Is It Right That the U.S. Government Spends More on the Digital TV Switch Than Literacy Education?

This is a title of a post on Gizmodo, a gadget blog.

I am just being nosy. It is USA education and I am just an Australian. I should not care less.

Anyway, from Gizmodo (the post itself quoted below because I cannot write it any better, my emphasis):

To be honest, I can't say that I am surprised to hear that the government has allocated $1.5 billion to inform 17 million citizens about the digital TV transition. After all, those uninformed few would undoubtedly take up arms if they missed out on sports broadcasts and NBC's Thursday lineup. However, I was a little surprised to hear that the total proposed budged for literacy education in 2009 stands at a paltry $574.6 million. Once again it seems that our government does not have its priorities in order. That having been said, does this represent a proper allocation of taxpayer money in your opinion? How does broadband access fit into the mix?

Howeever, there is a good news in this. If blogger at Gizmodo questions this, there must be more people having the same question. USA may improve when all citizens demand that.

BTW, it is a poll at Gozmode. Cast your vote and you will see how Gizomodo's readers responded. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

The beginning of the end for the industrial schooling system?

by Graham Attwell

Eleven existing secondary schools in Merseyside will be closed by 2009 and replaced by "learning centres" where they

will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.

Youngsters will not be taught in formal classes, nor will they stick to a rigid timetable; instead they will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests.

The students (should we still refer to them as "students" or "customer" or "client"?) will be given the day's assignments and then they can disperse into Internet Cafe zones to carry them out.

The focus of the new learning centres, according to what Graham quoted, are mainly vocational such as "haircare, beauty therapy, leisure and tourism, and engineering as well as the more traditional academic subjects"

This is certainly a bold move. I believe the success depends on the nitty-gritty of implementing the concept.

What is weighing down learning?

by Harold Jarche

Harold dug up a post I wrote two years ago and highlighted the baggage the current school system has.

However, I would like to take issue with his use of "learning" in his post title.

"Education system" is NOT the same as "learning". In today's education system, our children are learning, albeit not necessarily during "school hours" and not the kind of skills we (here "we" means adults or society) like them to learn. Learning IS an innate ability of human. It is not whether a child has learnt or not. The problem is about "what, when, where and how".

I have left out "who and why" in the above. "Who" is obvious. We are talking about the children - oops, everyone actually because we need life-long learning.

I don't want to ponder "why" we need to learn. It has been covered by too many people and I have no expertise in it. I would rather apply "why" to each of the "what, when and where". Why *we* want learners to learn "what", at "when" and "where"?

When and only when the above questions have answers, education system would be able to address "how" to achieve under the economic and social constraints.

Unfortunately, we do not start from a blank state. There is an existing education system. Can it evolve to the ideal state? Or it is necessary to have a revolution in order to achieve that state?

Again, I have more questions than answers!

[cross posted to Learning for 2020]