The Education Epidemic

A common problem facing many western countries is the low level of education of their youth. Growing up in Canada and attending non-private school throughout the 90's, i always remember my Eastern European - educated parents complaining that the material that i was learning (most likely for the 3rd year in a row...cause some kid's just don’t "get it" the first two times) was too simple and they had learned the exact same stuff at a much younger age. I also remember stories of other immigrant children who've moved to Canada after a few years of education in their motherland and were immediately advanced a few grades. The perfect example was while i was in my final year of high school, i remember going to my Calculus class with a Chinese girl who was already 2 years younger...she regularly laughed at the homework we received because she had learned it at the age of 14 (i was 18). Luckily for me (although i didn't realize it at the time), my father spent hours every week teaching me advanced maths and sciences (lessons that i would be taught in regular school years later) so that i could graduate at the top of my classes and that would eventually lead to a Computer Science degree from a top university. Having smart engineers for parents was my blessing...even better than having very rich parents who can send their children to private schools. Either way, most children don't have rich parents or parents who can teach them trigonometry...so their education (or lack-there-of) lies in the hands of the education system they attend.

Poor education is not just a problem in canada...america, ireland, UK, germany...almost every western country suddenly has an education epidemic and can’t seem to figure out what went wrong or how to fix it. Maybe it's always been this way and we've never cared because our economies were strong and life was good. But with the fear of globalization looming over our heads...booming economies of countries such as China and India where hundreds of millions of youth are being educated far better than we are (and learning english too), we've realized that without better education, the beautiful western lifestyle that we've gotten accustomed to will not be transferred to our dumb, uneducated, unmotivated, spoiled western children.

What to do? I'll tell you what not to do is throw millions of dollars at it and hope that fancy laptops and "smart boards" are going to make our children smarter. The analogy here is taking a beat-up VW Bug from the junk yard, attaching a Corvette steering wheel to it and trying to race it against an Acura NSX. Sorry, your car isn't Herbie and it's not a Disney world. If it was, I'd be dating Jessica rabbit...she was my favorite. Ok, ok, i have to admit, MS's approach is not all about fancy technology...they also plan on using the "`education competency wheel`, patterned after a set of desirable traits Microsoft encourages among its employees"...oh god shoot me now. In general i hate this kind of management speak...but let’s assume that there is some real theory to this stuff. Unfortunately, there's one thing the really smart people at MS have overlooked...the fact that they're all really smart!! MS recruits the smartest/best/brightest/motivated people in the world! They walk in the door that way...on day one they're solving some of the most complex software problems in the world. So assuming you have a genius, then your main goal is to use him/her to their ultimate potential (so that you can make lots and lots of money, bundle your crappy software with an OS that has a market monopoly and take over the word) and your desirable traits will be tailored to this type of person. I honestly don't know how you can apply the same theory to an unmotivated 12 year old who's only motivation in life is to progress to the next level of some video game. ok,ok,ok, lets assume the best possible scenario here, that the fancy technology and the Education Competency Wheel are a big hit and the kids graduate at a higher level...now what? Is our great plan to build these schools all over the western world? This school cost $63,000,000 which will service 700 children. This of course excludes the cost of running the school which will, in addition to the regular costs of running a school, need to invest money in such things as extra electricity to charge all those laptops and educating the school janitor to run the anti-virus utility when the toilet contracts an Outlook virus. Anyway, $63M per 700 students to start...and how many children need to be educated in America alone? Do the math...it's trillions of dollars. Now lets look at this from an economic stand point...if we need to be spending trillions of extra dollars so that little Billy can learn 7x7=49 at an earlier age...we're never, ever going to be able to compete globally. And just as an added kick...im sure Billy will never learn 7x7 cause every time he's asked that question he'll open up Window's Calculator and punch it in...brilliant.

Ok, so as you can see, in not a fan of the MS approach to solving the education epidemic facing western youth...so do i have a solution? Not really, but a good place to start would be to look at how other countries do more with less money. Maybe it’s time we give our teachers more authority in the schools, bring back those ugly uniforms, and start shipping the naughty kids to Australia.