Save Schools Through Decentralization!

What is your children's future? Will your species survive long term? Is your society breaking down from a lack of community and family structure?

For those of you who are cynical enough to believe so--or who have endured what passes for education in your world line today enough to hate it, I believe my suggestion may sound quite reasonable to you: decentralize your schools, freeing yourself from the worry of violent school shootings and overpaid under knowledgeable private school staff.

How would it work? Well, let me show you...

You hear about how one UCLA Professor has tackled the issue of over crowded classes, poor learning environments, and budget issues. It's remarkably simple: give power to the people closest to your clients.

In this case, the Principal was able to effectively change the school system for the better in some lower education settings. But, as much as this has been beneficial--this whole idea runs counter to everything administrators and politicians have known.

And it's not too hard to understand why. The educational system is as bureaucratic, bloated, politicised, and useless to students, teachers, and even facility members on some very fundamental levels.

I like this system, and I think it's a truly revolutionary way to educate your species. But I'd like to take it a step further.

Much like the Unix morals of coding lots of small programs that do one thing well, and hooking them together in a modular fashion means more solid and stable performance, so too does the idea of a decentralized school system.

Like IBM falling to Microsoft, and now Microsoft having fallen to give rise to Apple (yet again), once a system of organization and delegated power grows too complex it needs to become less rigid, not more tightly woven. It also needs to parcel it's self off, paring down functions or focusing all efforts into one goal.

Because many of your governments are partying like it's 1999 and there's a dot-com bubble, spending recklessly on useless endeavours--so, too, has your educational system fallen victim to such fodder and piffle.

So what's left to do in this new school system?

-Build an infrastructure of online tools, remote learning, and easy to purchase study materials for all to teach their children with.

Forget those monolithic structures of drain bamaging boredom! Let the adults in your community decide who teaches what, to whom, and when.

The technology you have today makes it feasible, given the right resources are directed towards creating such things.

With the plan for a national broadband roll out, guaranteeing most of the citizens in the USA have access to at least a 4 megabit a second connection you could do some really interesting remote stuff.

Especially with the rise of three dimensional television and interactive blu-ray discs. Think of the possibilities!

Of course not everyone will want--or have the ability to be-- teaching their children during the day. This is why it's up to the community to provide that information--who is best to teach what and when, ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, the cynics out there might find this tactic crude and perhaps even too far of a decentralization. I mean, there's creepy people out there that touch children, murder, rape, pillage. Heck, some even talk on the cell phone in the movie theater.

Obviously, some standards and rules would have to be set so people are aware of the low life's attempting to prey upon children. But with such a renewed spirit in community, maybe every street will suddenly be a lot more like Wisteria Lane.

Probably not, though.

...hopefully.

By now some of you may see this and go "What is this alien toking?" And for the record, I am sipping on Romulan ale. But regardless of such, I am the lonely subversive preaching the gospel of anarchy.

Work together, in harmony, to achieve certain goals that will ensure the survival of your species.

When the competition of kill or be killed slowly drains from your cultures you will be truly free to do what ever you want.

Utilizing the technologies I've begun to show you, such as my new favorite toy (the MakerBot) alludes to a renaissance gaining momentum as all of these circuits and silicon are creating bedroom music makers, artists, animators, printers, publicists, record labels, chemists, and so much more.

If the human species becomes too caught up in advancing it's self, even at half of the effort it puts into warring amongst it's self for profit and gain you would leap forward just as quickly as you would outside of a War setting.

NASA gave you some great stuff, and some not-so-useful products...like, Tang, for example. But adventuring above the blue yonder and into the sea of stars requires a whole new mode of reasoning in terms of resource sharing.

Yet no one marvels at the International Space Station.

But I remain steadfast in my convictions, because this close to the edge you're bound to fall either into the hands of bloody savagery or angelic harmony.

Now, if you'll excuse me--I've got more Romulan ale to drink.