You have a fever and you want to go see a doctor. Do you go see the doctor in a one-on-one consultation, or do you go sit along with 50 others who have similar problems to listen to the doctor drone on for an hour about what you should do? If this sounds ridiculous, consider how our current education system is pretty much the same. Learning is uniquely personal, and yet we spend 15 or 20 years in classrooms where students are thought of as standardized and assessed according to standards. This factory model of education made sense in a world where factories were the dominant engine of the economy, but that is long gone. We need a more personalized form of education, and that is simply impossible when you have large groups.

One-on-one education works well if children are lucky enough to have a tutor or a parent homeschooling them. However, there too one has to figure out an important aspect of learning - social learning. Humans, both big and small, are wired to learn from each other. This is especially true for kids. How do you offer opportunities for that? Microschooling offers a happy middle that allows for personalization as well as socialization and social learning opportunities.

Personalization is not in how the curriculum is taught, but in the curriculum itself. As we like to say, culture chews curriculum up before breakfast. You can have the most thoughtful, developmentally appropriate curriculum, but if it is not in sync with the culture the children are embedded in, then it's going to do nothing.

This is why community-run, community-led microschools make even more sense. They allow each micro-community of families to decide how to do things. The parents may not run the microschools, but they will have a big say in it.

Where's the evidence for the success of microschools, you might ask. This is a bit like asking for evidence that computers would change the world when they came out. Microschools are a tectonic innovation. And innovations often take time for results to show. According to some estimates, there are already close to 95,000 microschools in the US with over a million students. Even if those numbers are optimistic estimates, they show how they are taking root. 

Would you rather wait for 10 years with your child in a conventional school before you see results – and your kid has already been drilled and packaged into a standard box on the education treadmill? Education is a high anxiety, high involvement decision for many parents. It often makes them reach for the safety of proof. That's exactly what perpetuates bad systems. But we are finally at a stage where multiple factors are coming together to show the system is on its last legs.

Here are a few reasons why.

Learning opportunities are now everywhere. Earlier you had to rely on teachers to communicate concepts to you, but the best teachers are now on the web and will increasingly be available as avatars in gamified versions. What this new world needs is not a teacher but a facilitator who motivates, guides, observes, and shows the way rather than teaches in the conventional sense.

Microschooling can be cost-effective and allow for funds to be spent on the most impactful aspect of education – great teachers and facilitators.

Microschooling can be taken up anywhere, which means no more hour-long drives through noxious traffic for sleep-deprived kids. With this mindset shift from experts teaching to parents and guides learning along, anyone with the right aptitude, mindset, and love for teaching can operate microschools.

The lack of excessive regulation is actually a feature. Too much regulation stifles all innovation and experimentation. Microschools, being small, can also be far more transparent, allowing parents to judge whether the learning approach, process, and quality are desirable. 

All of these factors also mean that for the next five years, microschooling will largely be taken up by early adopters. This also means that if you do choose to microschool, you will become a part of a community of involved, free-spirited, adventurous families. The learning opportunities that this micro-community opens up alone might be worth the step.

Disclaimer (More of an endorsement, really): We are biased believers in microschooling because we run a microschool and our kids go there.