Roughly, there are two ways to approach this problem:

1. The top-down approach, where people advocate for policy reform.

2. The bottom-up approach, where we have special programs for gifted students, for instance, or make homeschooling/unschooling more attractive.

Also, simply getting people to do things that are more efficient for their time/effort. E.g. would encouraging students to seek more “uniqueness” than they otherwise seek be “better” than encouraging them to all conform to the same core curriculum? Is it really important for everyone to know math? (Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math). Could we simply encourage people to pursue what they’re awesome at and just delegate what they’re weak at?

For now, there’s more information on the Unschooling page.

Some places to begin looking

• The Quora topic on the subject

• http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en

• Cognito Mentoring

• GiveWell has also done some investigations on this. There is one particular post on the efficacy of chess instruction. Also see http://www.givewell.org/shallow/college-attendance

• Holden’s personal take on education in 2009

• Benjamin Todd in “5 reasons not to go into education”

Importance

FIXME

Tractability

FIXME

Neglectedness

FIXME

See also

• Reforming academia