I am usually thinking about completely boring ideas, that apparently seem crazy to most people.

Current example: Why the f*** aren't all elementary- and high-school textbooks free (either public domain or cc-by-sa), and freely available for digital download at some government website? Furthermore, why can't all students get free e-book readers, preloaded with all textbooks from all subjects, all grades, and all types of school?

The idea of "copyright" seems opposed to the idea of "compulsory education". (The former is mostly about excluding people who didn't pay; the latter is that no one is allowed to be excluded.) If the government wants everyone to know some given basic set of knowledge, it should obviously provide that set of knowledge for free, in most accessible form. Textbook authors should be paid for making the textbook once; afterwards the book should be free for anyone to read or modify. (By modification, I mean changing the format, translating into minority languages, adding comments and clarifications, etc.)

As soon as the copyright problem is solved and the textbooks are free, it makes sense in addition to paper books to also provide digital ones. My 60€ e-book reader comes with the entire f***ing Project Gutenberg installed. A school version could come with all the existing textbooks instead. As soon as the books are free, we don't have to picky about which ones to give to whom; just give everything to everyone. Spending 60€ per student seems like a good deal, compared with what paper textbooks cost. (Maybe the government could get even a better deal.) One reader is definitely easier to bring with you anywhere, compared to dozen textbooks. Remove all internet functionality to make them less distractive and less tempting to steal. (You should allow uploading books, though. Just so that you don't have to throw them away when a new version of a textbook comes.)

So far, this all seems relatively easy and cheap, so I feel it is crazy that no one did it so far. I mean, relatively easy and cheap compared to how we do things now. 60€ per student is peanuts compared to the money we already spend. Creating and digitizing the textbooks would be a lot of work in absolute terms, but divided by the number of students in the entire nation, the price per student would be negligible.

Now if you did this, it would suddenly give you new options you currently don't have. You could cheaply extend this service to adults who are already out of school and want to refresh their knowledge. (This would actually cost you nothing; just sell them the reader for 60€, as adults they can hopefully afford it. The content is free.) Or consider immigrants: you could just given them the readers as soon as they enter your country. You could have volunteers translating the texts to all kinds of languages. And you could add a special picture-based textbook of your language. Or if there is a new scientific discovery that changes something, you can have textbooks updated across the entire nation quickly and cheaply. (Just make the updates in bulk, once per year. Plug the reader to a school server, and have an application that compares directories and copies the new content.)

To get a bit more expensive, I could imagine schools to provide larger readers, integrated into school desks. Imagine a 1 meter long screen, below an almost indestructible glass, plus two buttons for previous/next page, plus two or more extra buttons to navigate the menu. This solves the problem of stupid students who keep losing their personal readers. (And it allows the gifted students to read at their own pace.) But I understand if someone would skip this one step for financial reasons.

Yes, parts of this already exist. You can get digital knowledge on YouTube or Khan Academy; there are places you can download some free textbooks, etc. But what I imagine is a nationwide, official, fully integrated solution, which requires zero extra effort from the side of a parent or a student or a teacher. Throwing all the trivial and less-than-trivial inconvenience away. Overcoming the fear of nonconformity by making it the standard solution.

And, ironically, my proposal is still relatively conservative, or at least orthogonal to many other possible improvement. I am not suggesting what should be the content of the textbooks. (Keep it the same. Or change it completely.) I ignore the topic of homeschooling or unschooling. (Give them the reader. Let them ignore it if they choose so.) In other words, I believe this should be relatively uncontroversial, at least content-wise.

Yet I suppose most people would consider this too crazy to try.

notjaelkoh

notjaelkoh

notjaelkoh

notjaelkoh

notjaelkoh

notjaelkoh