I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the comment about a Permaculture solution to the problem of education. I heard your response, but I disagree to a point. But give me a second and correct me if I make a logical error.

You said “in Permaculture I design the system”, but in many ways you don’t. In Permaculture we design interfaces between features. It rains what it rains, a chicken is a chicken and a tree is a tree. Try as you might, each will pretty much do what it does, even if that isn’t what you want. Your control is in creating the interface between existing features or introducing new features that can have new interfaces, sometimes you can also remove features. You said that in education “innate behavior is the problem” and “I can’t tell them what to do” but isn’t that just a tree being a tree? So your argument is that you can’t make a solution inside the system to fix a system, but I would say that that is what you do in Permaculture.

So we have fixed players, students, parents, teachers, administration, government and business. Students are encouraged to go to school by their parents and the government, the teachers do what the administration forces them to do and grinds them through an archaic system designed to create cogs for a machine that no longer exists, so that once completed they can get jobs from businesses. But we agree that doesn’t always happen because businesses no longer want interchangeable cogs for a machine that no longer exists. These forces businesses to either go through extra expense to retrain workers or go overseas for workers.

If you look at it this way, it would seem like there is a possibility of solution inside a broken system if we create new interfaces. Micro-degrees are such an example. They are a new interface between business and Administration to get better students. Homeschooling, unschooling, etc. are a second such “new” or recovered interface between parents and students. Apprenticeship is between businesses and students. I’m not saying I have an answer, but it would seem that a permaculture solution to this problem is to create new interfaces between some of the players, or to introduce new players with new interfaces, that will eventually link businesses who need modern day workers and the parents and students who want secure futures. If the bridge came from the businesses, then government might step out long enough to let it happen as they want good PR.

Just an idea.