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30 results found
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| Revolutionizing Education 
The University system here in the United States follows traditions that should perhaps be updated as we move into a globally competitive marketplace in the 21st century. Colleges have experimented with Internet classes and distance learning courses that are aired over television channels. I propose that colleges establish a set of professional quality video taped lecture presentations for standard courses. The video tapes could be kept in a special section of the university library, duplicated and sold along with textbooks, or even made availible publically through video rental stores such as Blockbuster.If distance learning is successful, a video-taped lecture should be equally successful or more so. The students may watch their lectures on a television and arrange to speak to a professor in the role of tutor during the professor's office hours during the semester. Thus, a single professor could be on hand to answer questions for hundreds of students without the need to provide lectures. The highest quality lectures could then be mass duplicated so that the lecture experience is superb.I spotted an article in the 1977 volume of the Journal of Mathematical Sciences in my college library that reported a scientific study comparing traditional education in calculus 1 to self-education by means of textbooks without lectures or other resources. Surprisingly, the outcome of the study showed that the students who studied themselves, from textbooks, without ever setting foot in a classroom, not only scored higher on final exams but learned the material in 2/3 the time. If this can be done for Calculus 1, this can surely be done for other subjects. Let us support the University system by charging for comprehensive, written, final exams that will give full credit a course whether or not someone has stepped in a classroom. The costs can be adjusted to finance the University operating costs and research efforts. France uses this system - French Universities don't charge for tuition, just for the exams, and their education system is excellent. One who has experience in industry can thus gain from his experience without retraining in fundamentals when he tries to get a degree. Another aspect of French education is the fact that courses all over the country of France teach a set course curriculum with no electives or course variation in different universities. The French spend a lot of effort to make the curriculum for someone such as a electrical engineer, for example, be everything which it needs to be for an engineer to walk out of school and go to work with all the skills he needs. French engineers work 35 hours a week and match or exceed the productivity of American engineers who work 50-60 hours a week ; people who work in international companies are aware that the productivity of the American worker is characteristically lower than that of foreign workers. I love America and say this only to bring attention to the fact that America has much room for growth in the productivity of the individual - I hope my observation encourages skeptical people to investigate this matter themselves to see the truth of it ; shame falls on people who would brush aside my remarks out of pride in American labor and never try to verify or disprove that I am telling the truth.In summary, we should video tape high quality college lectures for every course where this can be done ; investigate the use of textbooks alone as learning resources for particular courses suited to this kind of approach ; charge for final exams rather than tuition ; and follow France in standardizing college courses nationally to the highest level of quality appropriate for entering the job market, eliminating electives not "essential" to the training effort. Reward: I would feel rewarded if widespread discussion of these ideas could result in a commitment to test these plans. 
There are 8 replies to this idea
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| New Tax Rules
Some years ago, my college roomate asked me an interesting question about our current system of taxation. He was wondering if the democracy that we have would improve if the taxed citizens were allowed to choose where the money went. They would pick the important programs by giving a certain percentage of their tax money to different government agencies. A new tax form would have to be devised that would allow the paying public to allot a percent of their money to different departments of the government. There would be between twenty and thirty different categories. Examples would include National Defense, Department of the Treasury, Department of Agriculture, Department of the Interior, Research and Developement, NASA, welfare, foreign aid, National disaster relief and prevention, National Debt reduction and several other general categories where the Federal government spends your money. This would be like casting your vote in the most important way, with your dollars. I am quite sure that with the great diversity of National concerns nothing important would be left underfunded.Included in the twenty or more categories would be a miscellaneous block. This is for the people that don't give a care where the money goes, or forget to make the percentages in the blocks add up to one hundred percent. This would also insure that if something important is underfunded, it can receive adequate resources. The legislators would then decide where that money would be spent. It is important that we not shoot ourselves in the foot by not putting an adequate percentage number in the categories that directly concern ourselves.Reward: Just get it done.
There are 4 replies to this idea
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| Internet Voting
Why have a house and senate? Suppose legislation was to be brought to the voting public instead of debated and voted on in the house and senate. With the internet being what it is today, why do we need elected representatives to vote on laws on our behalf when we now have a level of technology that can enable us to vote for ourselves? Maybe a certain day of every month could be devised to vote on, like for example the second Thursdays of every month. Legislators could make the bills to be presented to the public and special interest groups could lobby us instead of them. It would certainly be much fairer and less likely to be corruptible.I am also against the practice of slipping unrelated legislation into bills. If internet voting on legislation ever catches on, I would like to see the line item veto also given to the people. People that don't have internet access could ask permission from a friend, relative, or neighbor to use their internet to vote or go to the public library to vote with their internet access. A person's social security number and birth date could be used to send their vote to make it valid. A set of master computers could have all registered voters information in its database for comparison to the incoming votes. Lobbyists would have to educate the public on the pros of their legislation and opposing positions would have to educate us on the cons of those bills presented. It might be time to start decentralizing the legislative body on the state and federal levels in this way.Reward: Just get it done.
There are 17 replies to this idea
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