Student graduates CNM before APS illuminating the dichotomy in public education

Whose interests come first; students or the system?

KRQE reports, link, on a young lady who has earned two degrees from Central New Mexico College before she was allowed to graduate from APS.

It points to the greatest dichotomy in public education;

• the need to create independent lifelong learners at their own speed v

• the relentless effort to take 30 kids with nothing in common but their age, and try to form them into thought choirs, able to learn in unison for twelve years.  30 kids in five rows of six desks, each on the same page in the same book on the same day.

Even if you could standardize individual achievement,
why would you want to, and especially at such great effort?

If the ultimate goal of public education is to create independent lifelong learners, why is it not the immediate objective?  Why are we trying instead to standardize individual achievement?
Students can be accommodated in their right to learn as fast as they want or as slowly as they need to.  The technology is there, the willingness to apply it is not.

The simple truths are;

1. there enormous amounts of power and resources to be spent in trying to educate and test children in groups,
2. there are a lot of people who enjoy spending enormous amounts of power and resources, and
3. you can expect them to prolong the status quo, blatantly or surreptitiously, for as long as they are able.

In start contrast, there is comparatively no money to be made in teaching children how to become independent lifelong learners at the earliest opportunity.