One of the most visible fronts in the free software movement is the Ubuntu folks' fight to squash "bug #1"--Microsoft has a majority market share:
Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world's population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.
This bug is actually filed in their bug-tracking system and assigned to Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of the Ubuntu project. It might not mean much to someone unfamiliar with technology, but for those of us in the industry this is a stroke of genius. It's an unmistakably clear statement about what the project is intended to do. It's a huge goal, incredibly ambitious, but it's an idea that inspires people and makes them want to take part.
The minute I read it I wanted to write my own bug #1 for education. The first thing we should fix before we think about anything else--the motivator for all the other things we might do--is this problem:
Bug: Education is done by force
Steps to reproduce:
1. Walk in to any classroom
2. Observe uninteresting or irrelevant content being presented, or topics taught by people who personally dislike the topic
3. Note that children aren't getting up and leaving
4. Realize that that's because they can't
Symptoms/Effects:
1. Kids think math is hard, or boring, or both
2. Kids think history is dull and irrelevant
3. Kids think that learning is a chore to be avoided
4. Bullying considered a normal part of growing up
5. 12 years of spending most of your waking hours in a dictatorship
6. Etc.
That's not all that's wrong--the dictatorship is, of course, trying to be benevolent, in the sense that it's aiming for a positive outcome for its "subjects". But trying to use force to implement a process that happens naturally is always going to be harder and involve nasty compromises. You always get a worse outcome when you try to work against nature rather than trying to work with it.
So I propose that we fix education bug 1.
Here are some steps that I think could be taken to address it.
1. Alternative schools. The most dramatic success story is probably the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. They have been operating for almost 40 years now, never has a student been forced to sit through a reading lesson, and never has a child failed to learn to read. They list other schools based on their model at their website, http://www.sudval.org/ under the "schools in other places" link (currently http://www.sudval.org/07_othe_01.html).
Also see this list of democratic schools worldwide.
Another alternative here might be a school that still has a curriculum but allows children to pursue it at their own pace. It would be presumptuous to conclude that the best thing for everyone is a total lack of structure. Some children are probably just going to thrive with more externally imposed structure--which is fine, as long as they can choose to get away from that when they no longer find that it addresses their needs.
2. Unschooling. Homeschooling without "schooling at home". This is essentially the practice of raising your children without forcing them to learn anything. Those of us raised with coercive education models might be surprised, but this actually works out great. People learn what they need to learn. It's a natural process.
3. Home schooling with a significantly child-led component. For people not quite ready to take that big of a leap of faith, they might set up a model that has some structure, but at least allows the child to choose the topics and the amount of time to spend on each, etc. Some children may prefer a format like this.
People considering implementing any of these fixes for their own children still face significant challenges. One of the biggest, and the one that I'm focusing on addressing in my own work, is Fear That My Child Will Not Learn Math. But whatever approach we take, let's start doing what we can to fix education's bug 1.