The School Revolution (11 page)

At home, a student is self-paced. On campus, he is paced by the lowest common denominator.

In almost every area except activities, shop, laboratory work, and music, online education is better. These benefits will lead to an exodus from campuses. It is only a matter of time.

After the exodus accelerates, school bond issues will fail. Parents whose children are
not on campus will vote no. Grandparents will also vote no.

The teachers’ union will vote yes.

In part 3, I’ll go into the bread-and-butter issues of my proposed educational revolution.

 

W
henever you consider the ideal anything, you should begin with this question: Ideal for whom?

Whenever you discuss the ideal anything with respect to economics, you must ask this question: Ideal from the point of view of the person who is paying?

Whenever you discuss the ideal anything from the
perspective of a legal agent, you must begin with this question: On whose behalf does the legal agent act?

These are important questions. The main difficulty in discussing the ideal school is that multiple groups claim top position with respect to the decision-making process. Administrators in local public schools claim this for themselves. Teachers claim it for themselves inside the
classroom. The school board claims it. If the school district takes money from the state, the state’s Board of Education claims it. The Department of Education in Washington claims it. Courts claim it. Lawmakers at all levels claim it. Educational bureaucrats claim it.

The greatest advantage of homeschooling is that parents can claim it. They are the ones who pay for the program, assuming
there is any payment involved. They are the ones who are acting as legal agents of their children. They interpret what their children need, and they select a program accordingly. Only to the extent that the state Board of Education has gotten the legislature to pass a law governing the content of homeschool curricula in general do the parents have to share this responsibility. These requirements
are usually minimal, and most homeschooled children can easily meet them.

Ultimately, however, the student can veto the parents’ decision. If a student decides that he does not like a program, he can complain endlessly, and at some point the parents get worn down. Or, if he chooses, the student can simply refuse to do any work. This is extremely rare, but it is certainly possible. Parents
can impose negative sanctions, or promise positive sanctions, but ultimately the student can veto any curriculum.

The main reason I favor homeschooling, especially online homeschooling, is because parents have great authority in making decisions regarding the content and structure of the programs. They can reject all or a part of a particular curriculum. They are not trapped by all-or-nothing,
take-it-or-leave-it offers. They can scrap one portion of a curriculum; they can substitute something else. They have far more authority over the content and structure of education when they are homeschooling their children online than they have with any other conceivable system of homeschooling, except one: where the parents create the entire curriculum on their own. This is so rare as
not to be a factor in my consideration.

Because of the low cost of online education, it is now possible for parents to pick and choose among multiple curricula. But they have to do this as representative agents. They have their child’s interest in mind. They want to pick a curriculum that will be good for the child in the long run, but that the child will also be sufficiently enthusiastic
about to devote himself to mastery of the material. So, parents dare not ignore what their children want. The children do have some say in the matter, if only with respect to how much dedicated labor they will invest in the program.

Then there are considerations regarding colleges. If the child is on a college preparatory track, the parents have got to decide which colleges are acceptable
and affordable. They also must decide if there are alternatives to conventional colleges. Should the children use CLEP exams in high school to reduce the cost of graduating from college? Are there other shortcuts that will save the parents tens of thousands of dollars? Parents these days tend not to ask these questions, because they are unaware that there are viable alternatives. When they
are aware of the alternatives, they then find themselves in a negotiating position with the child. If they can persuade the child to take a lower-cost approach to college, they can adjust the high school curriculum accordingly. If the child agrees to this, families can save fortunes.

Then there is the question of the ideological or religious content of the curriculum. Are the parents
satisfied with this content? Does the content correspond with the parents’ first principles? Again, this is a matter of parental authority. The parents make these decisions amid a barrage of conflicting claims and issues. The parents have to get involved in a kind of juggling act to make good decisions on behalf of their children.

In putting together my online curriculum, I have considered
all these competing claims. The old rule is true: one size does not fit all. I have attempted to put together a comprehensive curriculum that will meet the desires of the parents, the needs of the students, the admissions offices of colleges, and the available technologies of online homeschooling.

P
arents act as legal representatives for their children. This is a big responsibility. Each of the children in a family is different. Each child has different skills. Each has different interests.

If the parents do not choose private education, they are stuck with whatever the local public
school is willing and able to provide. This means that the school system determines what the children will be allowed to experience. The parents have little input in the matter.

When parents are willing to pay for a private school or a privately marketed curriculum, they reestablish control over their children’s education. They decide which academic program best suits each of their children.

In education, there are many kinds of students. There are many kinds of curriculum materials for these students.

