SCHOOLING: ANY PLACE, ANY TIME!
By Darrel Deide
Chairman, Idahoans for Choice in Education
When technology was brought into the classroom many years ago, everything changed, and schooling improved dramatically. This “new” technology allowed information to be presented all at once, freeing up teachers to spend more time educating and less time replicating basic data. Because an innovation like this was impossible to ignore, soon every classroom was utilizing this technology. This technology was put into classrooms around 1801. It was the blackboard.
Much later, various still and movie projectors and the overhead projector entered the scene. Today, computer technological innovations are all around us, but school leaders resist implementing much of it. Today, the only innovations that are accepted are those that do not negatively impact the education establishment.
It’s a shame. Not long ago, if a school student in Malad wanted to learn Latin, that student was out of luck. Today, distance doesn’t matter. Any school, whether in Boise or Bellevue, can have Latin instruction – or any other language or subject. It is certainly possible today to reduce staff in our schools and at the same time improve education quality and content. Yet it rarely happens.
Our public schools don’t look much different from the way they did 50 years ago. Sure, blackboards have given way to whiteboards and electronic boards. But the education special interest groups want to halt progress there and those entities have done a remarkable job at keeping real education reform at a standstill. But times are changing. Parents and students are starting to ask tough questions. Parents wonder why they’re putting more and more money into schools and getting less return on their investment. Students, who are very technologically savvy, wonder why they aren’t benefiting from the hi-tech innovations they see in everyday life. And now some policymakers are connecting the dots. If technology can bring the best and brightest teachers into every classroom, reduce costs and improve our schools, why is there such resistance to it?
The Idaho Legislature has made some progress by allowing school districts to use a small portion of their state funds for virtual education, but there is no real incentive to incorporate the wide array of new technologies in to our K-12 school system. There is still heavy resistance to real school reform. However, times are changing. There is little the education establishment can do about it. It is no longer necessary to just have schooling occur in a typical school in a typical classroom with 25 students and a teacher. Good teaching, good schooling can occur anyplace at anytime and anywhere. With technology, we can increase the achievement level of all students, increase opportunities for teachers, increase teacher salaries, decrease the cost of K-12 education, increase education choice options for parents, students, and teachers and potentially, truly revolutionize K-12 education. What is there not to like?
