The final article that emerges from this blog post will be submitted to journals, such as TOJDE (the Online Journal for Distance Education), which published a previous article about transforming schools LINK
This is an outline for an article called “The Unavoidable, Unbelievable, Unending and Unwanted Costs of Personalizing and Transforming a School”
Abraham Fischler, a pioneer of distance education, wrote in 2006 that we should...
Stop throwing money at the current system
We can't put money in the existing system and expect change. The analogy that I use is the propellor versus rockets. You can throw all the money you want at the propellor system, but you'll never get to the moon. You need a new principle operating with a new fuel that can
operate external to the atmosphere to get to the moon.
In other words, Fischler pointed out that we need a new principle to focus on students, not on the group.
Other industries have made similar changes and it is now time for education to do the
same. FedEx can tell you where any package is at any time. Look at banking, which is now available 24 hours a day through ATMs and you can go to almost any ATM to withdraw or deposit funds. Both industries invested in information and delivery systems to meet
the needs of their clients rather than asking their clients to accommodate to a fixed structure. Now the automobile industry is enabling customers to order on demand rather than requiring them to accept whatever is available in the dealer’s lot. In the business world, however, there is
competition that requires companies to adapt – education has not had this catalyst.
As long as time is fixed, then student progress is what is variable within the fixed time frame.
Thus, 30% of the student population is punished through failures.
