World Futures Institute: Education Revisited – Part Two

By ANDY ANDREWS
Los Alamos World Futures Institute
 
In Part One of this series we looked at teachers in the classroom, the more traditional practice in education. With technology today, however, one might ask why we cannot do it all online?
 
Think of all the money that could be saved for society if we could eliminate all of the classroom teachers. Or could we? Plus, if we did it on a national scale, the curriculum could be held constant everywhere. Of course, local knowledge might suffer.
Recently I became aware of a course offering for a one semester English course that provided full high school credit for a semester. The price tag was $200. At our local high school the students can take seven courses per semester. So, one might argue that taking all the courses online would cost $1,400 per semester or $2,800 per year. If we use the $3,000 figure of teacher cost per student cited in Part One, this would save $200 per year per student. At 56.5 million students, this represents a savings of $11.3 billion dollars per year or 0.17 percent. Not much of a savings for eliminating the benefits of the classroom environment and interaction with real human beings.
We are engaged in a communication revolution with internet technology and cell (smart?) phones. Today I had to make a phone call and my “smart” phone connected me, as a surprise, with Facebook phoning. It was a novel experience and I finally got to see an individual I have been communicating with for several years. Unfortunately, not expecting a video phone call, I had not combed my hair. While I can laugh at the embarrassment, it does suggest that one could attend classes via video if the teacher could monitor 20 screens or images simultaneously. But you still have a 20 to one student-teacher ratio. While this might not reduce the number of teachers, it might reduce the number of classrooms.
When I was in graduate school at U.C. Berkeley, a very popular undergraduate course in physics (Physics 10) was presented by Dr. Edward Teller. Enrollment and attendance was enormous with students scattered in many rooms, attending the lectures in “live” video.
In each room there was a “coach” to interact with the students and answer questions. But this was post-secondary education; can it be done at the primary and secondary levels? And can it be done when you have 55 million students? To me the answer is no, but it can be done partially and perhaps we can reduce some of the inefficient overhead costs.
One possibility of reducing overhead costs could be the elimination of paper from the school system. As a first step, do away with books. A student could have all of their texts on a simple tablet computer issued to them at some point in their schooling. Obviously, the device would need to become more sophisticated as the student advances, but think of how much lighter their backpacks could become. Personally I like paper for any significant amount of text, but I am an old person that went to school before modern technology and being able to read books off of a tablet. Ask Amazon.
But what about writing? Will pencil or pen and paper become a thing of the past? Recently I became aware of younger people unable to write cursive. If this is okay, I can envision a world where we only use keyboards. Can you take notes with a keyboard? One might believe thinking about such ma
An interesting calculation is how much might be saved by eliminating textbooks and only using tablets. We have considered reading and writing so a bit of arithmetic is in order. Assume that the 55 million students per year remains constant and that each student receives 13 years of education. Further assume that each student will require four different tablets as he or she progresses through the system depending on grade level and that each tablet costs $100. This means the cost of the needed tablets is $22 billion (100 x 4 x 55,000,000), not including the overhead cost of distribution and administration.
Now consider the books. Assume that four books are needed per year on average based on high school students taking seven courses per semester (seven books required) or 14 courses per year. As a rough estimate, divide 14 by four to adjust for pre-high-school and that some books can be used for two semesters.  Finally assume that each book costs $100 and lasts four years before needing to be replaced, making the cost per year $25. This means that the annual cost for books per year is $25 (cost per book) times 3.5 (books need per year per student) times 55 million (number of students) or $4.8125 billion per year. Over 13 years this amounts to $62.5625 billion.
 
Compare the $22 billion (cost of the tablets) to 62.6 billion (cost of the books) and the direction society should be going seems obvious if you agree with the assumptions and the arithmetic model.
If you do away with books you greatly affect the publishing industry, costing an unknown number of people their jobs. Of course, by eliminating the use of paper you save trees and (maybe) reduce the net energy consumption for information distribution. And you may be affecting the students in how they must receive and process information as well as reducing the exercise they received by lugging a backpack. The list can go on and on, to include the arithmetic used. And this is only a fraction of the overhead costs that need consideration.
Til next year…
 
Los Alamos World Futures Institute website is LAWorldFutures.org. Feedback, volunteers and donations (501.c.3) are welcome. Email andy.andrews@laworldfutures.org or email bob.nolen@laworldfutures.org. Previously published columns can be found at www.ladailypost.com or www.laworldfutures.org.
Search
LOS ALAMOS

ladailypost.com website support locally by OviNuppi Systems