
Hacking Education (continued) - ciscoriordan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/03/hacking-education-continued.html
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tokenadult
"But here's a quick summary of my big takeaways:

"1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of
his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even
curriculum. That's what the web does. It transfers control from institutions
to individuals and its going to do that to education too."

I am an example (of such a parent, of such students). This issue of education
reform has long been my passion.

<http://learninfreedom.org/>

The constraints I face as a parent are

a) money, as I pay taxes to a school system that I hardly use (and K-12
schooling is the biggest single line item in a typical state government
budget),

b) credentialing, because there are various regulations of K-12 education and
various expectations of college admission committees I have to keep an eye on,

c) time management, because I have more than one child to educate at the same
time,

and

d) community-building, because as I mix and match programs my children
encounter a diverse group of classmates, some of which I have never seen.

But it can be done, and I enjoy it. My oldest son will be applying to colleges
in the Northern Hemisphere autumn of this year, and he will have secondary-
level or college-level transcripts from six different schools or programs,
some brick-and-mortar programs here in town and some distance learning
programs based far away.

All this would be much easier for more parents if

1) state funding for K-12 were a reimbursement to the learner rather than a
subsidy for a government-operated oligopoly school,

and

2) any schools that still exist as distinct institutions would automatically
transfer credit from all accredited providers.

It will be an adventure to see what my son's college admission results are
next year. I'm actually rather inclined to have his younger brother be more of
a pure "unschooler" and not take so many accredited courses by distance
learning.

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jaxn
I posted some related thoughts on my blog: <http://urlzen.com/7hk>

