Lean Production: Inside the war on public education

[Blanks]

28. There is no doubt that certain subjects require...

...more input from teachers than others. Essays are a good example.

I knew a kid that was in my younger brothers class in Jr High school (40 years ago). He was a constant troublemaker and drove the teachers crazy. They tested him and he was a genius.

The problem with the current education system is that we place children of all abilities in a classroom and have them work on the same thing. There are a great many subjects (math and science for example) where; what we want the children to learn may actually exceed the teachers knowledge on the subject. They are held back and even bored by the subject matter presented. That is one of the things that I find appealing about the Khan academy. Children work at their own pace and a database tracking system identifies where each child is having problems in the system. Children don't move on until they've masterd a module. If teachers were monitoring the children's progress instead of lecturing; they would have time to keep kids from grab-assing. I expect any dedicated teacher to balk at this because I understand they have a passion for teaching, but again, certain subjects are best taught by allowing students to progress at their own pace.

I recognize that this model does not apply to all subjects, but if we could put 200 8th graders in a room with dividers and allow them to work on chemistry or physics at their own pace with a computer program that tracks their progress and evaluate only the ones who aren't getting it; that would allow subjects that require smaller class sizes to have a higher teacher to student ratio.

I'd have to see these studies (and who conducted them, and how they converted data to Tons) to believe that computer teaching has severe limits. I have two children who struggled through 10 grades at school and when they were allowed to work at their own pace on a computer; they completed subjects quickly. In the classroom; teachers get to decide how smart a child is. The computer doesn't bring any biases.

My son had a teacher who got annoyed at him because he constantly corrected her spelling; he was a special education student for all 15 years that he went to school, but he knew how to spell. She didn't appreciate being corrected in front of her students. Computer learning would prevent this kind of unproductive interaction.