[SoftwareMaven]

In quality assurance, you need to be very careful what you measure, because you will always optimize towards what you do measure. As I've watched my kids' schools deal with crap like No Student Left Behind, I'm completely convinced we are not optimizing for learning or creativity in any way.

When you look at how well kids can learn when they are interested and curious and how little our schools use that curiosity, there is no question that things can be better. Just because we've done it for 100 years doesn't make it the right or best way (especially when schools became factory training grounds in the late 19th/early 20th centuries). Test scores are a horrible way to measure success in education because it fails to show anything about creativity and ability to continue learning, which are the things a knowledge-based economy need more than anything.

There are a lot of really good teachers out there who are completely hobbled by the structure of the system. It's a complex problem, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to come up with better solutions.

FWIW, I think we should start smaller. I would like to see students move through their education not with an age-based cohort, but rather a capability-based cohort, and they can get pushed back to a lower cohort if they aren't achieving (my understanding is this is how China's system works; if I'm wrong here, please correct my knowledge). That would remove the "bored smart kids" that cause problems in class and who fail out as soon as they hit something hard (that almost happened to me in college) and it would remove the "frustrated dumb kids" who give up on being "able" to learn from the equation. Both of these groups would just be challenged at their level, and the teacher would be able to focus the lesson plan around it.

[moxie]

I think you nailed it: school isn't optimized for creativity, it's optimized for creating workers. But I don't think that just applies to the factories of the 19th century.

The highest institutional rewards are given to the students who most effectively suppress their own desires, just like in the workplace. The students I knew in school who excelled at school didn't enjoy going to class, doing homework, or the challenge of memorizing answers for a test that they would forget as soon as the test was over. Most of them were smart, but the key ingredient was their ability to suppress their own desires. And I have no doubt that they have been successful in the workplace for the exact same reason.