Today's school system is less and less one focused on aiding the learner to reach full potential than one of industry and politics, of taxes and conformity. Today's learner is more capable than those of previous generations, and the one-size-fits-all Prussian model that was the template for what would become the system of today's education standards has become quite antiquated and inappropriate given the rise of learning technologies. Criticism of this rigid system abound, and for good reason, as innovators and entrepreneurs are showing us what the future holds for learners, bringing access to education to more students and at lower cost than ever before. This is an unfortunate flaw on the traditional state-education model, and will likely lead to a arabica shift. No longer will schooling be "free" and compulsory, it will be available and affordable, effective and competitive.
"Arguments about education are contentious enough without bringing partisan politics into them, but it is interesting to note in passing that in recent years our Prussian-based public school model has come under virulent attack from both the right and the left. Conservative complaints tend to center on the alleged usurpation by government of choices and prerogatives more properly left to parents; as it was put by author Sheldon Richman in his book Separating School and State: How to Liberate American Families, “the state’s apparently benevolent goal of universal education has actually been an insidious effort to capture all children in its net.”"
"Attacks from the left have tended to be surprisingly similar in tone, though the villain is not the government but the corporations that have the most to gain from a well-behaved and conformist population. Writing in the September 2003 issue of Harper’s, John Taylor Gatto urged that we “wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands…. School trains children to be employees and consumers.”"
From Sal Khan's book The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined.
