[ExI] education again

[spike]

Do indulge my urge to hammer this further please.

 

OK so my previous what-if question had to do with the new opportunities
presented by the arrival in the past few years of permanent-record adaptive
online education, with Khan Academy being one good example.

 

We know the traditional education system involves a maturing process.  We
know it involves a number of mechanisms that are put in place (for good
reasons) to keep the students marching in lock-step, even though their
ability to learn is smeared out over perhaps an order of magnitude.  We know
that traditional education mostly squanders the high-end academic talent,
offering little help in general but plenty of road-blocks.

 

With our ability to envision a means of allowing students to use their time
and talent far more efficiently, we can see that some of the top-end
students will master everything in the traditional primary and secondary
curriculum by about age 12 to 14.  OK then what?  

 

There are good reasons for keeping them off of college campuses.  They
introduce so many headaches an administrator would rather not deal with.
They are often not emotionally mature enough for that environment, they
would introduce all kinds of risk, mixing with adults.  You know they would
lie about their age to get laid; then you have all the risk of statutory
rape.  There are so many related risks involved in mixing adults and minors,
particularly when those minors are smart and attractive.

 

To me it is becoming clearer always that we now can get plenty of students
to a strong mastery of the primary and secondary curriculum by age 16 and
some of them by age 12.  I just haven't figured out what to do next.  I am
so repulsed by the notion of falling back on the solution used on me and
plenty of us here: figure out ways to waste their time until they come of
age.  There is so much squandered potential, it is tragic.  It is making me
crazy knowing that I don't know how to harness the potential either.

 

Suggestions please?

 

spike

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