Introduction

Many professional educators, particularly in college and university
graduate schools, are required to write and publish articles and
books throughout their professional affiliation. Others do so for
prestige and ego satisfaction, but not many write for money because
academic books are not sufficiently popular to provide an adequate
return on the necessary investment of time. The motivation behind
the writing of this book is to share insights gained from nearly
thirty years of teaching on all scholastic levels from kindergarten
through graduate school and adult vocational courses. Observations
have been made, noted and filed with articles that support these
observations in a file labeled "Educational Philosophy" over these
years. Some of the pages of these notes and clippings are brown with
age but the ideas are still relevant to educational processes. Many
of the improvements advocated from the mid 1950's are still
required; too few that have had any wide-spread beneficial effect
have been implemented. The problems and some suggested solutions
will be mentioned herein.

This is not intended as an instructional methods book for aspiring
educators, so it will not specifically address, except incidentally,
psychological aspects of learning theory and teaching methods.

The learning system, if you please, to which I subscribe is based
on the following assumptions, succinctly stated by Malcolm
Knowles in an appendix to his The Adult Learner: A Neglected
Species (pp. 181-182,  Gulf, 1984) [A working paper prepared for
the UNESCO Institute for  Education, January 1983]:
     1. Learning in a world of accelerating change must be a
     lifelong process. 

     2. Learning is a process of active inquiry with the 
	initiative residing in the learner.

     3. The purpose of education is to facilitate the
     development of the  competencies required for
     performance in life situations.

     4. Learners are highly diverse in their experiential
     backgrounds, pace of  learning, readiness to learn, and
     styles of learning; therefore, learning  programs need
     to be highly individualized.

     5. Resources for learning abound in every environment,
     a primary task of a learning system is to identify
     these resources and link learners with them
     effectively.

     6. People who have been taught in traditional schools
     have on the whole been conditioned to perceive the
     proper role of learners as being  dependent on teachers
     to make decisions for them as to what should be
     learned, how it should be learned, when it should be
     learned, and if it has been learned; they therefore
     need to be helped to make the transition to becoming
     self-directed learners.

     7. Learning (even self-directed learning) is enhanced
     by interaction with other learners.

     8. Learning is more efficient if guided by a process
     structure (e.g., learning plan) than by a content
     structure (e.g., course outline).

Since being affiliated with public education, I have been an
advocate of self-motivated learning and less institutionalized
education. I realize that expressing this puts me in a position of
"biting the hand that feeds me." Nevertheless, my observation has
shown me that ego-centric, dictatorial teachers can stifle a
student's desire to learn. Einstein made the comment that he was
amazed that children can maintain the "holy curiosity of inquiry" in
a forced school setting. Many, perhaps most, lose it. Those who are
curious will learn without the help of formal school; the others
won't learn even in school and are a burden to the tax supported
system. We think Jeff's [Jeff is our teen-aged son] curiosity was
dampened by his sixth grade teacher. His fifth grade teacher was
excellent and Jeff knew she liked him. He said he learns for
teachers he likes and who like him. His sixth grade teacher
evidently could not tolerate him. Jeff knew it and didn't do a
thing; he hasn't done much in school since. We were encouraged
since, though, as a consequence of an exceptional high school
teacher's interest in Jeff. He gave Jeff a series of educational
tests that demonstrated that Jeff scored, as a Freshman, higher than
most Seniors in the area of general knowledge, things that are
probably learned outside formal school. He scored in the 93rd
percentile of Freshman norms; this is comparable to a typical
student in grade 12.9 -- nearly college level. The teacher also
found that Jeff understood the concepts that are necessary to
comprehend high school algebra. The high school had previously
placed him in a general math class.

An administrator of a private school (A. S. Neill. Summerhill: A
Radical Approach to Child Rearing. N.Y.: Hart Publishing, 1960) in
England allowed students to decide for themselves when they wished
to attend class and get serious about education. Most, nevertheless,
were able to pass their college entrance exams. Some did not start
formal learning until the last two years of their secondary school
experience.

The Florida state legislature is requiring departments in community
colleges to have 70% of their students placed in jobs or in
universities when they complete their associate degree programs. If
they fail to do so, the departments' funding is discontinued. A
large percentage of beginning students score at less than the fourth
grade level academically, when they begin, but are able to be
employed or transferred when they complete college work two to three
years later. If they can acquire all they need to know in two to
three years of college instruction, there does not seem to be a need
for taxpayers' support of elementary and secondary schools.

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     All the learning necessary for success in high school can be
     accomplished in only two or three years of formal skill study.
     Delaying mandatory instruction in the basic skills until the
     junior high school year could mean academic success for
     millions of school children who are doomed to failure under the
     traditional education system. Wm. Rohwer: (University of
     California)

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I am reminded of the time that my wife, Alta, and I were
particularly upset with a public elementary school in the spring of
1969. We were recognizably too inexperienced and inconsiderate of
the teachers to handle the situation maturely and regret that it
occurred. Kari [our oldest daughter] was in the sixth grade and a
victim of the profanity of a teacher subject to emotional outbursts.
Nikki [our second] was in the third grade, bored with the slow pace
her class was progressing. She consequently asked her teacher for
more exercises to do, to which her teacher responded that only
naughty pupils get extra work. These and other incidents
antithetical to effective learning motivated us to withdraw our
daughters from school and threaten to keep them out for the
remainder of the school year. It was only after the president of the
college where I was teaching appealed to me to settle differences
with the public school officials, in order to maintain proper
institutional public relations, that we had them return, but only on
a part- time basis. I had threatened to expose the archaic
educational system through an article that a reporter and
commentator wanted to write for the newspaper of a city of nearly a
million people. I don't know if I regret not having carried the idea
further more than I regret having caused embarrassment to my
professional associates.

