INTERVIEW: GLENN REYNOLDS & THE NEW SCHOOL

For those who aren't aware, Glenn Reynolds is the OG blogger Instapundit.  He is also a law professor at the University of Tennessee.  His new book is called The New School: How The Information Age Will Save American Education From Itself.  It's a 20-minute interview that is well worth a listen.  In it Reynolds discusses the following:

• How today's education system is an industrial age one-size-fits all dinosaur in today's diverse Internet-driven world.

• "It's not white flight now. It's just flight," Glenn notes: Why families of all backgrounds that can afford to are increasingly pulling their kids out of urban public schools.

• Why technology alone won't repair the current education system.

• Could education reform help break the logjam that political correctness has imposed on education?

• What does Glenn make of parents' recent complaints over Obama's Common Core agenda?

• Plus some thoughts on where Obama goes next as his administration reaches its nadir.

You can read the full transcript of the interview here.

Read his related article in USA Today: Don't fear innovation. Nobody ever got shot or pregnant from online or home schooling

Read his related article in the Wall Street Journal: Degrees of Value: Making College Pay Off

Read Kyle Smith's related article in the New York Post: US education model creates assembly-line workers

Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection has written a review of the book:

College Insurrection posts are often inspired by a pithy synopsis of campus news by Professor Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit).

So, with great joy, I wanted to share items from a new book featuring his wit, wisdom, and expertise on the subject of higher education, K-12 schooling, and possible technology-based transformations of how students learn that we may be seeing in the near future. One word for his newest publication, The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself: Compelling.

I am the mother of a 6th grader who is currently attending public school. While my son's school is a good one, I find myself supplementing his education with trips to Kahn Academy (his math "coach" describes the program in a great article). A core theme in The New School is that online courses are one of the many new tools that will allow parents to customize an educational approach that makes sense for their children. In fact, he is an "early adapter" himself.

He also gave an interview to Kathryn Jean Lopez for National Review:

LOPEZ: Who are the audiences for this book and how do you hope they'll read it and make use of it?

REYNOLDS: There are basically two audiences: parents who are unhappy with things as they are but don’t quite understand why, and educators (and investors in educational innovation) who want ideas on where things are going. I hope that both will find it helpful and interesting.

LOPEZ: What was so wrong about Horace Mann?

REYNOLDS: I'm not sure "wrong" is the right word, exactly. But when he brought the Prussian system to America, the response from his critics was that it was in some sense un-American: The Prussian system, the critics said, was based on the idea that the government was smarter than the people, while American society was founded on precisely the opposite belief. I think that the critics were onto something here, and I think subsequent history proves it.

LOPEZ: At what point do we stop thinking of college "as a path to prosperity"?

REYNOLDS: As soon as possible. Some students do better by going to college. Others do worse. Four out of ten students, according to Gallup, wind up in jobs they could have gotten without a college degree. That makes the time, and money, spent in college a waste, at least as far as prosperity is concerned. And some students actually do worse by going to college, developing problems with drugs, alcohol, or sex that may plague them for years, or a lifetime. Then there’s the debt, which can run into six figures, and isn't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

I'm not asking you to listen to the interview and follow all the links...I'm telling you to do it! Heh.  But seriously, Glenn Reynolds knows what he's talking about and this is important stuff.  Make the time!