NEEDED CHANGES


James Fox

Time 4 Change

With the rapidly increasing costs of education becoming one of the greatest problems facing both private and public institutions and students, the limited space, the shortage of qualified teachers and the diminishing amount of available parking space; it seems obvious that distance learning, done right, is the most important solution needed by our nation.

Currently, it is an evolving educational science and has a long way to go before it becomes the useful tool needed by the next generation of needy students.

Gaston Caperton, president of the association of more than 4,000 educational institutions, said, "There is no better investment than a college education;" however, the College Board reported these increases in annual tuition and fees between the 2001-02 and 2002-03 academic years.

These constantly increasing cost to the student is certain to create a two tiered society in the near future … a small group that can afford a college and a huge group that will not be able to afford college.

The parking in the vicinity of most colleges is so limited that students are counterfeiting, buying from unscrupulous chiropractors and even stealing handicapped parking permits. The entire UCLA football team was busted last year for using illegal handicapped parking stickers.

The qualified teacher shortage is growing every year. Many teachers are forced to teach classes they are totally unqualified to teach. All they can do is function as a classroom nanny and hope that no student needs technical help with his studies.

In this declining economy, it appears obvious that there is going to be less and less money available to keep up with the demands for more and more schools and more qualified teachers by traditional methods. We must compensate by drastically reducing the cost of education.

The first step would be to create a standard curriculum across the nation for all subjects and all grades. The curriculum should be selected by a commission of respected educators, then we should authorize the budgeting the United States Department of Education to actually create and print the textbooks for free distribution throughout the nation.

And finally, we should then concentrating on teacher training for online schooling classes using standardized teaching and support techniques. We must dispense with the current credentialing guidelines and start credentialing teachers to teach specific subjects and computer literacy. If classroom math teachers taught 5 math classes each day, he or she would become more efficient because he or she would bear full responsibility for the evolution of the student through 5 years of training.

If we did all of the above, we might be able to produce the student that needs no remedial classes and provide the quality education the taxpayer deserves for their children at an affordable cost.