School As We Know It Is A Losing Proposition

Three ideas converge to outline the likely future of education, regardless of whether at the K-12 or post-secondary levels. The only difference will be in the scaling.

First, content is free, something Sal Kahn has been saying for a long time. Students (and their parents) at all levels can access high quality content from a variety of sources, including public school districts, universities, publishers and, or course, Kahn Academy.Second, adopting the analogy theme, TIVO is to television as online is to course content (see this blog post by Alex Tabarrok), This means that content delivery need not have all recipients gathering in the same place at the same time (even if the place is virtual).And third, flipped classrooms work, as suggested by evidence from the totally flipped Clintondale High School near Detroit (see Tine Rosenberg's profile of Clintondale in the October 9, 2013, NY Times).If content is both free and time-shifted or time independent, then school as a conduit for content delivered during the 8-3 day or September to June year is a losing proposition.There is a silver lining in the fact that much, maybe most, of what is valuable about school is not in the content per se, but about the techniques, skills and problem-solving capabilities that students need to be able to do something with the content. Note to teachers: give up on content as a way of providing value to students; focus instead on helping them learn how to use content. Going further, in our interconnected yet still tribal world, it is the "soft" social and emotional skills that catalyze doing something valuable with content. Those are best learned in person and with a guide at one's side.