If Gonski is the answer what is the question?

• I am not saying all children can receive their education by sitting at home in front of a computer screen though I certainly think that would be part of the mix.
• I am not saying teachers will be cut out of the loop. Instead I am saying that instead of thousands of mostly mediocre and, for their educational level, poorly paid teachers we can make do with hundreds of excellent well-paid teachers. The right equipment will multiply what good teachers can achieve.

I further acknowledge that what pupils learn from each other is at least as important, perhaps more important, than what they learn in the classroom. Isolating kids at home where they cannot interact with their peers would have catastrophic results.

On the other hand delivering at least some education over the internet does have some of the following advantages over the classroom only model.

• Educational software can be standardised and tested for effectiveness. We can get real data on what methodologies work best for which kinds of students. And we can keep refining and improving. We can expect improved educational packages year on year, something that is not possible now.
• It offers students more flexibility. A student could simultaneously be studying, say, university level biology and grade 10 history. If a student can finish school in ten years so be it. If it takes 14 years that too may be accommodated.
• It does away with the tyranny of geography. When we arrived in Australia we discovered, much to our daughter's chagrin, that none of the local schools offered Latin.

Please note that I am thinking of the internet, and maybe other technologies, as tools to multiply the effectiveness of individual teachers, not to replace teachers.

Australia of all countries, which pioneered The School of the Air, lessons delivered by radio, should be embracing the internet as a tool for delivering education.

I have been mulling an article along these lines for some time but what finally galvanised me into action was this piece in New Scientist magazine.

Online schooling is exploding in US

Excerpts:

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Julia Ratten and her brother Jack, who is 7, won't be going back to their local school this month. After the school district in Beaverton, Oregon, announced its latest round of budget cuts, teacher lay-offs and increases in class sizes, Jack and Julia's parents decided to enrol them in the state's full-time online school, Oregon Connections Academy..

As schools around the US come back from their summer break, the Rattens are one of a small but rapidly growing number of families who are turning to the internet as an alternative to chronically under-resourced brick and mortar institutions...

Critics argue that there is little evidence online learning is effective. But as state-run schools, for-profit schools and even free alternatives such as video lessons set up shop online, more and more US students are ditching the traditional classroom.

Florida Virtual School, the first internet-based, state-run high school, opened its virtual doors in 1997. But in the last few years, as the US economy has faltered, some 35 states have cut budgets at all stages of education, from kindergarten to 17 and 18-year-olds in 12th grade, collectively known as K-12. Driven by the promise of reduced costs per student, states have increasingly turned to large-scale online learning programmes. Today, 30 states offer full-time online schools. Some, like Tennessee, require all students to take at least some online classes

Perhaps the schools funding crisis in the US will prove to be a blessing in disguise. It will force them to explore ways of delivering a better education more cost-effectively to more children.

At the beginning of this piece I called Gonski a fiasco and said it could be the one that does the most damage. The reason is that our future as a prosperous nation does not depend on some sort of ever-continuing minerals boom. All minerals booms end and the current one may be sputtering to a close as I write.