Wasting Money in Education – 50 State Curriculums?
I was recently given the job of conducting some research on Education in India and the current state of the education market in India.
One of the first things I discovered to my surprise was that in a country of 1.2 billion people with over 250 million students in the K12 age range at school, was that the country basically had one education curriculum.
At first I thought I had made a mistake, so I checked with our new office in India only to discover that was correct. A country that many consider third-world, does have an education system that essentially operates using one single curriculum.
So why on earth does a country like the United States – supposedly a world leader – a country with less than a quarter of India’s population and just 20% of that number of students, require 50 different State curriculums?
Are children in Los Angeles so totally different from children in New York or Florida? Of course not. So what on earth can possibly justify such a gross waste of time, energy and money, in a time when education appears to be under-funded and increasingly ineffective?
Can you imagine having 50 different financial currencies in one country, or a motor vehicle manufacturer like Ford making 50 different versions of a particular model of car, one for each State? Of course not. So why is it the case in education? (more…)
