The Mind of Brant Peery

I have seen the future. It is marvelous. The world has united and peace reigns. OK, I have not seen world peace, but what I have seen is a better world. It is made possible by great teachers melded with great technology. It is more advanced than mere computers, it is the growth of the human race through technology. It is as significant as the invention of written language. It will advance our civilization like the discovery of electricity. It is the next step in evolution. All this comes from a unified, perfected, and dynamic education system.

Once the USA was known as the land of opportunity. Even though there is now plenty of opportunity to be had in the US, we are far from rich in it. Opportunity does not knock as often as it used to. It seems to be reserved for those elite and lucky few. Why are they the ones that get the luck. The answer to that question is simple. There is not much luck associated with opportunity. Opportunity comes to those that are prepared to receive it. How does one become prepared? That answer is also very simple; they have enough knowledge to recognize opportunity when it knocks. They have been inviting it to knock, and have predicted its arrival. That seems like a smart person. They are. They have been trained. Unfortunately their training was not likely by the public education system of the USA. Why, because the USA does not have a forward thinking high performance motivated system of education. We pay our taxes to support a system the destroys ambition. It doesn’t reward performance, or talent. We pay for a system that is based on the lowest common denominator. Everything operates only to the level that is absolutely has to.

You might be wondering what I mean when I refer to to the lowest common denominator. It is a math term that means that every part of the equation is converted to and compared against the lowest number that fits all the numbers in the equation. Then the equation is solved by that one number representing the denominator for all the other numbers.  That works great in math, but is very bad for people. People cannot be compared. They cannot be made equal. They cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula (I know that some mathematicians will argue with me on that point). For some reason, our school system thinks that they can reduce us, and group us, and that will tap our potential. Perhaps they really don’t think that, but are restricted to believing that students can’t be treated any other way because of lack of money. Whatever they think, they are wrong. Every year this truth is proven by the test scores of our children. We are falling behind as a nation. Soon the rest of the world will be smarter than us, and we will no longer lead, but follow. Possibly from way behind the pack. This is inevitable if we don’t change. We must change the way the school systems operate.  We have to make major leaps in our educational structure. We have to evolve or we die.

First thing to purge is laziness.  There is no reward in our system for great performance. I pay the terrible teachers in my community just like I pay the great ones. Sometimes I pay the terrible ones more. Now that is ridiculous. I want my kids to have the best teachers, yet I am paying to keep the worst ones. Why, because they have tenure; some are union. These are all excuses to give lazy incapable men a good job that rightfully belongs to someone else. I pay for it, my kids pay for it, the country will pay (has been paying) for this mistake.  If someone sucks at their job, FIRE THEM. That way the remaining workers can get properly compensated for their work. Why then does the education system put up with this? It is because the administrative staff is not compensated on how good the staff is. As long as they meet the testing standard (the lowest score that is acceptable) then everything must be going well. Why can’t we have incentive to be the best we can be, not the worst we can get away with? How has the public put up with this waste of resources for so long? It boggles my mind.

We are wasteful. That is easy to see in the school system. If it were a business, it would not turn a profit. Some would say that public education isn’t capable of turning a profit. I beg to differ. That is like saying that the man who walks a race because he races the track alone is incapable of running. If there is no one to push and compete against, then it is natural for man to take the easiest way. The way that achieves all the goals set with the least effort.  No one can win, because no one can fail. It might sound like a good idea to not allow anyone to fail. But when no one fails then no one can win and we all loose. We all fail equally. That is not a good position for a world leading nation to be in.

We need competition in the education system. We need something to push public education to higher achievement. Something that will make educators work to push their facilities to the limits to stay in the race. Something that will breed innovation, thrift, and quality. We need a free market education system. A system that will push the administrators to perform at their highest capacities, much, much higher than the lowest acceptable results. They will not be running alone, so if they walk the race, they will lose.  The free market system is what has made this country great. It is the next evolution in public education. The answer to all the questions on how to implement a free market system and still give every student an equal chance are many and they are difficult. However, we have very intelligent people in this country. We can figure it out. So first, we have to create a free market education system.

Next we need to address the fact that the fundamentals of education haven’t really changed in 200-300 years. We are, for some unknown reason, still stuck with the teachers available to us in the geographical area in which we live. We still sit in classrooms. This is very inefficient. I really didn’t like any of the available economics teachers at my high school. I could have been taking much more advanced math in grade school. My community is a farm community. So they don’t stress that kind of thing. How is that an equal chance at education? If I had lived in Las Vegas instead, I would have had the opportunity to attend a high school that specialized in technology, or medicine, or many other subjects. Why do they deserve more than me? Why couldn’t I learn from their teachers? There is no good reason why. The Internet makes all these requests possible. I shouldn’t be stuck with mediocre teachers when there are great teachers out there. Distance learning. It is the new rave. OK, not new. The television has been wide spread since the 50’s. The school system has largely ignored its usefulness because that would mean change. And change is hard. And education takes the easier road because it can. With the Internet, a teacher in Nevada could teach me about computers. One in California could teach me English, and one in Idaho could teach me math. They would be the teacher that I learn from the best. Why, because I used a personality database to find them. We do it with dating, why not with educating?! This would also allow us to use highly specialized people to teach, and less specialized people to tutor and grade. Now that is efficiency. Great people would want to teach because they are compensated properly for their skill. If no one signs up for their classes, they are not paid.  People would have to learn to educate well to be a teacher.

This method might also alleviate the overcrowding is the schools. Internet education can be done at home, or in smaller groups at distance learning centers, or libraries.  I see the classroom of the future being something that is more virtual. The students can interact with other students virtually. They do it on their cell phones already whether we want them to or not. We should harness this firm grip on technology to enable them to learn more. Why do we fight trends like this. We should ride the wave. They are showing us the way, and we ignore them. We even punish them for it. BAD ADULTS! They are smarter than we are. Lets let them show us how to unlock their potential.

This all sounds great perhaps for the future. Not now. It is too risky now. Many would argue that this kind of mass change could collapse our system and make it irreparable. This is true. There is the chance of that happening. Many people do not like change, and will resist it at all costs. Even at the cost of their own education or that of their children. The answer to this problem is so simple that we refuse to see it. We have to make changes now that are so small it won’t threaten the nay sayers.

A few things that we could change right away without much difficulty is to offer some classes on line at the high school level. Parts of the country are already doing this. Almost every university has mature programs already established. This would not be something new, we would simply be solidifying an already accepted standard. This might give the poor a disadvantage, as they might not have computers, or high speed internet. That is where the community library can help.

Soon, however, the libraries will become over crowded. All those student wanting to learn the new way, the way they understand. The libraries will scream for higher budgets. We can give it to them. By that time, we should be able to offer half the classes held out of school, and half in school. So now only about half the kids will actually be in classrooms at one time,. This means that the community can avoid building that new high school after all. That should free up a few million for the library computer rooms.

Soon, all the teachers and students will be used to this kind of an interface. The time will come when it will be natural for the students to want to take classes from teachers that teach in other schools. The teachers will have learned how to be more efficient with the technology, and a new type of classroom will be born. Students will learn from teachers that they have never seen in person. Knowledge will freely flow from across the globe. They will have the opportunities that were until that time reserved for the children of only the very wealthy. They can virtually travel to New York and learn there. Then off to Florida to learn there. Then to California to learn. Eventually to Paris, and London, and … well you get the picture. We do the same thing on the internet every day. Our children traverse the internet much better than we do. Lets let them use their skills to their great advantage.

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