School's Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education

A radical formula for cutting through the bureaucracy of the traditional education system proposes the implementation of technologically innovative media as learning tools and privatization of schools to introduce competitiveness. 35,000 first printng. $25,000 ad/promo.

Are school systems, classrooms and teachers obsolete? No less so than the horse was with the coming of the automobile age, argues Perelman, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Washington, D.C., in this stimulating brief for technology-based hyperlearning. He makes many apt criticisms of current schooling, charging, for example, that the current mode of passive learning is defective and that our education system is monolithic and socialistic (American academia is about 90% owned, operated and/or financed by government). He supports not only parental choice of schools, but also students' microchoice from a floating technology menu. On the debit side, techno-optimist Perelman is too eager to lump together all styles and types of learning and to ignore the role of gifted teachers. In his seemingly corporation-friendly way, he praises the innovative entrepreneurial leadership demonstrated by Chris Whittle with his controversial Edison Project, a private school system Perelman believes is dedicated to profitability as a necessary criterion of success.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Perelman, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, proposes a bold new plan for education that hinges on the use of hypermedia and electronic networking to facilitate hyperlearning. He recommends that the current educational system be abolished, along with its bureaucracy and credentialism. The schools that remain would be private, competitive, and mainly vocational. Educator schools would be transformed into research and development think tanks. Education would be lifelong for the whole family. Perelman bases his proposals on his experience as director of Project Learning 2001, an education restructuring study sponsored by nine U.S. corporations and foundations. His ideas are provocative and radical and will engender controversy. For most education, business, and public policy collections.
- Shirley L. Hopkinson, SLIS, San Jose State Univ., Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.