Politically, parents, taxpayers and adults generally want to "know" what is going on in schools. That is actually impossible, in the extreme. Even 5 or 10 humans do, say, think so much so quickly that no one person can truly be aware and attuned to all that happens among them. This knowledge, this impression of accountability and oversight is a political and administrative need, not an educational one, but it persists.
However, two other forces are assisting the transition to a much more diverse and individualized educational process. One is the complexity of modern electronic devices, including surprisingly cars. The other is the existence of Google, Bing and other internet search engines. We are slowly getting used to exploration instead of instruction in our lives. We actually have no choice, since our human world in all aspects grows steadily more complex. We can't have the internet's contents written down in a book. It would be impossibly large and most of it would be written in languages each of us cannot read.
It is usually older people who have experienced and seen learning from a lecture or a textbook who feel both irritated and lost when they get a new device but it doesn't come with a book of instructions. My mother got an Apple IIe and a big heavy book about how to use it. She wanted to know and experience it all so she sat with the book and started reading from page 1. Of course, that is not a good way. You can't remember and you need to see and feel as well as read but I could not convince her of that.
Further, a little experience with Google, the Wikipedia and other internet sources quickly shows us that day by day, hour by hour, we can go and get what we need at the moment. We see that learning it all is impossible. By the way, we also see that "what is to be learned" is actually changing continuously, too.
Teachers and the public know that schooling and the curriculum are basically irrelevant. We have plenty of examples of dropouts and low-grade achievers who have succeeded very well and many whose grades were very high who have not had happy nor productive lives. On the other hand, the amount of education and of schooling keeps on correlating with later success, at least in general and statistically.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
