How do we give every child an excellent education?

“Child” should be “person”. Perhaps the biggest problem with our education system is that we try to cram all education into the first 18 years of life, and then, apart from desultory training and vain rhetoric, that’s it (unless the individual takes their education into their own hands). This has all sorts of unhealthy social results (such as the idea that in the course of a life you first have playtime, then worktime, then more playtime), and disconnects education from other areas of life.

It’s never going to be possible to make every school excellent, to have only good teachers. The law of averages doesn’t work this way in education, just as it doesn’t in other areas of life. But by making education a strand of everyone’s life rather than just a gearing up at the start, everyone will understand the issues better, and be motivated to contribute to the success of the system.

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Last updated 2004/10/31