[pbhjpbhj]

>every teacher we replace saves $50-150k/year directly and removes a massive unfunded liability (their pension/future health care costs) from the government balance sheet

Who looks after the children?

If parents are working then, even if children are learning through a computerised system, children still need to be cared for.

Are you going to do away with teaching staff altogether? So no one to monitor and encourage the students, to watch that they're not going lord-of-the-flies and building a bonfire out of the learning terminals or are you going to mandate that parents look after their kids and take responsibility for what is currently [often] school based learning.

Don't get me wrong, teachers are not solely childcare professionals. But, children still need care without teachers.

Presumably non-teaching child care staff in a school like environment still need to be paid wages and pensions and have their health costs paid - did you account for that in your savings?

Are you planning on Khan Academy sorting out emotional education, social education, etc. too?

[yummyfajitas]

The fact that we can't replace every single human does not mean we shouldn't try to replace some of them.

Is it your assertion that with 16% less adult supervision (to borrow a number from my first post), schools would degenerate into "lord of the flies"?

If anything, I expect the situation would improve. Rather than having 1 teacher trying to do double duty (lecture and impose discipline), we could have cheaper discipline-only employees handle the discipline side and leave the lecturing to Khan.

[pbhjpbhj]

I guess what I'm wondering is how're you implementing it beyond just telling about 1 in 5 teachers not to come in to school next term?

It sounds like you're planning on having a "person with a big stick" in a room of 35 kids playing a video on a screen. Or possibly in a room of 35 computers with kids at each one.

For sure, have a room of 1000 computers and one person with a machine gun ... sorted!??

[tedunangst]

You hire new teachers slower than old teachers retire.

[pbhjpbhj]

OK, in most schools where I am that won't work (for example if there are 2 teachers for 1 year of pupils, one retires you then have a 60+ student class and classrooms designed for about 24) but that's not what I'm trying to get at.

What I want to know is how you're integrating Khan Academy (or similar) use into a pupils learning experience - eg give them a terminal to interact with for all their learning?

Also he seemed to be suggesting that we get rid of people in the role of teachers and have some form of child/youth minder. What's their actual role, what setting are they working in, how do they relate to the kids, are we shouldering kids/youth with the entire responsibility for their own education, is this the ultimate pupil-led learning or something else?

[yummyfajitas]

What's their actual role,

Preventing violence and hooliganism.

what setting are they working in,

The video lecture portion of the educational experience.

are we shouldering kids/youth with the entire responsibility for their own education,

In another post I suggested a model of 2 hours of video lecture, 1 hour of recitation with a human teacher. Thus, you allow 1 teacher to do the work of 3. The youth police would devote their full attention to overseeing the video lecture area and preventing hooliganism (as opposed to 50% on police work, 50% lecturing like a traditional teacher). Thus, the youth police would be lower skilled (and hence cheaper) and we would probably need fewer of them than teachers.

This is one possible model. I'm sure if you devoted 30 seconds of thought to it, you could come up with other possible ways (not just straw men) of doing it. I'm not proposing a solution, I'm asking why Khan Academy isn't trying to come up with one.

[pbhjpbhj]

See, police in my country earn more than teachers.

>"I'm not proposing a solution"

It pretty much sounds like you are, just a partial one.

The problem as I see it in implementing such a system is that basically you have to experiment with a whole load of people and if the experiment doesn't work then it's "oh dear we messed up your education, nevermind there are plenty more people to experiment on".

The least impacting way to trial this that I can think of would possibly be in a situation similar to that in Australia where some kids/youth in the interior belong to "schools of the air" and interact with teachers by webcam (eg http://www.emerge.net.au/~kalsota/information.htm, http://www.outbackwriter.com/education.htm). Having kids able to use video lectures to supplement in this sort of scenario seems less impacting and more easily trialled as the kids are using a computer in a similar way already - perhaps they've been doing such a thing, not sure. What is different about schools of the air is that they appear to be largely home-tutoring with support.

[philwelch]

"So no one to monitor and encourage the students, to watch that they're not going lord-of-the-flies and building a bonfire out of the learning terminals"

It's an amusing mental image, but let's be honest with ourselves. If the system is intended to prevent the students from going lord-of-the-flies, it's already failed. School systems don't even reliably stop students from engaging in outright physical violence on each other on a regular basis.