[omegaham]

> If you calibrate everything perfectly, some number of students will get a highly optimal (for them) education where everything was timed perfectly, using the easiest-to-understand lessons. For everyone else, for the slow and learning disabled, for the quick and talented... it will be an awful experience. And, whether you call it luck or circumstance, neither of those groups will be educated well enough to be able to express their criticism easily.

This is a really good point - the public education system isn't an artisanal workshop; it's a large, industrialized factory where "raw materials" are turned into "product." Every grade is another step in the factory process. And while I guess it might be optimal given the very limited resources that we devote to education, it's heartless and doesn't work very well from an absolute standpoint.

Personally, I didn't get a lot of my education from school. Sure, I was there ten hours a day, but I mostly learned from my father and the homework that I did. I would get assignments, and my father was the one who really taught me whenever I ran into problems. I would then go back to school and pass tests.

Unfortunately, my situation was atypical and very lucky; I was blessed with a loving father who was fascinated with a large variety of topics and loved teaching. Most kids don't get a resource like that and get stuck with school as being the only avenue for learning. How can you reach them? I think the only answer is more money, which will go toward more teachers. Cut down the class size to ten kids per class, and you'll get a much more individualized curriculum. As long as you have 25 kids in the classroom, you're going to end up with the factory approach.