As failing socialized education once more is cutting teachers and looking to pour federal tax paid money to save salaries of some of them, why not do something different: cut textbook costs by delivering learning content using mobiles. Roughly speaking, one teacher’s salary of $100,000 could provide 100 students with a smart phone for each and an access plan for each lasting many months.
But why fire the teacher? Why spend more at the federal level, increasing the deficit? Why cut down more trees to create paper to print resources that are out-of-date before ink is rolled?
Instead, we can chop down the local textbook/analog budget, then use the money saved to equip students with mobiles. That way, we keep the teachers out of the budget cutting morass. By saving billions through virtual resources, money remains for human teachers.
There is a picture of Congressional Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey in an article today in Politico: Dems eye stimulus to pay teachers. There is no suggestion in the Politico report of any answer to school money woes except to fire teachers or pay them by sending federal dollars to states. Obey, a chastened liberal is quitting Congress — yet another sign that the socialist solutions he has long supported are not working.
Education needs something new, and we have it! In fact pivotal positive innovation is not only possible, but unstoppable. Wrongheaded actions like perpetuating the status quo through federal money dumps slow innovation down, especially for the failing schools that are perpetuating a dependent class. But as the Obeys fade from the failing big government era, we will enter a global golden age of learning.
Handschooling is a major driver toward that golden age. As it delivers the global knowledge commons online, handschooling is moving learning back to the local level and into the hands of individual learners.
Let’s use the money crunch that is worrying Obey’s brow. It is an opportunity to speed up the switch to virtual resources and save some teachers — and quite a few trees while we are at it.
