I recently visited TED Conversations. It’s one of my favorite places to go when I’m looking for things to write about. They came through for me again.

The thread I was following concerned the need for education reform. I have a daughter who recently graduated high school and is entering college as we speak. So the education system is is something of an issue for me right now. The comments on the subject were amazing, enlightening and sometimes scary.

One of the more popular ideas involved home schooling via internet and virtual tutors. The use of augmented reality for children exploring their environment was another one that caught my eye. Replacing books with digitial information made me laugh too. The general tone was that “traditional” education techniques had failed and need to be replaced.

A personal favorite of mine suggested that reading, writing and arithmetic are over-emphasized. Really? There’s some secret “learn by osmosis” technique that I missed? Darn, that would have been handy back in school. Unfortunately, there isn’t.

What most of them agreed on is the need to make education more interesting and accessible. This is what I like to call horsepoop. Education is what you need to do in order to do what you want. If you want education reform, there are some things that might help more than some radical deconstruction.

Genuine equality of access would be a good start. If all students have the same quality of facilities, instructors, materials etc, that would be a worthwhile reform. If there were an increased societal value placed on education, that could be worthwhile. Ensuring sufficient funds without the political wrangling normally involved could be a worthwhile reform. Re-instating refor schools for those intent on disrupting classes and denying others their education, I think that might be worthwhile too.

I don’t think that easier/more interesting is a viable path for reform. Easy doesn’t generally equate to being worthwhile, and oftentimes, less challenging is boring. The fact is, some things have to be learned because they have to be learned.

I don’t think there’s much that would have made multiplication more interesting for me. I ended up writing my multiplication tables out one hundred times. It wasn’t easy or interesting, but I still do most of my basic math in my head.

One more reform. Let’s lose the idea of passing a set percentage of students regardless of actual achievement. It creates an underclass of people who don’t possess the tools to function effectively in society. They may not get teased for being held back a year in school, but they will be when they can’t get a job because they can’t read.

Reforming education will require a reassessment of what we expect it to achieve, what we are willing to invest in it, and what we expect of our children. There is no “one size fits all” solution. One thing is certain. The longer we wait to address the problems in our education system, the greater the harm to those we should be helping.

Cheers, Winston