and in most cases in the neighborhood there are at least some adults who are not working or are working from home, so they could take care of the children. Also the current daycares could take older children to help out with the younger ones.
My favourite blog, Slate Star Codex, wrote a very similar proposition earlier this year. I can see the appeal in this idea, but I do have a few misgivings as well:
VastaaPoista1) You recognise that a school has other functions besides education, but your proposed solutions don't sound very convincing. At a workplace, children would be at best a nuisance and at worst a hazard. Teenagers could be somewhat more useful, but they would require so much monitoring and supervising, that in most cases they would be more trouble that they're worth. Your other idea, where unemlopyed people would monitor the children, has a set of different problems. How would I know whether the person who would be looking after my children is trustworthy? How would they keep teenagers under their supervision? Where, exactly, would they take care of these children and teenagers? Etc.
2) Giving teenagers a lump sum of money, no strings attached, might not be the smartest idea. While some would no doubt use that money as a seed to their start-up, most teenagers are have short time-preference and high need to impress their peer group. I can imagine for examplke motorcycle sales going off the roof, with the associated highway fatalities.
3) Of course, we are also really widening the gap between upper and lower classes with this idea. Children with highly educated parents can happily take the 54 000 e and learn all they need at home, but if your parents never finished secondary education, your chances don't look so good.
Thanks Antti for great comments and the Slate Star Codex blog was absolutely brilliant! :) Here are my thoughts on your misgivings.
Poista1) In USA alone there are over one million homeschooling children, which means that there are probably quite a few ways of dealing with this problem and I'm sure if we did some research into this, we could easily come up with ways how to solve this problem. My main point was that there are tons of alternative ways how to solve this depending on each individual family's situation. For one family the workplace might be indeed dangerous or inconvenient, but for many it would be perfect and educational, and for many the workplace could be altered to accompany the children better. If all schools were dropped, the neighborhood would surely find some trustworthy people to take care of their children. Teenagers nowadays stay most of their time online, so they wouldn't be too hard to reach, and I'm sure the promise of an award money for finishing their studies would surely motivate them to work if not hard, then at least take their studies seriously enough not to spoil their lives beforehand.
2) If the teenagers didn't have to waste their time in the schools, they would have time to figure out something worthwhile to do, so the money would quite likely go to good purpose and I'm sure their parents would have a word or two to say how to spend that money... But I do agree that there might be some other better ways of giving/dividing that money, like SSC in his blog suggest. Do you have any suggestions?
3) This assumption seems a logical one, yet at least partly unfounded. According to homeschooling studies parents with no teacher education background and/or higher education tend to teach their children as well or better than parents with teacher credentials. I know you probably didn't mean only this, but it gives the direction that learning doesn't necessarily require professional teaching in order to be successful. But I think where your point may be right is that the socio-economic background of parents usually has a tendency to be transferred to the children. So this is a good question and I might try to tackle it in another blog post. In general my thought would be that due to increasing peer learning based on inner motivation, the class gap could be narrowed opposed to the current system which provenly is widening the gap.
I hope you keep on questioning my thoughts and ideas. :)