Do E-Readers Spell the Demise Of Traditional Schooling? 301
Attila Dimedici writes "I came across a an article this morning that suggests that the Nook and the Kindle have changed things in such a way that schools are becoming obsolete. His premise is that the ideal way to teach children is by a tutor ..., [and] the Nook and the Kindle have allowed large amounts of written material on many different subjects to become accessible enough that parents can tutor their children at a price that just about everyone can afford."
The author is a bit off-base on the nature of the public schooling,
but easy access to resources like Project Gutenberg and Wikibooks certainly removes some
barriers to self-study and the limitations of the 20+ child classroom.
Re:Sureeeeee (Score:4, Informative)
Yea this will replace tutors
The article is talking about replacing traditional schooling methods (ie classrooms+lectures etc), not replacing tutors. The article is talking about MORE tutors - in short, you completely missed the point of the article.
Personally I believe lectures will soon be a thing of the past. Teachers should be spending their efforts actually interacting with students rather than a one-way recitation of material, which can be accomplished through video lectures (ie the guy from Khan Academy is a much better lecturer than 90% of teachers out there).
Congratulations on first post though
Re:Sureeeeee (Score:1, Informative)
And the reason for all that? Income taxes. Income taxes, the 2nd worst mistake the USA has ever made, right behind slavery, has been making our manufacturing too expensive, so it has mostly all moved overseas, along with its high-paying jobs. What's left is crappy retail jobs, and equally low-paying service sector jobs - just the things that cannot be exported overseas.
The answer? The Fair Tax. The Fair Tax calls for the abolition of the income taxes, all of them, and replaces them with a consumption tax - a Federal sales tax. You get to keep all your money you earn, unlike the extremely regressive income taxes that, via the payroll taxes for social security and medicare, tax the poor at 15.3% from the 1st dollar they earn to the last, while Warren Buffet brags about paying a 10% income tax, and his share of the SS and medicare, taxes for which are capped at around $100K, amount to peanuts for him. Then there's the regressive nature of the corporate income taxes, and other taxes that the businesses incur, that amounts to about 22% of the selling price of anything manufactured here. So, when a poor person buys a light bulb manufactured here, 22% of its price is from income taxes of all forms. Add that to the 15.3% for social security and medicare, and we're taxing the poor at about 37%. Nice regressive tax, and the reason that the poor have difficulty "getting ahead."
Yeah, labor is expensive in the USA, but that's not the reason manufacturing has mostly left, because most manufacturing is not very labor intensive any more due to automation. A few people can now take care of a factory that used to employ 1000's. Those few people, getting paid big bucks to do the things machines can't, such as repair themselves, install themselves, etc. can be paid well, and the company can still make a serious profit if it is not hampered by the USA's astronomical corporate income tax, at 35%, plus and average of 4.5% more than that in state corporate income taxes, making the USA the 2nd-highest corporate tax rate in the world, behind Japan and then only by a few tenths of a percent.
Like Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" campaign slogan, "It's the taxes, stupid" applies...