Month: May 2025
Education Needs to Become Technology-Based
Education is one of the most (if not the most) important features of a strong society. As much as we gripe about our current education system, America does actually have a good system; It produces some of the best thinkers on the planet and does a reasonable job of giving everyone the base-level skills needed to survive within our modern society. However, there is plenty of room for improvement.
For many conservatives, job creation seems to focus on returning manufacturing jobs to the US and giving tax breaks to large corporations to do it. Manufacturing is dead, and any proposals to bring back those jobs are shortsighted. Even if we stop sending jobs overseas where people can work more cheaply, given a few years, they’ll just give those jobs to robotic manufacturing plants that work even cheaper. We’re already doing this of course, but the problem will only become worse as technology continues to advance.
The answer is education, both for adults who need to find new skills, and for children, where our current strategies fall short on creating citizens who are engaged and curious about the world around them. We have to start training people in areas that are harder to be automated (in the long run, we’re all likely replaceable, which is either going to be a great or terrible thing), and it needs to be open to everyone, regardless of income and location.
Traditional teaching isn’t going to make quality education available to all; we’ll need to utilize technology. In addition to providing quality education regardless of location, using technology also has many other benefits listed below. Keep in mind that the points below are written from the perspective of providing K-12 education, but this style of education should be available to anyone on topics ranging from learning the ABC’s to topics within Computer Science and Theoretical Physics.
The system that I propose is a web-based system of courses (probably short, 2-3 week courses), where the curriculum is catered to the individual and responds to the student’s interests and learning style. It could be used by school districts, parents, or anyone who wants to pick up a course to learn something new. A teacher’s role would likely just be for guidance, answering questions, and support, while the technology would develop lessons, tests, and the overall arc of the student’s education.
Tailored to Each Student
Currently classes have thirty to forty students (or more) and one teacher to assist them all. We can’t tailor a curriculum to each student’s interests or learning style with this system. Imagine a system that realizes a child is interested in dinosaurs, so it incorporates this interest in a variety of ways to help the student learn. It could also learn how the child learns best, so it could use that information to more effectively reach the child. Does the child learn best by examples, doing problems, reading and testing? We could build a system that knows this and changes based on the student.
Greater Depth and Driving Curiosity
A system that can learn the interests of it student would help drive curiosity (and the love of learning), and could assist that student to dig deeper into the topics that they enjoy. We need to foster curiosity and the desire to learn, which is hard to do for a teacher who has to concern themselves with thirty students, but perhaps easier for a computer which is tailored to each student.
More Enjoyable
A curriculum developed specifically for each student would help with engagement and overall student happiness. Since each student would be on their own track, the pressures to keep up would disappear and the individualized support that they would receive would help to mediate the difficulties and frustration that many students face today, which can negatively impact our views on learning and education.
No More Biases
There are several studies that teachers are biased (they are human after all). Sometimes teachers give more attention to more attractive students, or loud students, or any number of differentiating features. A technological approach would be free of this.
No More “Class Of…”
Having dedicated classes that move together at the same pace causes many issues. Older students in their class grouping often do better than younger students, students are sometimes forced into starting school when they’re not quite ready, or later than they could have. A web-based, technology solution would allow a student to start school whenever it is best for them. Topics could also be taught in different arrangements. While we currently dictate a series of classes, a fully custom curriculum could delay classes that the student isn’t ready for, or bring in new courses to help build the foundations needed to move forward.
Less Expensive
In order to provide the equal level of attention, we would need to hire a massive amount of teachers. The cost to develop this technology would likely be fairly minimal, and can more easily be adapted and improved over time.
Available Everywhere
Income inequality is going to be an increasingly large factor in our lives unless we do something about it. While there are many drivers to the issue, the urban/rural divide seems to play some role in this. In cities there are many more opportunities for specialized schools, a greater stock of quality teachers, and other opportunities for education. Creating a system delivered by the web would give anyone with an internet connection the ability to receive quality educational resources and learn as much as they want to (this is perhaps also an argument for base-level government-provided broadband for everyone).
Whether or not we as a country take this on, a technologically-based system will be developed at some point in the future, and it’s likely that the first country that does will move to the forefront of innovation, well-being, and overall happiness.
Self Taxing and the Society Investment Fund
Originally Posted: 3/17/2017
My news feeds are inundated by news of Trump slashing government investment in numerous programs and organizations. Things like 5.8 billion from the National Institues of Health, and cuts to the EPA, education, the sciences and anything else that may actually help propel us forward as a civilization.