One of the great problems with any system of tax-funded education is that the tax funding brings multiple levels of the state into the picture. In order for a school to qualify for tax funding, it must conform to certain requirements.
These requirements move the entire educational system in the direction of bureaucratic management. In other words, government’s money moves the educational system in the direction of “one size fits all.” This is inherent in the nature of the funding. A state government cannot hand out hundreds of millions of dollars for education unless there are guidelines for spending that money. Otherwise,
there would be a siphoning off of government funds to line the pockets of people inside the system. So, there have to be rules and regulations, and as a result, the entire system becomes bureaucratic. Ludwig von Mises called this bureaucratic management. He contrasted it with profit management.
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Bureaucratic management is always marked by a central source of money.
The money comes from the state, and therefore it is controlled by state officials. Parents have only minimal inputs as to which tunes should be played, on which musical instruments, and in how large an orchestra. The educational system favors bureaucrats who have come up the chain of command inside the educational system. Bureaucracies are rarely innovative. The longer a bureaucrat has been on
a payroll, the less innovative he is. The book of rules becomes dominant: “We don’t do things that way here.” Bureaucracies are supposed to be predictable, but what is most accurately predicted is this:
a reduction in the influence of taxpayers over the system
.

Bureaucrats always resent interference from outside agencies, especially the legislature. So legislators can do very
little to implement changes that are recommended by the parents of children enrolled in the local school system. Parents can do very little to educate the legislatures. So the top of the educational system is sealed off by the bureaucrats in terms of whatever this elite guild of educators favors.

The important principle to uphold here is that the parents should remain
economically
and
also
legally
in control. The fact that they are willing to go into the private education market in search of a program that offers their children the best possible match indicates that they are willing to assert both their legal authority and their economic authority in the marketplace. They put their money where their mouths are. Their willingness to spend money and time on their children’s education
is the basis of their control over both the content and structure of education.

What are some of the things that are most important to parents who take their children’s education seriously? First, they want to make certain their children are safe. They want to make certain they are not subjected to bullying by other students.

In addition to safety, parents want a solid moral environment for their children. These days, the public schools have become the equivalent of drug emporiums. A lot of students are concentrated in one area, and they become easy marks for other students who are making money by selling drugs to their peers. Parents who are concerned about this can deal with it by removing their children from
the environment. Children who are academically successful and self-confident about their abilities are less likely to succumb to the lure of fantasy escape provided by drugs.

Parents also want to make certain that teachers are concerned about their children’s special educational needs. The trouble is, in a classroom environment, teachers have a lot of students to consider. They are restricted
in the attention they can give to any one student. The student has to adjust to the teacher’s abilities rather than the other way around.

As the student grows older, he is supposed to become more independent. This is important, because as I have said, when the student sets foot on a college campus, there will not be anybody there to act as his nanny. So, the high school curriculum, and
the structure of the educational program, must be focused on the student’s ability to mature. The student must become increasingly self-educated.
The entire academic program should be structured in terms of this process of maturity through self-education
. Parents tend to neglect this aspect of education, especially in the high school years. They want for their children in high school what they
wanted for their children in the primary grades. They want individual attention for them. This is a mistake.

A student who begins as a freshman in college may be required to take classes that consist of as many as five hundred or even a thousand people in an auditorium. A professor lectures to the students. The students take notes. Then, several times a week, they meet in discussion
groups led by graduate students who have no training in teaching. These courses are sometimes called mega courses. They are highly profitable to colleges. The cost per student is low: one professor and some low-paid graduate school teaching assistants. There is almost no individual attention associated with these classes. Students who are not self-disciplined, and who do not have good study
habits, rarely make it through the first two years of college. This is why the graduation rate is only about 50 percent for students who enter as freshmen.

Parents should examine the high school curriculum very carefully to make certain that both the structure and content of the course work push the student, yet also provide a way for students to interact with one another. Students generally
respond better when they are part of a program in which there is mutual interaction. A system of tutoring is exceptionally effective, because students understand what other students are going through. A student who has successfully completed the particular course has the experience of taking that course fresh in his memory. So, he is in a position to give guidance to the student who is just
beginning the course. The teacher has not taken a course like this in a decade or more. The teacher forgets what is like to be a student. This is one of the great advantages of online education. Students can use forums to help one another over the rough spots, course by course. Another huge advantage is this: a student learns more as a teacher than he does as a student.
The experience of teaching
somebody
else is one of the best possible ways to master course material
. To use an analogy, teaching etches the material into the mind of the teacher. It is an extremely effective way to become proficient in a field that is new to you.

