Or maybe we're expecting too much of the school system when it should be the responsibility of parents to teach their skills valuable skills. School isn't the solution to all our problems.
So as a parent why can't I demand a system I pay for to provide that kind of service to my children ? In the realm of computers its ok, I know computers, and can fill in , but what if my child takes an interest to chemistry ? As a society we can ( and should ) be able to provide the depth of education to our kids that they will be able to absorb.
You can: send your child to a private school. Or do it on the cheap, send to a government school, and get the mass produced education that's a poorer fit.
I think that there are plenty of options that have yet to be explored in education.
I'm honestly not surprised that there have not been groups of parents with children around the same age getting together to "time-share" teaching their collective group of kids skills according to their abilities as adults. It's a very different experience to learn something from somebody with a passion for subject X than someone who is paid to teach subject X. Were I a parent, I would rather find 5-10 other talented/smart/skilled parents that each have unique passions and share in the effort of teaching my kid and theirs whatever it is that is in my ability to share.
The good teachers in school are those that are passionate enough that you as a student forget that they are being paid to be there and impart knowledge upon you.
TBH, the closest thing we have to such an arrangement today is Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It would be great if a similar program arrangement occupied 6-8 hours of a kids day.
Because I'm passionate about what I do for a living and want to practice it daily. I'm also passionate enough to share it with others. But when sharing it with others becomes a full-time job, you no longer get to practice it. 80% practicing, 20% sharing is a pretty good ratio in my book.
Plus being a teacher has become an institutionalized career, full of needless bureaucracy that in many cases sucks the fun out of what is fun about that job.
I think Google could try something out in this space as a way to attract more talent, maybe by allowing employees who are parents to set up a school taught by other Googlers in their 20% time. If I had a kid already, I would definitely want to join Google if it meant my kid would be taught by the really smart people that work there.
FWIW, I worked as a teacher for 1.5 years. English language teaching to ~11 year olds for 6 months and presentation skills to graduate students for 1 year.
Agreed. By definition, school has to cater to the average. It's meant to provide a baseline for society. There are no rules that education must be contained within the school grounds. The way I see it, they handle the boring stuff like geography so I can spend time on teaching fun stuff like computing!
As long as we cater to the average, we are allowing the average to be brought down by underachievers - we need to draw a line somewhere. Moving to the US from Europe to start my Sophomore year of high school was a real shock - even with any language and cultural barriers I was being taught things that I had learned years before that. I ended up dropping out, not because I couldn't keep up, but because I was actually bored in school and just couldn't stand not learning something new. I regret not having a real diploma and just a GED - but other than that I have no regrets. It hasn't hindered my job prospects and I have come far enough on my own.
Back to my original point; I think the education system needs to raise the bar slightly above average and attempt to make children reach for their goals.
I agree, but I do wish there was a better way for school to get out of the way when parents decide to do that. I moved to America when I was in middle school and had already learned to program from my brothers and was years ahead of my American peers in mathematics. I was placed in a slightly-less-behind "advanced" mathematics class, but I was required to keep submitting homework assignments for all the mathematics classes I was "skipping". I had more than double the busy-work and I still felt held back on the subject matter.
A better approach? Admit that the school was holding me back and allow me to pursue an alternate course of study with my family, without the burden of additional work for classes that aren't at my level. In a lot of places, doing that isn't nearly as easy as it should be.
