#12 - Public Database
This is probably the biggest, most important and most difficult project on the list.
Using modern technology, home schooling, online schooling and various publishers have turned the packaging of courses into a big business You can buy any course you want in catalogs or online. Just pay for it and it’s yours.
In the past, knowing what was a good curriculum was general knowledge or something that educators learned, specialized in and applied to their work. As education became more complicated and more specialized, it moved from “public domain” to commercially owned and supplied. You can get a curriculum for almost anything if you're willing to pay for it. It used to be public, but now it's private. Computers and the Internet have expanded the capability to create, access and disseminate data and knowledge.
Having private companies sell prepackaged courses seems like a good idea. They can produce nicely printed textbooks, audio, video, support materials like posters or classroom handouts and a variety of teacher support and aid materials. But it has been hijacked to where you can't assemble a curriculum or know what an appropriate curriculum is without paying for one of these commercial packages.
A way to combat this would be to have a public database that outlined what a complete curriculum should look like. Not a database with all of the materials,just a list or outline of the courses for a particular grade, course or subject. People could consult it and compare to see if the local school's curricula was appropriate or not. Given the number of subjects and courses in existence, it would be an incredibly large database.
Commercial companies could still sell their packaged courses replete with pleasing presentations and support materials. They are good at it and it's worth the price, What is being advocated here is just a database that outlines what should be taught that has easy public access so we know if a course has a proper place in the school. Make it public domain again.
Modern technology makes it possible to assemble and make available and easily accessible.
Having a public database (of the outline) would protect the data from being hijacked by anyone.
Commercial companies could still sell packaged courses to us with provide quality materials.
The software already exist. The database is relatively simple and only has a dozen or so fields* to be really complete.
Gathering the data would be a monumental project and would require an unbelievable number of educational and technically qualified people to create and maintain it.
* Fields might include:
Course Name.
Short Description.
Unique index number. Could be coded like Dewey Decimal System.
Group (e.g. English, Math, Science, Humanities, Physical Education, etc.)
Category (e.g. reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, etc.)
Grade or Grade Range.
Prerequisite or knowledge prerequisite.
Knowledge learned or ability gained.
There would also have to be a physical place to house it and a way to disseminate information. A computer, a building,access, software and staff. A Web Site maybe or download area.
Having a public database would go a long way toward hijack prevention for commercial or idelogical purposes. It would also contribute to standardization across the states.
(download the project)
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