Al Gore was right! Computers are the answer! After meeting with my Mensa group, I am pleased to reveal the future of higher education, starting in 2020.
COMPUTERS HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS! ; from the sum of 2+2, apple pie squared through a zillion decimal points, or the size of Pee-Wee Herman’s shoe when he was 17. The time has come to pair the computer with all those kids seeking a higher education!
The most glaring problems are the brick and mortar facilities in which “school” has utilized for several hundred years. It’s over! We no longer need them! The questions and the answers will go back and forth from educator to student by way of the Internet! A physical plant in which to do this “school” is a waste of building materials, valuable property, and tax dollars. Allow me to explain. By the year 2020, every child in grades seven through 12 in high school, and the four years of college will have a computer. That’s all he/she needs!
(An exception will be made for grades K through sixth grade. These are the basic social formation years for a child. They will learn rudimentary educational skills, while their parents will attend bimonthly PTA meetings to become grounded in the child, teacher, and parent symbiotic relationship. The Elementary school building program guarantees the seventh grader the basic building blocks to pursue the levels of higher education.)
Here it comes! Are you ready? Drum-roll please! Introducing the greatest teaching innovation since Socrates and Aristotle, and more recently, Mr. Kotter and Our Miss Brooks. The students in grade seven and continuing through four years of college have their teaching professor sitting on the lap! It’s the computer with Windows 27, Storm Doors 15, plus bytes, roms, rams, and longhorn sheep that are ready to convert these mop heads to Mensa’s. Now, cover one eye, and read the first line on the chart. Wow! You just failed the eye test, so take my hand, and allow me to lead you on the path to higher education in the year 2020.
This is the part where we separate education from the physical building where it has resided for far too long. Just think of the advantages of razing all those high school buildings, college dormitories, and University campus facilities! Choice land, already paid for, becomes available for use by the general public. Imagine beautiful parks, museums, concert halls, and on and on. This can all be accomplished because “Professor Know How” is in your laptop waiting to be called upon.
Let’s examine the high school pluses of not having a school building. No more lockers, school buses, cafeteria food, and disinterested teachers, just to name a few. Dress codes, boring field trips, fights in the boy’s bath room will be a thing of the past. No more hassled parents having to drop off or pick up their kids in all kinds of inclement weather.
Many of the same negatives recited above are also present in the so-called seats of higher learning. The major difference between high school and college is MONEY! BIG MONEY! BODACIOUS BUCKS! The element table used at Harvard is the same one used at Podunk Junior-College. Annual tuition at Podunk: a couple of thousand; compared to Harvard (economy class) $60,659, while annual tuition at MIT is a measly $43,720.
STOP THE MADNESS
Do the words that drip from the mouth of a tenured instructor have that much value? I, for one, don’t buy it. The tuition buys the colleges or universities endorsement that you attended their hallowed halls, enjoyed the keg parties, participated in the panty raids, and eventually received a diploma that will impress Mom, Dad, and most future employers. The alternative would be to remain in your own home town, and take all the necessary courses for a successful life on your IBM< Dell, Samsung, or whatever you got on sale at Walmart. By 2020, when the wrecking ball has leveled the “ivy covered bastions of education”, the competition for jobs will be based solely on what you know, and what value you bring to the organization!
I can hear the protests starting to form. “What about athletics, physical fitness, and learning the spirit of teamwork?” Well, fear not, that is a major revenue source that we shall latch onto like a hungry lioness. What used to be called recess, became gym class, which later evolved into intramural sports. The most promising of these young athletes, both male and female, would attract the attention of Bob Costas; who would interview the athletes with the most potential to play their sport on a professional level.
Organizations such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, CIA, BINGO and OPRAH WILL START BIDDING WARS TO OBTAIN THE SERVICES OF THESE PRIZED ATHLETES. That is the one caveat that is essential in the plan to tear down the existing schools and teaching institutions. Athletics will survive! The huge educational wrecking ball will spare the athletic fields, Olympic pools, baseball diamonds, and stadiums for the fans.
Who is going to pay for all this?!? Isn’t it obvious? The team owners, of course! The NBA, MLB, NFL, NATO, and the AF of L and the CIO, will loosen their purse strings, and throw huge amounts of cash at the athletes to assure the success of the program. Those acronyms, combined with the PAC groups on K Street in Washington, DC will grease the wheels of professional sports.
Let’s sum up. Do you want your kid saddled with a student loan for a quarter of a million dollars, just so he or she can say “I went to Harvard”? The choice should be a very simple one; we only have five years. We need to start a groundswell of support for this, albeit radical, but daring new plan for higher education in the future!
Let’s all get together for a group hug in Bill Gates’ front yard!
Opps, it seems we’ve forgotten two very important career choices. The AMA and the ABA were somewhat miffed at not being included as a professional goal. I’ll admit that we must educate some outstanding young students in the medical field i.e. doctors, dentists, nurses, and golf caddies. The omission of the lawyer category, however, was deliberate. It was a tossup between the sanitation workers and the attorneys. It was an easy choice; someone has to take out the trash. A small group of legal minds will be encouraged to study by candlelight, (they should have a Lincoln aura about them) in a cold damp room. Upon graduation they would work for legal aid helping the poor. The industries that would suffer the most without attorneys would be Mercedes dealers, and Armani clothing stores.