But this stuff is important. These things matter.
It’s Time to Start Doing It Ourselves
I’ve had a growing view that the main job of the conservative party is to pull us back as a society, to keep us from progressing as fast as we otherwise could. Perhaps it’s time to just stop letting them.
If they don’t want to fund the things that are truly important, perhaps we just need to start supporting and funding them ourselves. Those of us who do want more investment in education, science, health, and technology should self-impose taxes on ourselves for those things that matter.
I know…we live in a society, and everyone in society should help contribute to these things that affect us all — that to me at least is a big part of living within a society, but for many this concept eludes them. It’s a little like giving in to those who say that they shouldn’t fund public education because they don’t have children and don’t understand that an educated populace is good for everyone. It’s like saying to them, that’s ok, the responsible people in society will pay for this — you’ll get the benefit without any payment. It does suck, but the alternative, at least for now, is that this stuff just doesn’t get funded and we’ll suffer for it. More importantly, our children will suffer for it.
Having those who care about society pick up the tab for all of this also proves the conservatives right. They say that society can function without strong investment from the government, and by having those of us who care pick up the slack kind of proves the point for them.
Ok, the conservatives win. Whatever. I’m more tired of having them hold back progress.
Getting Started
We can easily self-tax by utilizing existing non profits. We can make up for cuts (or total elimination) of public broadcasting funds by donating directly to them. This is good, but I’m thinking of a larger effort, perhaps something like a “Society Investment Fund”.
Perhaps it can start out as some sort of an online dashboard to manage your investments in various non-profit organizations. I log in and see all of the organizations I’ve invested in and the latest news and progress updates from each of them.
Societal Investment Clubs
Within this system, perhaps there are groups that I can become a member of where we pool our money and decide how to invest it together. Maybe there are numerous groups with a prospectus of their societal investment package with whom they donate to and in what amounts. I can browse those that match my values, become a member, and get involved.
There could even be specialized investment types similar to kickstarter — like funding for new local parks or amenities. We can donate money and if all of the investment is raised, the project moves forward, if not, everyone gets their money back.
It could be a platform for far greater civic engagement, a place to suggest improvements, and a place to see how our society is being invested in, from the neighborhood level all the way up to the state or regional level (California, Oregon, and Washington should really all work together more).
A tool like this could be incredible. The challenge for something like this is engagement. Would people actually log into a system like this on a regular basis? Realistically speaking, probably not since there isn’t an immediate reward for staying on top of this stuff. Perhaps that is a challenge that could be overcome though.
Perhaps Not Ideal, But a Way Forward
I would like for our society to grow and prosper. Perhaps the issue with funding through the government has always been that there is little connection between the money that I send off every April when I do my taxes and how that money is actually spent. While not an ideal solution, perhaps self-taxing and a platform to aid in the process could be a nice way to see how my money benefits society. Perhaps this in itself could help people care more.
A Blended Economic System
An area of concern I have regarding any given economic system pertains to its ability to foster technological progress. I believe capitalism excels in this regard, while I remain more than a little skeptical about the capacity of alternative systems, particularly those leaning toward the socialist end of the spectrum.
However, I wonder about a blended system, perhaps not so dissimilar to our current system. What if we reduced the protected amount of time that patents are in place, and then provided some functionality within our government to socialize those technological advances. It seems as though a system like this would make the benefits more available to society as a whole, and perhaps even push private companies to push technological advancement even more quickly, since their patents would run out sooner and they would need to continue to innovate.
As an example, I believe it’s fairly inevitable soon that we will have fully automated farms, where bots and algorithms handle everything from dictating what gets grown and when, to the planting, land management, and harvesting. There is of course great incentive for private enterprise to chase the technology to achieve this, but the savings that such a system would provide to the end customer are a bit nebulous. Will the cost savings be passed onto the consumer? (Probably not).
But what if we reduced the amount that patents are applicable for, and then created some way as a society to fund the development of that known technology, perhaps by voting on what we want to build and utilize as a public good. We would then tax accordingly to fund those things. Perhaps even some of those goods could be distributed to citizens for free (I could envision a certain amount of fruits and vegetables grown for the public good, freely available to anyone).
Of course, many would argue that even after patents run out, the free market would foster competition on that technology, and do just fine at reducing the cost on those goods produced. And perhaps they’re right. However, perhaps there are things that the market wouldn’t optimize, or that we would want to provide for free or below market value.