Liberalization of knowledge

Why is it that only people who have to medical school can be doctors?
If the passed the same rigorous examination even though they have not had formal training shouldn't they be allowed to practise. The examination already tested their knowledge and clinical skills. However why is it that the exams is limited to only a few? The more people in a field the richer it will be and with that amount of competition. Prices will be driven down and quality will go up as doctors try to outdo each other. In the old days that is how it was done. There were medical schools to speak of so people are apprenticed to a doctor help the person do all the menial tasks in exchange for knowledge and skills and when they are ready off they will go to the Royal Colleges and take their fellowship exams. I believe the current and this old system should be used as both as it strenghts and weaknesses but since they are there why not use them all?

A vision of future education

Nowadays we have choose between two extremes,
Either too much spoon-feeding and have all our ideas dictated to us by the professors or too much self-directed learning with no guidance whatsoever to the extent that students grow too much like weeds. I propose to remedy this problem by converting lectures into debate sessions between professors of differing point of view. Students are presented with the facts and an idea of what is important to know but they make the synthesis and decisions of what to believe themselves.
Take for example there are many differing views as to how teaching should be done in universities as the above. Instead of forcing students to be captive audience we should have professors duking it out with proofs and rebuttals. The only weakness would be that the more eloquent person will influence more people at the expense of truth but this is preferable than to have indoctrinated people. If people can't be taught to value substance over style and think for themselves then they probably can't succeed in whatever system.

Who needs teachers?

Nowadays with the great availability of the interenet,
And also access to knowledge either through the printed or electronic media, it seems the roles of teachers are diminishing. As we can see fromt he previous post I can get knowledge from a professor in the UK without ever even needing to go overseas and spending the money. Having read his article and memeorised it one can say one is as informed as him on that particular matter.
However without teachers how are we to know what is crap and what is not. Teachers are still needed to guide us. Teachers are needed so we can avoid rediscovery. Put simply they are compasses. Textbook are charts. these by themselves do not make a voyage which we must undertake and be responsible for ourselves.

Better than anything I can say

I am for education reform and most of the time I believe the market,
Can the do a better job than the government ever can. Professot Tooley here say it in much better words than I ever can and offers empirical evidence. http://admin.fnst.org/uploads/1044/OP3.pdf to get the rest of his papers go to his website http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/tooley.html

Monopoly of ideas in education

This is crazy,
But when you have one lecturer on a subject in the soft sciences he is basically monopolising the dissemination of information. If he is capitalist his lectures will be biased towards capitalism. Why can't lectures be debates between two opposing camps, for example capitalists veruss socialists on the need ofr minimum wages. Both have to justify their stand but at the end of the day the student thinks for himself.

Ending the government's monopoly on education

This is one reason why it should be done,
It is hearsay in court but that doesn't mean it is not truth. People be the judge. http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/61811 Competition makes things cheaper and give more choices. The parent will have choice to change to school that is better and lousy ones that try to be funny as above will wither adn die. Fancy losing your job?