Parents are also concerned that the content of the curriculum is consistent with their first principles. They do not want teachers with a rival
worldview to gain control over their children for six or seven hours a day. They do not want people with a rival worldview to sit in judgment of their children, pressuring them to abandon their parents’ worldview and substitute the teachers’ worldview. This process begins very early, but certainly it begins at the junior high level and continues all the way through graduate school. For centuries,
teachers have seen their responsibility as persuading students to abandon the traditional views of their parents. This is why parents must be conscious of this conflict. Schooling is a recruiting process. Parents who are unaware of this are sitting ducks.

Parents who understand the nature of this confrontation can reduce the risk of seeing their children picked off by teachers. They
do this either by hiring teachers as tutors, or by enrolling their children in private school classroom settings in which the teachers are more likely to share their worldview. But both these approaches are very expensive. Most parents cannot afford either option. This is the tremendous advantage the Internet offers to parents today. There are comprehensive curriculum programs on the Web that cater
to the outlooks of a wide variety of parents. If the parent can find an online curriculum, or an online school that uses a particular curriculum, they can turn their children over to these online institutions. They can monitor what is taught in the classroom, because the classroom is located inside their own homes.

This is a crucial advantage to online education. Unlike all classroom
education,
parents can monitor what is being taught their children
. They can look at the reading assignments. They can look at the examination questions. If there are videos involved, they can watch the videos, or at least sample the content of whatever is being taught. If a particular course is not to their liking, they can substitute a completely different course by going to a different website.
Parents in effect can hire digital tutors.

Another advantage of online education is that parents can monitor certain courses and then discuss those courses with their children. One parent may monitor a history course. Another may monitor an economics course. After dinner, they can sit at the table and discuss what the child learned that day. The parent can also monitor the
homeschooled child’s performance by having the child pass a CLEP exam after every course. This provides evidence that the student has completed the requirements for a college-level course. There is nothing more persuasive to a truant officer than a stack of CLEP exams in which the student has scored at least 50 points (the cutoff score for acceptance in a college program).

Even if the
student does not take CLEP exams, the parent can see that the student is performing well when the student writes a paper every week for each of his liberal arts courses. The parent can see the improvement in the student’s performance as he matriculates to the next year’s courses.

Another advantage of online education is that the parent can assess the value of the program in a direct
fashion. With tax-funded schools, parents really do not know what courses cost. Furthermore, they do not know about the allocation of funds. Is most of the funding going to the school’s administration? How much is going to classroom instruction? This is almost impossible to discover, because the administrators make it very difficult for the Board of Education to discover the answers, and the Board
is not interested in promoting widespread understanding of fund allocation among voters. This is especially true in districts where the lion’s share of the money goes to administration.

When a family adopts homeschooling, the parents can easily assess how much each course costs. Is the course worth it? Most online schools offer a thirty-day money-back guarantee. If the parent finds that
the particular course is not appropriate for his child, he can inform the administrator of the online curriculum that he wants his money back. This is not economically possible with any other form of education.

Because there are no government subsidies for online education, the federal government has no say over the content or structure of the educational program. There may be state
regulations that force homeschooling parents to conform to certain course requirements, but in most cases, the child demonstrates through an examination that he has mastery of a given field. There is no question that an online course is an effective way to teach children. Most children involved in homeschool programs test higher than children of the same age in public schools.

If the
parents really believe that a child needs a lot of adult supervision, one of the parents can specialize in a particular course. That parent can work with the child to get him over any intellectual barriers the course has created. I generally think this is not a good idea, for the reasons I have already mentioned. But if the parent disagrees with my assessment, he is in a position to intervene. If
he thinks the child is not getting special attention, the parent can provide that attention. Obviously, this is probably not going to be the case in advanced calculus, but it can be the case in history, government, and maybe economics.

The parents can see which courses pose bigger problems for a particular child. This is important. The parent discovers through a system of examinations
and writing assignments whether the child is progressing. The parent can see where the roadblocks are. While I think it is best to let the student find ways to get through or around these roadblocks himself, parents who disagree are in a position to intervene. The parent is in control. The parent delegates certain aspects of the course work to the designer of the curriculum, but the parent can always
veto the creator of the course. If the parent thinks he has a better approach to teaching his child, he can intervene.

With online education, parents have a far greater choice of curriculum materials and structured education than is true with any other form of education. The parent does not have to pick a particular curriculum, or a particular course. He may decide to, but he does not
have to. It is not an all-or-nothing deal. When he enrolls the child in a private school, it is very close to an all-or-nothing deal. There are probably not a lot of competing private high schools locally. But online, there are innumerable courses available.

The best curriculum is an integrated one. It is a curriculum in which the courses reinforce
one another. Think of a course in history. It presents an era or a society as a unit. Although it is a separate area of study, the literature course should parallel that history course so the student can understand the society’s literature as part of an integrated whole. So the literature course should reinforce the history course. The history course becomes more memorable because the student
is familiar with representative examples of each society or era.