I was just looking over Kant's On Education. He died in 1804 when Germany was but on the cusp of industrialization (it considerably lagged Great Britain). Kant emphasizes home schooling and tutoring. He believed in education research and experimental education. He had high hopes for a theory of education. He prefers public education to home schooling and tutors to parental instruction (although had he seen America's public schools today I suspect he would have thought differently). The home schooling/public education question was alive to Kant as it has recently become again. I wonder how he would have reacted to the crackpot diversity-speak of today's education schools and the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Household tutors probably fell out of fashion as their relative cost increased, much like household servants. But today increasing numbers of jobs are of this kind. Many New Yorkers have dog walkers and full time nannies. Why not tutors? I wonder if tutoring as a profession might make a comeback, especially in light of the increasing interest in home schooling. Perhaps an enterprising academic might start a chain business "Home Tutors R Us" that offers tutoring services, much like the firms that provide nannies. This would have the advantage of being offered in suburban and rural as well as urban locations, where affluent parents send their children to private schools. Perhaps home tutoring could be combined with distance learning. Perhaps small groups of parents could combine to hire a tutor for several children. I think the bottom line is that a market driven system of tutors would be far preferable to the dismal public schools of 21st century America.
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- March 29, 2010