EVERY PERSON IN SOCIETY HAS A RIGHT TO AN EDUCATION

• That education should include a core curriculum that everyone is expected to learn. Albeit, this should be kept to a minimum.

• That education should provide the individual with the knowledge and skills needed to live a productive, healthy, and happy life.

• That education should last for the entire lifetime of the individual. It definitely cannot cover only grades K-12.

• That education should be tailored to the specific individual's needs, fostering the development of the individual's innate skills and talents.

• That education should include vocational training regardless of the vocation the individual chooses to pursue or is most suited for.

• That education should be free to the individual. Society's return comes when the individual applies the skills and knowledge learned for the benefit of the society.

MERIT SHOULD BE THE CHIEF SELECTION CRITERIA FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

• It is not enough that one have the desire to go through a particular education program, one must also show the aptitude.
  • Doctors, dentists, lawyers, and other professional fields are a few cases in point.

  • Here, it is important that tests and interviews be used to determine who is most appropriate for filling these positions in society.

  • Similarly, society should actively sponsor a number of Ph.Ds to meet it's research and professional needs -- while at the same time more passively offering such programs to individuals with the interest and dedication to pursue this on their own. In no case should money be a factor.

• Society benefits most when it's members are operating at the best they can be, and not only as individuals but in groups as well.
  • This only happens if individuals are put into education environments that are most suited to their optimal development.

  • Exactly what this is is for the education system to decide based on a detailed assessment of each individual plus an understanding of society's needs.

TEACH BASIC SKILLS REQUIRED TO FUNCTION.

• Reading, writing, arithmetic, and basic problem solving.

• Basic learning skills that can be used throughout life.

• Basic coordination (sports) and cooperation (team spirit).

PRESENT BASIC INFORMATION REQUIRED TO STAY HEALTHY.

• Nutrition, exercise, emotional, and mental well-being.

PROVIDE A BASIC ETHICAL FOUNDATION FOR SOCIETY

• Ethics and right behavior. Common teachings from religions.

• Freedom, nature of government, responsibilities, and rights.

• Spiritual basis underlying all expression of consciousness.

DEVELOP THE NATURAL SKILLS, TALENTS AND ABILITIES OF EACH INDIVIDUAL.

• In the grander scheme of things, these were selected to allow the individual to fulfill a particular destiny, or at least attempt to do so.

• These are the most important resources that any society has. We cannot afford to waste the skills of any one of us.

• It matters not where these abilities lie, be they athletic, artistic, manual, intuitive, rational, aesthetic, philosophical. Any one or more of these can have great value if developed sufficiently and applied in the right way.

TEACH PEOPLE HOW TO FIND OUT WHO AND WHAT THEY ARE.

• First, people must be shown that this is an essential life task.

• Then, they must be given tools for self-discovery.

PROVIDE INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS WITH THE VOCATIONAL TRAINING THEY NEED TO WORK EFFICIENTLY AND EFFECTIVELY.

• This is especially important given the expected number of different jobs a worker starting today will have in his/her lifetime.

• As a society, we're in a much better position to do this well than relying on a private sector economy tied heavily to a bottom line.

PROVIDE THE MEANS FOR INDIVIDUALS WHO WANT TO LEARN TO EFFECTIVELY CARRY OUT THE LEARNING PROCESS AS FAR AS THEIR TALENTS AND INTEREST WILL TAKE THEM.

• Such individuals provide an enormous resource for tackling the problems of society that require special knowledge and skills.

• Learning keeps people fresh and alive. Further, it's extremely important in a world that is changing as rapidly as ours.

THE THREE R's ARE NOT BEING TAUGHT EFFECTIVELY.

• That is, they are not being learned effectively.

• If one can't read, write, or figure; there is not much place for one in society.

• It is not clear that going back to basics will fix anything.

VIOLENCE AND DRUGS ON CAMPUS ARE NOT CONDUCIVE TO LEARNING.

• Violence seems to be rampant everywhere.

• Drugs are available at ages that are simply abominable.

THERE IS NO AGREED TO EDUCATIONAL PURPOSE THAT DRIVES THE CURRICULUM.

FAR TOO MANY BUREAUCRATS.

• They are at the local level at each school, and then up through multiple levels as far as the federal government.

• Bureaucrats don't enhance or facilitate the education process.

TEACHERS ARE NOT EMPOWERED TO DO WHAT THEY DO BEST.

• Discipline is nearly absent from the classroom. Disruptions prevent those who want to learn from being able to do so.

• Teachers have been reduced to babysitters. In many classrooms, this is the key function that has remained.

PAY IS FAR TOO LOW TO ATTRACT THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST

• It's time we treat teaching positions with the respect they deserve given the huge responsibility that they have, educating our young.

