My august sirs,

There are, in rough measure, three levels of students. The small plutocracy of intelligent and highly self motivated, who will learn the material whether, the teacher is in the room or not. These people, upon graduating, often take high profile jobs at Time Magazine and the National Post. Then there is the vast majority of students who you have to beat with some kind of stick (fear motivated) to learn the material and three repetitions are usually required. Upon graduating these people do the work of the world. Schools exist primarily to serve this group. Last we have the small group of students either emotionally or physically damaged. This group is hope motivated and their future is unclear.

Through strict admission requirements, you can close your eyes to the last group. Now you are left with a vast majority of students who will only learn the material through coercion and repetition. Homework is a valuable tool in this endeavor.

So, lets set up a mind experiment. One group goes to a school with teachers, but has access to advanced internet tools. The other group is made up of 16 yr olds, with some direction from internet learning software only. Ready GO. Four years later which group, on a whole, is more prepared to enter the workforce? If you said group number 2, you are not a teacher.

Students learn at different rates and for some students the rate of learning is much faster than the average class length. This is a classical educational problem. Literally, I am sure Socrates had to strike this balance. New tools could greatly enhance the quantity of learning for high learning rate students. Does this mean just turning these students loose on the internet? If not, how do you write a curriculum?