Is the Internet like a school bus?
Here’s a picture I took of a one-room schoolhouse in Redding, CT, just up the road from me. It was built in 1789 and closed in 1931. For 142 years, this little building served twenty students at a time, across eight grades, and was one of 10 schools like it in my little town.
Redding consolidated these schools in the 1920’s, like most towns in the country. Why? Because new motorized school buses could easily collect students from all over town and bring them into a central school.
A major technological innovation—the automobile, and better roads—totally changed the model. This new model improved the quality of education, because teachers could focus their lessons on students grouped by age instead of by where they live.
The innovation of broadband Internet further reduces geography as a factor for accessing education. In fact, it completely eliminates it. The Internet eliminates any physical constraint, such as the size of the classroom or number of desks. Universities and corporations regularly offer courses and training to remote students and employees, and as a consumer of online education, I can attest to the effectiveness.
For grade-schoolers, there are clearly social and disciplinary benefits to attending a physical school, not to mention the “day-care” benefit to working parents. Internet learning requires self-discipline, which can be in short supply for younger children.
But with so many school districts suffering budget cuts right now, and a national desire to raise performance through standardization, why don’t we look at a government program for online public education?
Maybe online education is supplementary, to start, and there are certainly many companies already offering these services today. But ultimately, do taxpayers really need to pay 100,000 math teachers to deliver the exact same lesson on algebra next Tuesday morning?
Are there better ways of organizing students than age and what town they’re from?
- How about by their current ability level?
- Or by their preferred learning styles?
- Or the kids whose first language is Portuguese?
- Or the kids whose first language is Portuguese and they have a learning disability, and they’re color blind?
The Internet is excellent for serving niche communities like this, with a level of specificity a local school could never achieve.
Why not offer the best online interactive algebra lectures ever seen, delivered by the best math teachers in the country, and targeted directly to students organized by something more educationally meaningful than geography? Students everywhere can consume these on their own—during class in rotating shifts, or as homework—and then we pay our teachers to work with students locally in smaller groups, or even one-on-one. We make tutors available online at anytime, and they can live anywhere.
It isn’t an over-night investment, but it’s not unlike the building of new schools, the purchase of new motorized school buses, and the paving of roads. Over time, I hope to see government leverage the Internet to improve public education quality, and better use the most valuable local resource: the teachers.
I’m not the expert, and I got to thinking about this while cycling by the one-room school house. I’d love to hear from people in education, or the online education industry… please leave a comment!
