It’s Time To Disrupt Education

Disrupt Education Now. Why? It’s Past Time.

Education in this country is broken: everyone completely gets this. There is not one person who feels that the public education system is working. But nothing will ever change or get better because even though 5 constituents make up the educational system:

1. Students
2. Parents
3. Teachers
4. Unions
5. Government

The last two will always attempt to maintain the status quo, and therefore the system will never change. It’s funny how the least important players in this game are the ones who hold the most power and are also the ones least affected by the system. Those have the most to fear when we disrupt education.

The students are the direct benefactors of quality education. A quality education, fair and balanced, provides students with all of the tools required to survive and, yes, compete in this world. You think students in other countries stop scoring soccer games because the students feel bad? No.

The parents pay for this education. In return, they get a shoddy product and are forced to take it. In some states, it is actually illegal to homeschool your children, and in most others, parents cannot afford to pay their taxes AND send their children to private schools that work.

If you ask me, the teachers are basically good; they do what they can with the resources they are given. Even they want to see us disrupt education.

These three players are desperate to change the game. They have seen the quality of education in this country plummet as the costs have skyrocketed. They know that there is no correlation between money spent and the quality of education.

Unfortunately, the last two players in this game like the rules exactly the way they are: unions have a sweet deal – in concert with the tax stealing government, these two thieves and low lives have stolen billions of dollars and many educations from the first three players. They have the most to fear if we disrupt education.

Vouchers have universal appeal for the first 3 players: they allow the best schools to stay open, the best teachers to gravitate to them, and the poor schools to close, and the poor teachers to leave the field. Vouchers initiate competition, the thing which drives people to be better than they were. But since vouchers only have negative effects for the other 2 players, they are forbidden.

There is no way out of this: unless we see a massive, immediate change in the system, billions of more dollars will be spent on ever-worsening education, and the only ones who will benefit will be those last two players. We need to disrupt education.

So I only see one solution: cut them out. How can we cut out the unions and the government? Start as many new private schools as we can. Drive the kids out of the public schools into private schools. Create a second private school system, a shadow school system if you will. Draw students to it by providing a better product.

How do we do this without massive amounts of government money? Simple. Technology, the free market, and innovation. You only have to look at places like Khan Academy to see the future. Imagine thousands of online schools finally disrupting this atherosclerosis-ridden system.

Now is the time. Just like digital disrupted both the music and book industry, the time is now to jump into disrupting education. In future posts, I’ll talk more about how we can do this.