Humble suggestion: Read Diane Ravitch’s “Death and Life of the Great American School System” as well as Linda Darling-Hammond’s “Education in a Flat World”. Both are excellent, and as real teachers could tell you, we won’t “fix” education until we follow the strategies inside of them.

I’m wondering how long it will take for people in this country to become humble enough to follow the lead of Finland or South Korea???

Some content can be demonstrated in a 3-5 minute video and mastered in a classroom later. Other content can be taught in class, but reviewed on-line.

The promoters of distance learning/technology overstate their case, but not by very much. There are huge savings to be found in rapidly expanding virtual education.

The promoters of the status quo have had 50-70 years to prove their model, and a 2 decades of massive funding increases, administrative bloat, and fruitless “class size reduction” have not come close to proving successful.

There will alway be a place for a talented conveyor of content. The “classroom” will endure. What should not endure, indeed cannot endure, is the and its massively over -staffed and under-performing current system.

How will these techno-educators account for their student’s mastery of the lessons they deliver? How, with hundreds or thousands of students to account for, will these educators gain an understanding of where each student is coming from on a social-emotional level? This goes beyond touchy-feely–there is plenty of data to show that a lack of inclusiveness, particularly in failing schools, contributes to the achievement gap. Mr. Peterson’s dichotomous account of why students aren’t performing–(1) because they already know the material or (2) because the material doesn’t speak to their “contemporary” mindsets–completely misses this perspective. Yet, I won’t rule it out completely: I think the concept, while flawed, opens up an interesting discussion of what an educator should be.

I note your strawman argument. Recorded lectures (also high-quality printed material , interactive computer courseware and forms not yet invented) are not substitutes for an educational system. Most people are not natural autodidacts, which is why we have schools in the first place. High-quality materials are force-multipliers, because the cost of reproducing information is close to zero (unlike the cost of producing a Richard Feynman!). But reducing the number of personnel required to teach runs directly counter to the interests of “educators”, who want job security. Unfortunately, the more “educators” required by the system, the less choosy society can afford to be and the less society can afford to pay each one. Society is probably better off with a system which tries to exploit quality in both personnel and materials rather than quantity of bodies in front of classrooms.

Moving on, I agree that credentialing is a joke, and that most of our teachers (as well as our fellow citizens) are trained but hardly educated. This, however, is not a sufficient argument to dispense with the educational system. There are plenty of thoughtful educators that work diligently and successsfully with their students everyday. We need to move beyond reactionary bashing of the schools and listen to what educators (not education professors, wealthy industrialists, or politicians) have to say. They are not always right but they are talking from a place of actual experience and not just ideology.

Additionally, “ignorant staff using their authority to assert falsehoods” are n0t found only in public schools. In fact, this is almost certainly the modus operandi of all of our institutions-corporations, small businesses, think tanks, goverment, etc.

Really good materials (what Daugherty maligns as a teacher flying around in an airplane) can both inform students and inspire teachers. Ever heard of Feynman’s lectures on physics? They have been lauded by many as some of the clearest and most accessible educational resources on the areas they cover, yet they are the work of ONE MAN. It may only take the efforts of a few dozen inspired people recording lectures, plus a few tens of thousands to answer individual questions, to bring millions of students to the point where they understand what Feynman was trying to teach.

I learn a great deal from what I read. I don’t require a one-on-one, or even one-on-twenty, experience to learn many things. The same materials which serve me can serve a hundred, or a billion… if they are good enough. I am not prejudiced, I am experienced.

I have plenty of experience with the “current system of education”, including ignorant staff using their authority to assert falsehoods (about statistics, to give one example). If you think that credentialed staff spouting falsehoods can produce better-educated students than the best written or recorded materials, I’d like to see evidence to support that position. Until then… OUT, OUT, YOU DEMONS OF STUPIDITY!

When millions of “students” exit K-12 with diplomas but lacking either true (even functional) literacy or numeracy, the emphasis on “one person having a connection to another” has to go by the wayside. Being a self-supporting adult in the information age means being able to read, understand and produce. How kids acquire these abilities is irrelevant. If you leave those millions to stagnate in unemployability because the computers to deliver materials didn’t have enough “personal connections” to suit you, you deserve the blame for their predicament.

We need to do what works, prejudices be damned.

Actually, I don’t think we need less teachers, but no more… but the technology point… dead on.

It’s just common sense isn’t it?

A few years ago someone figured out that you could put these jazz patterns into a computer – and bam! You’ve got a robot that plays saxophone like John Coltrane. Luck for me, John Coltrane robots won’t put anyone out of business because there are more than enough real jazz musicians to go around, and a real musician who can actually improvise will always sound better than a machine playing patterns.

The same can’t be said for teaching. We will never have enough master teachers to go around because there simply aren’t enough people who have what it takes to be a master teacher – the need is too great. We don’t even know if there are enough people who could learn all the patterns it takes to teach a decent class. If good enough is all we can do, would you rather listen to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjONQNUU8Fg
or this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXR9ggRdFI&feature=fvw