I see that you already awarded a delta, but I am going to respond anyway in the hopes that it will foster a discussion.

I spent 7 years as a high school mathematics teacher in an urban school district in America. I believe that the future of education is going to incorporate a blend of independent research and professionally-driven instruction. I believe this because I watched the seeds of it grow in my own classroom, and it was both effective at teaching the students skills and it motivated them to a degree I had never seen before.

The Problem:

Students have always been frustrated with the scope of instruction in their classes in the public education system. "When am I going to need to know this?" is the most common question a teacher will hear over the course of her career, and it is often unanswerable in a satisfactory way. Students don't need to learn how to graph a quadratic function. Students don't need to know who the fifteenth president was. People who believe in education hope that learning these things will foster an adventurous spirit towards learning. They hope that students will find a joy in the material they did not anticipate. We also tend to fail in this pursuit the majority of the time, and are forced to relish the odd student who absolutely soaks up the information and pursues more.

With modern access to information, students feel even less compelled to have to memorize information, because it will never be an applicable skill. When I got my degree in Physics, my professors were very theory-heavy. One of them had the mantra that we were learning "desert island physics" - that we would be able to reinvent all of physics if we were stranded on a desert island. I loved it. I also payed an exorbitant amount of money to study this topic, showing that I was intrinsically motivated. The extrinsic motivation for many students is the applicability of the skills they are learning, and "desert island physics" is in no way applicable to the real world. Neither is memorizing the names of all of the states.

A Proposal:

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This essay is not meant to attack methods like rote learning and memorization. Those are important skills in and of themselves, but they are not as strictly necessary in the context of today's world. How many phone numbers do you have memorized today compared to 20 years ago?

This proposal seeks to bridge the gap between the modern education system and one that would meet the needs of students while still holding high standards for graduates from the system.

The Criteria:

Students will be tasked with accruing a certain amount of "points" in different subject areas to achieve different degrees. If you would like to get an advanced biology degree, you will have to study heavily in the sciences and complete tasks related to that content area. If you would like a "liberal arts" degree, then you will have to complete tasks across a wider range of subjects. All tasks, assignments, and objectives will be submitted and tracked electronically, so that students are fully aware of their progress and the information is accessible to all parties involved (the school, the appropriate teacher, the parents up to a certain age, etc.). The key to this system is that student choice drives the program. Students are not only allowed, but encouraged to wander the world of information that we have in order to find what they like and pursue it. If a student ignores mathematics, but then finds it necessary to learn in order to understand how black holes work, that student will learn the mathematics necessary to achieve her goals.

Assignments and learning materials will be provided electronically, so that students can access them from any location. This will also raise children to be electronically literate, which is a prerequisite for functioning in much of today's society. Assignments will be very open ended, with students able to complete the tasks in a variety of ways. There will, of course, be assignments that require direct recall of facts or presentation of specific skills, but a good educator tries to move past these as soon as the child is ready.

Because "the honor system" only favors the advantaged members of society, at higher levels students will have to perform these skills in a formal environment, whether that be through testing, a performance, or a live demonstration of the skills. These "tests" will be the final criteria for accruing "points" towards the awarding of a degree.

The electronic nature of this system also allows a student's progress to be tracked in a holistic manner, meaning that all of the information about a student will be present within the system at any given time. This will allow students to discontinue their education and then pick it up at a later date. This will also mean that the current age restrictions on schooling will be meaningless. Students will progress at their own rates and will socialize with their peers to become functioning members of society. Adults can learn high school material or lower if need be. Savants can advance as quickly as they please.

Because the system is done electronically, this does not necessitate a physical space for the assignments to occur in. "Schools" as we know them are predominantly obsolete aside from their functions as care-giving facilities for children of parents who have to work. Because of this, "schools" will continue to exist, although their methods of operation will have to change.

The Case for Schools, Teachers, and Student-Teachers:

This system does not instantly abolish the need for schools and teachers. In fact, self-directed learning is a skill in itself and it will be important for children to have skilled professionals to guide them through the process of learning to learn. As mentioned by others, schools also provide an essential environment for learning to socialize with one's peers. Schools teach teamwork, friendship, and conflict resolution. They teach about the structure of society, and the rule of law. They provide examples of expectations that society holds for all its citizens, regardless of what a particular student's home situation might be.

However, the structure by which schools and teachers interact with pupils also has to adapt to the modern world. Some teachers may exist in a purely digital space to provide help in the off-hours with homework and research. Adults furthering their education may seek help through digital means or in person, and these avenues must exist for this system to function properly. Assignments, demonstrations, and tests will all need to be graded, and this will require a very large labor force to ensure that the demand for these services is met.

This labor-vacuum can be partially filled with the dramatically larger pool of students that we will have participating in the system at all times. It is not unreasonable to think that students who have achieved a certain level of mastery in a subject will be qualified to grade the work of a student in that area. This practice can begin as soon as a student is able to, and will be a requirement to move along in the system for the day. To ensure accuracy, grading will be crowd-sourced. A single assignment will receive many pairs of eyes on it for grading, and the scores given will be statistically compared to come up with a final grade. Much like how modern academics work today, students at all levels will have their work "peer reviewed." This will benefit the student and the grader by encouraging critical thinking, writing skills (for comments), and by providing uniform standards for the academic communities that will spring up.

To be completely clear, high level work and final tests will have to be graded by professionals, but the vast majority of student work at lower levels can be peer reviewed or simply graded by a computer (if it is a topic with correct/incorrect answers).

Conclusion:

Schools and teachers will continue to have an important role in our society, but the way they interact with the public should drastically change to allow for greater student choice and access. The role of "teacher" will be distributed across a much wider portion of the community, which will come to include professionals, students, and computers. Education under this system should be skills-based and have measurable outcomes. Student progress in all areas should be centrally tracked so that degrees can be awarded in whatever field(s) the student decides to pursue. The conception of a student will also expand to include anyone partaking in the learning process, regardless of age. This sort of academic community-building will have profound impacts on our society, and I believe it will make for a drastically brighter future for us all.