31 Self-Paced Learning

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Learning comes from within: students "teach" themselves, at their own rate, which is completely the opposite the concept of teachers. At some point in most people's lives there is a yearning for learning but it gets snuffed out by the inhumanity of didactic education where students are grouped by age, subject to calendar years, and sit at a desk in a common physical location pretending to listen to droning lectures. Self-paced learning, at home or in a common space, using the best interactive materials and prompted by facilitators would be best method of learning for the majority of students of all ages. With self-paced learning, they can study as short or as long as they like, whereever they like. If their home environment is not conducive to learning then they can go the public school grounds or somewhere else: no clocks, calendars, due dates, or test dates, and assessments are integrated into the lessons.<br /><br /> It is irrational to think you have ever had a single teacher of better quality than the very best on the Internet. Self-paced learning also has low per student cost, and the savings can be alloted to students having difficulty. Teaching recent immigrants & poor children might need more help but lots of "poor" children would excel in self-paced, especially if not forced into a public school environment, and the State's requirements can be satisfied from what student's are actually interested in.<br /><br />All the tools are in place for public access to self-paced Internet-based learning. There are some major programs building up from MIT & elsewhere, but for now the Teacher's unions, conservative thought & political correctness are major obstacles in the way of self-pace learning. If our goal is to see the American Dream in full force, take off the binders and talented kids will burst into the stratosphere, no matter what their background is.</p>