An Improvement to Education

One of my favorite side effects of writing stories is coming up with good ideas. To be clear, I’m not referring to good ideas to advance the plot or develop a character, but rather the good ideas that are applicable to reality.

Whilst brainstorming I had one such epiphany. In one of my most recent stories I had decided that the Terrans (humans for non sci-fi readers) had for their government a Democracy, based largely on the Athenian model. From this I segued into the Terrans being quiet highly educated, a practical necessity for a working Democracy, which in turn meant they must have an excellent educational system. This then got me to thinking about ways of solving, or simply eliminating, problems with our modern school system.

Now, I am by no means an expert in the workings of our educational system. That said, my humble opinion is that one of the foundation stones of the flaws in this system are committees and boards. There are other problems and multiple possible sources working together to cause them, but this seems like an important one that needs to go.

First, when there is a budget shortage cuts need to be made. Programs and Teachers seem to be the victims of these budget cuts. This results in the decrease of all extra curricular activities that are not the most popular of boys’ sports and an increase in the number of students per teacher. Unless I’m mistaken, committees and boards are the ones who make the decisions on what gets cut.

When talking about the education system however, it seems to me the most useless elements are the administrators and committees. The students are the most important people in the education system, and they need teachers, which makes teachers the second most important. Schools need an administrator or principal to make decisions, supply materials, and other functions that would otherwise require the teachers to spend more time accomplishing tasks that do not involve students. That’s where it should stop in my mind.

Committees and boards exist because people need/want oversight, watchdogs, and bureaucracy. Though these groups and their responsibilities are intended to make sure students get the best education (the job for which we are already paying teachers and principals) they in fact take away resources and valuable time from the students, teachers, and principals.

If you were one of a group of twelve people (this number has been chosen at random) whose job it is to determine how to spend money, would you recognize that it doesn’t really require twelve of you to make this decision? If you did would you elect to reduce the size of the board, thus risking your own job. If not, would you elect to have your pay and benefits reduced? Many of us may want to say we would, but how many seriously would follow through.

Instead these committees and boards elect to lay-off or reduce the compensation of what they perceive to be the things which are not as important as themselves: Programs and Teachers. If I’m not mistaken, these committees also are responsible for deciding what portion of funding goes to their pockets in the form of salary or benefits. And these committees and boards occasionally have additional committees or boards that preside over them. In essence we are paying lots of people lots of money to make sure that the people we hired to make sure the other people we hired are making sure that teachers and extra curricular programs are providing our kids the best education possible are getting rid of those same teachers and programs because by the time money trickles down to them, there are no funds left. I understand that last sentence may have been difficult, thus highlighting my point. To simplify I’ll use an example.

From the money intended to educate our children Joe is paid to make sure that Dan, who is also paid, is making sure that Mrs. Smith and other teachers are providing our children with the finest instruction in Math, Science, English, Sports, Music, History, Foreign Language, and Art. Each category has multiple sub categories such as: Algebra, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Literature, Writing, Football, Water Polo, Band, Choir, US history, World history, Spanish, French, Theater, Sculpting, and the list goes on. After Joe takes out his compensation, and Dan after him, the funds left for Mrs. Smith and these programs has already been depleted.

“But we need oversight! Got to have us some of that regulation!” some might say. Ok, keep your boards and committees but have state assemblies allot them separate funds instead of having these committees and boards tap into educational funds. In doing so if there’s a budget shortage then these committees and boards would have to get rid of their own members and the ones who remain would have to work harder, instead of them firing teachers and making the teachers that remain work harder. This should also ensure that every penny allotted to the education fund goes to education, not bureaucracy.