As a consequence of my mentioning home education as an option or
supplement to institutionalized education, readers may receive the
impression that the book's primary topic is home education. I did
not, initially, intend to make the book seem solely as an advocacy
for home education. As stated in the section on "better ways," I
mention home education as an option on the condition that
institutionalized schools fail to provide an environment suitable
for learning. Optimum learning environments consist of cooperative
arrangements between homes and schools, whether public, private or
correspondence. The use of technological tools, television and home
computers, can tie homes and schools together in a manner that can
reduce the total tax expenditures and make learning more efficient.

The book's primary indented advocated feature of education is an
increase in the use of technology. Every other industry has eagerly
adopted tools which make their operations more efficient and money
saving. The education industry appears to have deliberately avoided
such improvements. As I contemplate articles in magazines such as
the Technological Horizons in Education Journal (T.H.E. Journal) and
other sources listed prior to Appendix 1, I realized that my job as
a teacher (i.e., dispenser of information) is really not necessary.
The hands-on experience that students have while learning computer
(or math or English or business or whatever) skills, at the computer
terminal, interacting with the information, is a more effective way
in which a person can learn. One can learn by doing, without the
interference of an instructor, much more effectively than by
listening to an instructor talk. One value of computer based
learning is that it permits students to make mistakes without fear
of rebuke and embarrassment. They can learn most effectively by
discovering - the scientific method! Each student can determine for
himself how much drill he needs to master a skill or how much study
he needs to comprehend a concept. If the student lacks tenacity and
discovery is too frustrating, he can even determine best for himself
what his most efficient, effective and desirable mode and
environment for learning is: reading, listening, seeing or
participating. The computer can provide many variations of model
situations to test the student's understanding of the concept.
Increasingly, the instructor's job is becoming one of planning the
process rather than "dumping" information for students to
regurgitate.

The greatest obstacles to implementing CAI/CBE [computer aided
instruction - computer based education] are the inflexibility of
educators and inability of legislators to devise innovative funding
procedures. Educators fear technological innovation because they may
lose the student attendance on which legislative funding is based.
Legislators are not sufficiently inventive to devise new funding
schemes acceptable to their constituencies, although some voucher
systems have been proposed. Without traditional tax supported
funding for progress, one must seek viable options for education:
"do it yourself."

The more I analyze educational effectiveness, the more I realize
that the best time for a person to learn is when he has a question.
If he is allowed to get some degree of understanding followed by an
attempted implementation of that understanding, he will realize what
concepts he does not understand and will seek to understand by
asking. Acquiring information as it is dispensed from an instructor
at the convenience of the instructor is inefficient; most of the
hearers are possibly not ready to receive the information when the
instructor is ready to dispense it. The student is ready when he
realizes when he needs to ask for clarification. This is the reason
for the positive findings of research in home education. Those
educated at home have a private tutor, in a parent or sibling,
constantly available.

The body of the text amplifies these concerns even though it may not
address them all specifically.

The first portion of the book reviews some of the major problems
facing institutionalized education. The rest of the book addresses
potential solutions and emphasizes the effectiveness of little used
technology, primarily television and computer based learning, and
introduces home education as an option. The appendices provide
quotations from advocates of home education, a rising optional
educational movement.

It is possible that some of my colleagues in the teaching profession
may take offense to some of the reports and observations. I trust
they will realize that any reference to "traditional educators"
recognizes that they (we) are victims of an entrenched system that
requires a radical overhaul. Recognizing this, many teachers are
leaving for other, less frustrating, professions. Admittedly, many
teachers are misplaced, as is true of other professions. School
boards and administrators should do a better job of screening
applicants, but with little to offer in the way of monetary
incentive, they have little to gain in the way of talented
professionals. If the objectives of this book were met, I would no
longer be an educator in an institutionalized educational
establishment. I may be a consultant, but not an educator in the
traditional sense. The traditional educator is an anachronism,
possibly appropriate for the nineteenth century hierarchical
industrial society but as obsolete as the dinosaur now. And his
primary products are other living anachronisms being provided
obsolescent "facts" with archaic methods that make them as
inadaptable as the dinosaur.

No claim is made that the proposed solutions to the problems pointed
out are definitive. There may be as many appropriate educational
procedures (solutions) as there are learners. Each learner may best
seek and find his own most effective learning procedure and
environment. The recommendations made herein, hopefully, will
generate further recommendations.

Thanks go to Elmer Cox, now deceased, the exceptional high school
teacher mentioned above, without whose encouragement and similar
educational philosophy this endeavor would never have been
undertaken; three daughters and one son, with whose frustration over
the educational establishment's faux pas I sympathized; and
especially my wife, Alta, who has been with me from the beginning.