EDUCATION COSTS TOO MUCH

• Actually, this is not certain. Put another way, we are paying too much for the results we are getting.

• Whether we are paying too much or not enough for education can only be determined by evaluating exactly what benefits education provides for society.

THERE IS NOT ENOUGH INVOLVEMENT FROM PARENTS

• Broken homes, two income families with latch key kids, and larger gaps between generations due to accelerated change contribute substantially to this.

• Socially, we are not arranged so that kids get the support, care, and assistance they need to grow up into responsible adults.

• The education of parents is often too weak for them to be of much assistance to their kids even if they wanted to be involved.

TOO MUCH RELIANCE ON TRADITIONAL CLASSROOM TEACHING.

• This worked in an age where the world was much simpler and the job was to disseminate a set curriculum to everyone.

• We now live in a world where knowledge is partitioned. In such a world, most of what individuals need to learn is highly dependent on what they will be doing for their life's work.

• Tailoring of the curriculum to the individual's needs requires providing substantial time where students learn on their own.

LIMITED MEANS OF KNOWING WHAT A STUDENT HAS LEARNED

• This is especially a problem as students move from teacher to teacher or school to school.

• Universal records with results of standardized tests, aptitude tests, modules learned, and teacher evaluations would help.

NEED TO FREE TEACHERS TO TEACH

• This requires reestablishment of classroom security and discipline.

• Disruptive students should be removed and placed in a separate environment until they demonstrate that they are ready to learn.

• Teachers must be given time to focus on individual student needs again.

THE KEY LESSON TO BE TAUGHT IS: HOW TO LEARN.

• There are many ways to learn, not all of which work well or even at all for various individuals.

• Teaching someone how to learn empowers them to learn anything for which they have appropriate tools, skills, and aptitude.

• Given the rate at which the world is changing, this is extremely important as learning has been transformed into a lifelong process.

OUTSIDE OF THE MINIMUM CORE CURRICULUM, STUDENT INTERESTS SHOULD DRIVE WHAT THE STUDENT LEARNS.

• This should be guided by appropriate advice from the teacher or from one or more mentors.

• These mentors should be highly knowledgeable in the areas in which the students natural talents and abilities lie.
  • This requires that a means be established to identify the natural talents and abilities of individuals. Some aptitude tests already exist. A range of others will need to be developed.

  • The intent is that the relationships last over a significant period of the individual's life, if not for their entire lifetime.

  • Multiple mentors may be needed in cases where skills lie in multiple areas for which no suitable single mentor can be found.

  • Mentorship should be considered like a "time tax" that individuals pay to help with the development of others in society. Only those most suited to perform this service should be enlisted/recruited to do so.

• It is important to keep students both challenged and motivated.

EVERYONE SHOULD BE "EMPLOYED" TO TEACH

• Each individual should consider it their responsibility to pass their skills/ knowledge on to at least one other individual during their lifetime. Society should help to identify who that should be.
  • This assures that skills/knowledge are never lost. There is always a living host in which they are embodied.

• Society benefits whenever the overall level of education is increased and benefits more the further it is increased. The greatest increase comes when everyone is teaching what they know to others.
  • We need to be careful that what is being taught is moral, effective, and right.

  • This requires some oversight on the part of all of society, as a responsibility that we all have for and toward one another.

• Those with the appropriate talents, skills, and knowledge to be of the greatest benefit to society should either be paid as Master Teachers or should have a part of their time taxed to be used toward education projects. This could be a part of the price they pay for having their research funded by society.

IT'S TIME TO CONSIDER NEW DESIGNS FOR SCHOOLS

• Some alternative designs have been tried over the past 40 years.

• An assessment should be made of what worked and what didn't and out of that one or more designs should be chosen for prototyping.

• Those that work the best should become part of a plan for renovating our schools, however implementation should be tied to plans for renovating our communities.

IT'S TIME FOR A NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION THAT IS EMPOWERED TO:

• .... DEFINE WHAT EDUCATIONAL SERVICES WILL BE PROVIDED
• .... By What Parts Of Society
• .... To What Parts Of Society
• .... To Meet What Specific Education Needs.

• This should include all types of educational needs, both secular and spiritual from birth through death including: pre-schools, grade schools, middle schools, high schools, trade schools and apprenticeships, colleges and universities.

• This should address who is entitled to what educational services at what points in their lifetimes.

• This should address how both the public and private sectors will be responsible for providing various education services.

OVERALL CONTROL OF THE EDUCATIONAL CURRICULUM AND THE MEANS FOR PROVIDING EDUCATIONAL SERVICES SHOULD REMAIN WITH A GROUP WITHIN SOCIETY WHOSE SOLE CONCERN IS THIS ASPECT OF THE WELFARE OF SOCIETY.

