EDUCATION UNBOUND

I owe this post to Rafe Champion

Australian Ross Farrell has an "Education Unbound" website, dedicated to freeing education from the bonds of ideology and bureaucracy. See here

Ross has a paper (not online) in the current edition of Policy, from the Centre for Independent Studies, reporting on the rise of the modern "edupreneurs", providers of private education.

He has drawn on research in the Third World by Ross Tooley, describing a world of small, independent private schools thriving where some would least expect to find them - in the world's poorest countries such as: Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and China. For the past two years, Tooley and a team of researchers have studied these innovative schools around the world.

Their findings are reported in a paper in the US magazine Education Next and in a report on the site of the E G West Centre. It is apparent from the references cited in these reports that there is a wealth of research on private education that is not even a distant rumour to the uninformed and doctrinaire protagonists of public education.

The successes of private education will not come as a surprise to those who are familiar with Ed West's historical research on the extent of private education before the "for profit" sector was sabotaged by the political entrepreneurs in the public system. So the private sector remained only as the preserve for the very rich and the members of religious communities who could subsidise their schools or recruit essentially unpaid staff.

Ross Tooley is the director of the E G West Centre, based in Newcastle, England, and dedicated to choice, competition and entrepreneurship in education. The site has information on the research program for the centre, including international studies on the prevalence and effectiveness of private education.

There is also a page on the life and scholarship of the late E G West.

The full text of West's book on historical research and the failure of government in education is on line here. Some excerpts from it:

"On my calculations (West, 1978), in 1880, when national compulsion was enacted [in Britain], over 95 per cent of fi fteen-year-olds were literate. This should be compared to the fact that over a century later 40 per cent of 21-year-olds in the UK admit to diffi culties with writing and spelling (Central Statistical Offi ce, 1995: 58)."

In New York: "By this time [1836]the superintendents were expressing complete satisfaction with the provision of schooling. On the quantity of it the report of 1836 asserted: 'Under any view of the subject, it is reasonable to believe, that in the Common Schools, private schools and academies, the number of children actually receiving instruction is equal to the whole number between five and sixteen years of age.' The fact that education could continue to be universal without being free and compulsory seems to have been readily acknowledged. Where there were scholars who had poor parents, the trustees had authority to release them from the payment of fees entirely, and this was done 'at the close of term, in such a manner as to divest the transaction of all the circumstances calculated to wound the feelings of scholars'."

On literacy in the US: "Richman (1994) quotes data showing that from 1650 to 1795 American male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 per cent. Between 1800 and 1840 literacy in the North rose from 75 per cent to between 91 and 97 per cent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 per cent to 81 per cent. Richman also quotes evidence indicating that literacy in Massachusetts was 98 per cent on the eve of legislated compulsion and is about 91 per cent today."

Virtual Classrooms Abound on Internet

"Just as online college and graduate programs have broadened the range of options in higher education, virtual charter schools and online classes are gaining popularity among the K-12 set.

To the delight of homeschooling parents and others wanting a different kind of education for their children than what is found in the local public school, entrepreneurs are flooding the Internet marketplace to offer everything from individual courses to entire schools. Improving technology is providing more opportunities for interactive features on Web sites, such as live chats, videos, and downloads.

Virtual K-12 education began to develop over the past five years as a way to support homeschool students. First, books and materials were made available for purchase and mail order, followed by programs that facilitated learning, and then video-linked instructors.

"The ability to create a 'classroom of one,' where each student has a focused learning experience with their teacher, is truly within reach," said Dan Cookson, CEO of TrueNorthLogic, a company serving 850,000 students, teachers, and administrators nationwide.


Accommodating Interests, Schedules

Supplemental programs and tools--often targeted toward students who rely on their parents and/or online schools for the majority of their education--are also being used in traditional classrooms.

Programs can be used to supplement the main lesson plan, providing children with another means to learn. Some parents of children in traditional schools use online education programs at home to enrich their children's education, give them remedial work, or assist them with unique situations such as a disability or unusual extracurricular or athletic training schedules.

In a climate where test scores rule, programs such as those available through InteractiveMathTutor.com provide distance-learning opportunities for students in alternative programs and traditional students requiring special assistance to hone their math skills for class work and standardized tests. According to its Web site, InteractiveMathTutor.com strives to enhance the experience of learning for online students by providing around-the-clock access to personalized tutoring, with "a daily and direct communication line to receiving quality, highly effective help in a timely manner."

Critics of online education point out the absence of live teachers and social interaction. But Cookson said students are separated from their teachers "only by distance, not by the level of attention or involvement. The online environment can be a student-centric model that increases communication capacity among teachers, students, parents, and administrators."

Improving Socialization

Steve Peha, president of Teaching That Makes Sense, Inc., a 10-year-old company that offers Web-based content management systems to school districts as well as online tutorials for writers and other supplemental services, notes some potential pitfalls. "There's no question that online learning resources are beneficial. The question is under what circumstances," Peha explained. "While online learning may soon replace in-school learning, the results will be very different. Access to information will be better. And the cost will be lower. But the quality of the final result may not be what we want for our children or for our country."

Learning is an inherently social process, Peha said, so when kids learn something in an online setting, the best "supplemental" activity is interacting with people in a different context, where they can put their new learning to use. After working with students in both online and classroom settings, Peha says, "the greatest success comes from the student's own initiative." As a result, he concludes, the ideal situation combines online and classroom learning.

More here

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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