Quote from: Blanca_Gregory on July 28, 2018, 07:23:14 AM

Quote from: Chapman.S on July 27, 2018, 04:11:32 PM

Blanca_Gregory is definitely right about the lack of evolution in public schools. If you took a public school from a hundred year ago and one from today, they would differ so little. That's a bit startling, if you think about how many other things have changed the the world. I honestly don't have much hope for public schools. I definitely don't plan to ever send my children to public school unless they really want to. Peter Thiel is funding kids to quit college and develop their business ideas (https://www.fastcompany.com/1755089/peter-thiel-gives-whiz-kids-100k-quit-college-start-businesses). Praxis is another great example of a company that is helping young people gain real work experience instead of a degree. I think this type of practical education, when people do what they actually want, is the future. I am a big supporter of the unschooling movement.

Great! You know the funny thing is that no one seems to be discussing these obvious things. I graduated from institutions where the members of the faculty felt they were doing such a fantastic job. Maybe they actually were trying their best. But time has shown that their best is not good enough. Regardless of the fact that these institutions rate highly in the world, they were still not meeting the society's needs. So, I think the reference point for performance must be reviewed. A higher institution must be judged based on how well it meets the society's needs and not by how well it is taking on other institutions of its kind.

I agree that there is no point in competing between different indicators that don't necessarily mean anything in the end. So what if your students do better on a standardized test? Is that actually going to help them in their careers? We suffer from education inflation. What we could do 50 years ago with no education, or a grade 5 education, now we "need" a high school degree. What we used to need a high school degree for, now we need a bachelor's. What we used to need a bachelor's for, now we need a masters. This just makes it easier for HR departments to filter through the applications. It doesn't actually give any kind of guarantee that the quality of the employees will be any better. Luckily, some companies are starting to realize that and are looking at other things rather than degrees.