Manufacturing Education

Few people would argue with the claim that our educational systems are not producing the quality product that they should be producing. Few would argue with the claim that education is far too expensive, far too uneven in quality; far too unreliable, and far too ineffective. What they would argue about  is how to fix it. My suggestion from the past  few posts would be to automate the process of teaching and to manufacture education.

Using the manufacturing model we can produce higher quality education that is much more reliable, consistent in quality, and affordable. But, in order to do this we have to move education from the classroom and into cyberspace. But, this is a big step and many people have reservations about it. They are concerned with loosing the personal contact they had with both teachers and students. They are concerned with the behavioral and social aspects of education. These are certainly valid concerns, and I would address these concerns in two ways.

First I would put these concerns into perspective. That is to say, people tend to exaggerate the interpersonal aspects of education. While you may fondly remember a teacher you had some where along the line, overwhelmingly most of the teachers you have had are forgotten or, if remembered, you cannot remember much good about them. Further, the bonding with classmates is also way overstated. How many of the hundreds of classmates you have had over the years do you still keep in touch with. For most people the answer is - precious few.This is not to say that there were not important things going on in the classroom beyond the basic education. There was socializing, maturing and a host of other less tangible areas of growth occurring. What happens to them?   Well, that brings me to my second point.

By getting teachers out of the educational process, you free them up to do things that are more rewarding, more interesting and more productive.  I would use, as an analogy, the introduction of computers into organizations in the 1960's. Most jobs that existed in the 1950's were gone by the 1970's. Instead of having people do monotonous clerical work, they began doing jobs that required intellectual skills and decision making. While there was great fear that computers would create massive unemployment, they, instead, just made most jobs more interesting. That is, they freed people up from boring work and allowed them to do more satisfying work. Automating education will do the same for teachers. In the next post, I will speculate on what some of those jobs might look like.