Education is inefficient.

It takes much longer to teach a class than to teach an individual. The system does not meet the best interests of the individual child.

However, the alternatives are not economically viable. Our system has determined that it is more cost-efficient to have one teacher teach a group of 30 students all at once. It would seem to be less efficient to have one teacher for one student.

However, our current system demands that we place a child in a classroom for a large part of his or her first two decades of life. The classroom learning and socialization processes could take place over a much shorter period of time if the circumstances were different.

This proposed change in the system would mean that children who do go to school at an early age would be able to enter the big world and to be productive earlier in life. They would help society with worthwhile activities and ventures.

We don't allow children to grow up at their own pace. Even precocious children cannot make their mark in the world until they have reached a certain arbitrary age. All children are required to be cooped up in classrooms, where they must proceed at the rate of the slowest student and the weakest teacher. They waste their time while waiting for the system to carry out its inefficient activities:

• Dealing with disciplinary issues
• Reviewing things that the child has already absorbed and internalized
• Dealing with social issues among friends

All of these issues could be avoided by allowing the child to learn in a real-world setting or in smaller, homogeneous groups.

Some bright children don't learn properly in achool because of the inefficient waste of time. They become disruptive because they're bored. A bright child could learn much more, over a shorter period of time, under a different instructional system. He would be able to complete his studies several years before other, normal children. Why must he waste extra years of his life in school?

During this abbreviated period of time, children who are less gifted may be asked to study fewer academic subjects. Gifted students, on the other hand, would study more academic subjects, possibly by themselves, or under the guidance and tutelage of an experienced teacher. There would still be a range in the knowledge acquired.

We could also make use of technology to help us teach children more quickly on an individual basis. We would bring them into school when they are ready, and then we would send them out into the world efficiently, and at their own rate.

Doesn't this method of adapting ourselves to the students make sense? Do we have the right to waste a number of years of a child's productive life if he can complete his studies earlier?