In this ambitious paper Alfred Bork takes on the question of educating everybody. This daunting task, he writes, will not be accomplished with current approaches. Instead, we must look at a system using computer-based, adaptive learning. He proposes an initial three year "experiment" to launch the system and an additional seventeen years to implement it across all grades and subjects. The paper, this month's IFETS discussion primer, has already drawn the usual objections. It will cost too much. People need teachers. The cultural differences are too great. People will object to women learning. Yeah, maybe. But look: the numbers don't add up any other way. The cost of not providing an education to the majority of people in our new, tightly integrated planet is too high to contemplate. Education is what leads people toward peace, prosperity and democracy. But we simply cannot afford to provide nice teachers and classes for everybody: look at the problems surrounding education funding even in the United States, the world's richest country. All the objections in the world won't change these two realities. We can debate the details, but Bork's plan has legs. It is something we must look at sooner or later. Preferably sooner.
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