Smart Source It

There was an article in the Sunday paper today about how the education curriculum is becoming so standardized that teachers don't have the latitude to deviate or take classroom discussions into needed areas.

Proponents say that having all students get the same education regardless of which physical school they attend is a good thing. In theory that makes a lot of sense to me, all students with a high school education should have had equal education in the basics.

Where they lose me in the argument is that some classes can go far beyond the basics, and some classes may need to spend more time in the basics this scripted teaching doesn't seem to allow for that.

It also occurs to me that if the entire curriculum is scripted, why do we need to pay professionals to teach? Couldn't we hire some off duty police officers to keep order and an actor to teach the lesson? Better yet - do away with brick and morter schools altogether and have each of the lessons online and kids can learn from home on their pc's.

They can call a 1-800 number for any questions. THe state would save a lot of money and while you might have accredited teachers on the help line at first, as soon as you figured out the top 100 questions you could script the answers and outsource (oops smart source) the call center. If a student made it through the IVR and the "teacher" couldn't answer the question they could escallate the call to tier two support. For a fee you could have access to tier two support without having to talk to a teacher first.

"Thank you for calling Roosevelt High School, please enter your student Id."

(beep, boop, beep beep, boop)

Hello, TP Gal, please enter your class number, for Language Arts, press one.... for assistance in espanole, marque ocho.

"beep"

"Thank you, you have selected Language Arts. Please state the keyword of your question."

"Shakespeare"

"I heard you say shape sphere if that is correct press one"

Oh my, it could go on and on and on. It would be great!