High quality education
How to improve education with the Meta-Problem Method
Our society’s future will be determined by how well we educate our citizens. But high-quality education is expensive, and we have limited resources.
There are endless opportunities to increase the quality of education, but most come at a cost. The decisions that shape how we use our limited resources are handled at many levels, from individual teachers and parents, on to schools and districts, and all the way up through policy makers and politicians.
The question then becomes which problem (or cluster of problems) should we choose to solve? Where will our efforts lead to the greatest improvement in education quality for the investment dollars we’re willing to spend?
Those are questions that can be answered using the Meta-Problem Method. The approach is about choosing the best problem to solve, but only after you’ve defined the goals you care about, explored your many options, and weighed the trade-offs. To learn more about the Meta-Problem, click here.
How should we invest?
There are two key layers to navigate when applying the Meta-Problem Method to the problem of delivering a high-quality education. The first is to decide what should be given to our students, and the second is who should pay for it.
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Both issues are heavily intertwined. Parents sometimes choose non-public schools because they are willing to invest more of their personal resources to achieve specific outcomes. College students in some countries pay drastically more for their education than in others because of the way college is funded. Some vocations require you to pay out of pocket for your education, while others provide on-the-job training to get you into the field.
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Most countries have decided that educating their children is a responsibility of government. They know that when children grow up with high quality education, they pay it back many times over a successful career.
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As we decide who should pay for that education, it can be hard to see how changes today impact future generations. The consequences of a change today may only be fully realized decades from now. For example, take away or add a certain kind of support for elementary school, and it will take over a decade to see how it impacts those students as adults.
Quantifying the tradeoffs
Because of the scale of education, we constantly look for ways to increase efficiency. This raises difficult questions. For example, if kids have almost as good an experience when they have 20 classmates as 30, is it worth losing a couple kids who need more individual attention?
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The relentless push for more efficiency takes a toll on teachers too. Over the past several years educators have been burning out at record rates.
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If we want a future with qualified doctors, engineers and teachers, we need to maintain the availability of college. If we want to have an educated population who can follow a budget or apply for a job, we need to achieve at least moderate quality for our youngest citizens.
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Using the Meta-Problem to improve education starts by exploring possible decisions and the resulting outcomes. Some example scenarios:
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Which students are not being served with our current level of funding? What changes could we make to bridge the gap?
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How are we serving our current population of students. Would more or fewer resources lead to substantially different outcomes? How can we tell what the future impact will really be?
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Who should pay for high-quality education? Who will benefit from the investment?
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What are we willing and able to do? How can greater clarity help us make good decisions? Which options will provide the greatest return compared to the effort involved?
The value of a good education
A great teacher can entirely change the trajectory of their students. Figuring out how to provide that experience to as many students as possible while serving everyone is challenging.
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Layer in limited resources, and the need to create a system which is sustainable indefinitely, and you have a high-stakes dilemma on your hands.
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Choose an example below to learn more about the meta-problem framework and how it can help us achieve a high-quality education for all our students.