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Several of the report's other recommendations such as disease
prevention are already being fulfilled by various private sector
players. The web pages of
Dr Andrew Weil,
Dr Joseph Mercola
and Dr Julian
Whitaker provide useful advice in this area. They also expose
hoaxes such as the bird flu epidemic. There are several excellent
books on the shelves of most neighbourhood bookstores that cover
subjects such as home remedies, disease prevention and health care.
Individual people can take responsibility for their own health if
they so choose.
A libertarian approach to dealing with mediocrity and the lack of innovation would begin by
examining how state action may ultimately promote mediocrity while
stifling innovation. The state school system disregards the unique
individuality of each child and expects all children to learn the
same subjects at the same rate. It is only in the homeschooling
environment and in a handful of private schools that students may
experience learner-paced instruction. The joy of learning is all but
absent in the majority of state run schools.
Canadian education
borrows heavily from precedents in the United States. A onetime
award winning teacher and former president of a teacher union named
John
Taylor Gatto has published an online critique of public
education in America and other nations. The emphasis in state
schools is on conformity in behaviour and in the pace of learning.
In his classic book entitled A Mind at a Time pediatrics
professor Dr Mel Levine wrote that the structure of each child's
brain was as unique as the DNA and fingerprints. He further advised
that each child's brain also processed information in its own unique
and distinctive way.
The writings of Taylor
and Levine suggest that the foundations of innovation, achievement
and excellence may best be nurtured in a learner-paced environment
where children routinely experience the joys of learning and of
discovery. Such an environment usually exists outside of the state
school system and may be the reason behind the worldwide growth in
private schooling and homeschooling. The innovators of history were
almost consistently people who learned their innovation outside of
the formal school system. Thomas Edison who invented the
incandescent light bulb learned about electricity hands on while
working as a telegraph operator.
There are many other
examples of innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs who had minimal
formal schooling and whose achievements were noteworthy. Henry Ford
developed a mass production line for automobiles. Booker T.
Washington was a former slave who is alleged to have taught himself
how to read and who founded the Tuskegee Institute. The world's
foremost modern innovator whose software runs most computer systems
stepped out of university studies to pursue other interests.
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