• Local boards can retain some autonomy, but should serve in an augmentory capacity only. The bottom line is that we cannot allow the few at the lowest level to define the education process.

• Efficiency demands that we quit allowing non-experts to make decisions at a local level based on partial information. This results in a lot of duplicate work and many wasteful decisions.

• The better approach would be to convene the best and brightest and get them to work out one or more viable alternatives. These could be prototyped at a level that no individual school district could afford and the best prototype could be offered to all school districts where they could then be appropriately tailored.

• This is not the same as having a staff of administrators or bureaucrats clogging up the system instead of teaching. Changing administrative policy doesn't fix anything unless it gets rid of some of the administrators in the process.

THE BOTTOM LINE SHOULD BE: HOW DO WE GET THE BEST EDUCATION AT A REASONABLE COST.

• This requires setting a budget for education and then operating within that budget. This should be a resource not a cost budget.

CONVENE A NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL CONVENTION

• Establish a national education policy for society.

• Define a core curriculum that includes a sound moral basis.

• Explore alternative concepts for schools and set the groundwork for creating needed prototypes to demonstrate that these concepts do indeed work.

• Define what skills are required of teachers in the new environment.
  • Train present teachers in these skills where possible.

  • Enlist new teachers with these skills where necessary.

• Reevaluate teacher compensation and revise it to be commensurate with the value of the tasks that they perform.
  • Teachers perform one of the most important tasks in society.

  • How well teachers do their jobs to a large degree determines the overall creative productivity of the entire nation. This, in turn, is a key factor in the economy of the nation.

DECIDE ON A VISION FOR EDUCATION IN SOCIETY.

• Make sure the VISION includes all aspects of educational services required by society.

• Realize that in this day and age, education is a lifelong process that requires commitment both from the individual and the society.

• Determine what budget and/or resource commitment is required to achieve and support that VISION.

PLANT THE VISION FIRMLY ON THE GROUND

• Use prototypes to show that the VISION can be realized and to come up with optimal ways of achieving the VISION.

• Cookie-cut the best solutions to get them out to all districts. In most cases, solving a problem the right way once beats attempting to solve it the wrong way thousands of times.

REALIZE THAT FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL'S SKILL & TALENTS THAT GO UNTAPPED, SOCIETY LOSES GREATLY.

• Education is not confined to the walls of our schools, libraries, and universities; it is something that springs eternal from a being curious to know, and it can be fulfilled by something as simple as nature, a caring fellow human being, or a professional teacher.

• As a society, we must commit the resources needed to develop these skills & talents.
  • In many cases this is not a matter of money, but of access to the right person with the right skills to assist the student in the learning process.

  • In some cases, access to the right resources is required.

• Someone once said that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste". Here we're talking about more than that -- mind/body/spirit, and this we definitely cannot afford to waste.
  • There is a sacredness of spirit in every one of us that chose expression at this time on this planet. One of society's greatest obligations is to facilitate this expression.

ENLIST ALL (OR A LARGE PART) OF SOCIETY IN THE SOLUTION

• Nearly everyone is able to assist others in learning how to do something that the individual does well.
  • All that is required is matching the people who know with those who need to know. This could be done as a part of a national education database.

  • Of course, the matching must be followed by a commitment of time. This would not necessarily have to cost anything, but it constitutes the consumption of a resource in society and the delivering of a service to society.

  • May need to provide common places such as schools where such "teaching" can be accomplished. We're so used to operating as individuals that our communities aren't set up to handle this very well.

• For most people, this should be treated as a tax on their time. It is not clear that it would have to be on top of their present 40 hour work weeks, rather it could possibly be part of that.
  • On the other hand, through some transition period, it may be necessary for individuals to give up a part of their free time to help fix society's present ills.

  • Exceptions to this should be rare. Everyone has something to contribute.

• EDUCATION PROBLEMS REQUIRE VISION TO FIX.

• EDUCATION MUST BE TREATED AS A SERVICE THAT IS PROVIDED TO INDIVIDUALS THROUGHOUT THEIR LIFETIMES.

• NEED TO CONVENE A NATIONAL EDUCATION CONVENTION EMPOWERED TO MAKE SWEEPING EDUCATIONAL REFORM.
  • Administrators should be expressly excluded from such a convention as well as lawyers.

• ONE OF THE KEY ROLES FOR EDUCATION IS TO ESTABLISH THE MORAL BASIS ON WHICH SOCIETY IS FOUNDED.
  • This violates the idea of separation of church and state only if the moral basis specifically advocates any religion. Yes, this is shaky ground, but the results of not covering it are unacceptable.

Copyright © 1995, Wayne Hartman, Revised -- (21 Feb 96)

DISSEMINATION FOR EDUCATIONAL OR NON-PROFIT USE IS BOTH PERMITTED AND ENCOURAGED.