(Virtual) Schools for Learning (for a Change)

Something exciting is happening in education. Virtual schools, home school coops, virtual charters, and other ingenious ideas have cropped up to sneak learning back into education.

Last fall, more than 140 of the state’s 426 school districts used Wisconsin’s Web Academy to provide online learning to more than 800 students in grades six through 12, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.

The Madison School District offers about 100 high school level online courses, and its Madison Virtual Campus started in 2005. Most students use the courses to supplement the regular school day, said Kelly Pochop, Madison’s online learning facilitator.

Some states, such as Michigan, even mandate students take an online course before graduating high school. “If districts aren’t currently offering online courses, they’re studying ways to provide (them),” said Brian Busler, Oregon’s superintendent. Online classes, whether at the university or elementary level “have just exploded over the last several years.”

....Officials say one reason Oregon is moving toward online classes is to compete with a virtual charter school opening as part of the McFarland School District, about 12 miles away.....

....While the physical location of an online school often doesn’t matter, having one nearby makes it easier for students to travel to take standardized tests, attend field trips or interact with teachers. _WisconsinStateJournal_via_News Alert

Over more than a century, Americans have been sold a factory model of education. Mass production, mass indoctrination "education" tries to engineer minds in the grand blank slate tradition of BF Skinner. The end result is students who are not ready for college or the workplace -- the slow motion collapse of a nation's human capital infrastructure. Psychologically neotenised, academicall lobotomised narcissistic incompetents, who have finally taken over the highest levels of the US government.

Will it be possible to work around the "lost generations", and work to help children learn for themselves, to think for themselves, to become competent, thoughtful, responsible and effective humans? A novel idea. Let's form a committee to study it. Put the best minds at the university schools of education to work on it. Float the concept at the next union meeting. Best of all, get the government working on it. Yep, that ought to do it.