parents who decide to remove their children from that system. Without freedom of parental choice in education, the state will pursue a policy of extending its monopoly over education . Tenured, state-funded bureaucrats will then use this monopoly to screen out ideas that call into question the legitimacy of government interference in many areasof life, including education. The government does not have to burn books in order to persuade the next generation of voters of ideas that favor the government. The government need only screen out books and materials that are hostile to the expansion of the state. The students do not gain access to such materials except at home, and the hours spent learning at home are minimal compared to the hoursspent in tax-funded schools.
Parents who are convinced that the curriculum materials in the tax-funded schools are not what they want for their children should be allowed to provide alternative curricula in the privacy of their own homes. This is what educational freedom is all about. If parents want to pull their children out of the tax-funded school system, there should beno restraints on their doing so. There should be no restraints on the development of curriculum materials. The adoption of specific curriculum materials should be left to the parents’ discretion. It should not be a matter of civil law.
10 http://bit.ly/LeeperCase.
6
Self-Instruction
A t some point in every student’s academic career, he must move away from instruction by teachers and toward self-instruction. The obvious example of someone who has made this transition is a person who has passed his oral examinations for a doctorate degree and is now working on his dissertation. But the transitionfrom classroom instruction to self-instruction takes place long before a student enters a doctoral program.
* * *
Classroom instruction is not efficient. This is why we find that, once a person graduates from high school, college, or graduate school, he never again subjects himself to anything like classroom instruction, except maybe fora brief seminar over a weekend. Classroom instruction is not suited for the presentation of detailed new information. The lecture method is a good way to impart the highlights of a difficult topic. The highlights may create interest in the topic; that is what a seminar is supposed to do. But the idea that the lecture is a good way to communicate basic information, most of which is supposed to beremembered, is ludicrous. We know this because at least 90 percent of everything in a lecture is forgotten in less than three weeks. 11 It is almost random as to what information in a lecture is actually retained by the listener. What one listener will retain will be very different from what some other listener will retain.
This is why classroom instruction is apoor substitute for reading. With reading, a person can skim over the information rapidly to get a sense of the overall perspective. Then he can go back and read at a slower pace. He may highlight certain information. He may make marginal notations. If he is wise, he records key facts and their location in a book by posting the information on Evernote, a “cloud” storage application. This way, he cancome back and search for information a decade later, or half a century later. If he has made notes in the book, he can reread his notes, or skim the highlighted portions. He can review the material when he needs to. None of this is possible with a long-forgotten lecture. Even if the student recorded the lecture, it is not easy to review a lecture. The student can read at least twice as fast as,or maybe five times faster than, somebody speaks. He’d have to listen to the entire lecture to find the piece of information he was searching for.
All this is to say that lectures are at best supplemental exercises in conveying new information. On the other hand, some people might be wired to learn better through a lecture than through reading.
Parents who are convinced that the curriculum materials in the tax-funded schools are not what they want for their children should be allowed to provide alternative curricula in the privacy of their own homes. This is what educational freedom is all about. If parents want to pull their children out of the tax-funded school system, there should beno restraints on their doing so. There should be no restraints on the development of curriculum materials. The adoption of specific curriculum materials should be left to the parents’ discretion. It should not be a matter of civil law.
10 http://bit.ly/LeeperCase.
6
Self-Instruction
A t some point in every student’s academic career, he must move away from instruction by teachers and toward self-instruction. The obvious example of someone who has made this transition is a person who has passed his oral examinations for a doctorate degree and is now working on his dissertation. But the transitionfrom classroom instruction to self-instruction takes place long before a student enters a doctoral program.
* * *
Classroom instruction is not efficient. This is why we find that, once a person graduates from high school, college, or graduate school, he never again subjects himself to anything like classroom instruction, except maybe fora brief seminar over a weekend. Classroom instruction is not suited for the presentation of detailed new information. The lecture method is a good way to impart the highlights of a difficult topic. The highlights may create interest in the topic; that is what a seminar is supposed to do. But the idea that the lecture is a good way to communicate basic information, most of which is supposed to beremembered, is ludicrous. We know this because at least 90 percent of everything in a lecture is forgotten in less than three weeks. 11 It is almost random as to what information in a lecture is actually retained by the listener. What one listener will retain will be very different from what some other listener will retain.
This is why classroom instruction is apoor substitute for reading. With reading, a person can skim over the information rapidly to get a sense of the overall perspective. Then he can go back and read at a slower pace. He may highlight certain information. He may make marginal notations. If he is wise, he records key facts and their location in a book by posting the information on Evernote, a “cloud” storage application. This way, he cancome back and search for information a decade later, or half a century later. If he has made notes in the book, he can reread his notes, or skim the highlighted portions. He can review the material when he needs to. None of this is possible with a long-forgotten lecture. Even if the student recorded the lecture, it is not easy to review a lecture. The student can read at least twice as fast as,or maybe five times faster than, somebody speaks. He’d have to listen to the entire lecture to find the piece of information he was searching for.
All this is to say that lectures are at best supplemental exercises in conveying new information. On the other hand, some people might be wired to learn better through a lecture than through reading.
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