Education for the masses

“I never let schooling interfere with my education.”
-Mark Twain

A year ago I wrote about Online College courses; most notably the Khan Academy. A recent Wired magazine article describes how Khan is a complete game changer, and how children have been able to advance at a blistering pace using Khan's materials. So what does the public school system think of it?

So what happens when, using Khan Academy, you wind up with a kid in fifth grade who has mastered high school trigonometry and physics—but is still functioning like a regular 10-year-old when it comes to writing, history, and social studies? Khan’s programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who’ve seen Khan Academy presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it “to stop students from becoming this advanced.”

Bottom Line

American grade school education is not "about the children", nor is it about what is best for the children. It's about conformity. It's about social engineering and promoting "correct thought". Only a factory-assembly-line educational system, a "we don't care about individual", would complain about students becoming too advanced.