| > why does "scale" matter in education? Maybe because, specifically in the U.S., there are 73.6 million [0] children aged 0-17. 45.7 million (or 50.4 million [1]) of which are school age. If that isn't a problem of scale I have absolutely no clue what is. You can't give every single one of them the kind of attention and resources a super rich kid gets. It's just not feasible. We as a country made the decision a long time ago that every child deserves an education. I'm sure there's a few libertarians out there who'd disagree. But, I don't think that's a controversial opinion these days. I'd go as far as saying that the opposite opinion, that not every child deserves an education, is borderline taboo. It's not something I would ever suggest in polite company unless I'm intentionally trying to make people think I'm a huge jerk. Given that we want all children to be educated, that there are limited resources to do so, and the number of school age children is enormous we have no choice but to think of education as a problem of scale. Currently we spend $620 billion a year on public education [2]. That number is sure to increase, but never to the point where every kid has all of the hands on teaching that would be preferred. This means system-wide improvements are likely going to have to come from somewhere else; namely better methods of teaching which can be applied nearly across the board. Is this the optimal situation? No. But, when you consider that the natural state of things is no education at all, perhaps we shouldn't reflexively sneer at attempts to make an imperfect system marginally better for everyone in the long run. 0: https://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp 1: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372 2: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 |