There are lots of examples of this in practice; to me, it seems roughly right.

For example, in late medieval Europe, this rule seems to apply to the guild craftsman system, vestiges of which still remain.  You apprenticed to a master for a period of time, typically three to five years, living with him like a son and learning the trade.  You might start out sweeping the floors and taking care of the tools, but you progressed to working alongside the master or, if he had a large workshop, journeyman craftsmen, but always under the supervision of the master.  After your apprenticeship you were sent out into the world as a journeyman yourself, with your reputation at least initially dependent on the reflected prestige of your master.

This guru-disciple relationship was formally regulated by the craft guild that the master belonged to; only masters could have apprentices and only masters belonged to the guild.  In order to get master status you have to submit a ‘masterpiece’ to the guild.

[Edit: See also Ira Glass on spanning the gap between taste and ability.]

I don’t know what the answer is for the newspaper industry, but between the film and music industries, they seem to have plenty of examples to choose from.  I’m a hardcore seven-days-a-week, tossed-on-my-doorstep New York Times reader, and I have been since time immemorial.  I’d like to see the paper option continue but I recognize the limitations.   There is real value in journalism and I’m willing to pay for it; as just one example, see their coverage of Afghanistan lately; CJ Chivers and Carlotta Gall and David Sanger and the rest of them have to get paid somehow.

The textbook industry is another situation entirely, and much more interesting from my point of view.  I think the big opportunity is to change the idea of ‘textbook’ fundamentally; my idea would be that university professors would construct classes using whatever content  they need from whatever source is available.  Good teachers do this today and don’t rely on textbooks.  In the future, good teachers would continue to craft their own courses; the difference is that changing technology allows you to create custom ‘textbooks’ that can vary by each course.   I think it would be fair to charge for the design, but I don’t think that will happen; professors today routinely share course syllabi as a courtesy, although those are really just the outlines of a class.  With this new textbook model you could have everything together (or linked together) in one place.

The class, formerly known as the textbook, would include lecture outlines, related readings, bibliography, assignments, on-line components, collaboration, student submissions, photos, and so on — including, perhaps, components of the classic textbook narrative as the backbone.  Course designers would grab parts of other people’s classes and reuse them.   Cool things happen when you remove physical limits to knowledge; compare Wikipedia to old encyclopedias.   A startup, Flat World, is attempting to do something like this using open source content.

You wouldn’t have to require that students have something like the new rumored Kindle, but if the professor was going to review the textbook in class they would have to have *something* to look at — either the paper edition, or a device like this rumored new Kindle.

But I don’t see the device as much of an obstacle; there’s already a free Kindle application for iPhone, for example, so I could just use my phone in a pinch.  And there are tons of other devices that exist or are coming out that can do similar things: e.g., a small tablet computer running Android.  That’s the sort of thing that if it’s successful will be knocked off in Shenzhen within a month and the cost will plummet — the only real cost is in the simple hardware, so you could easily imagine these for $150 or less, in the range of impulse buys even for college students.

I really like the looks of Samsung’s e-book reader, which has a nice soft, non-tech look to it; partly that’s because of the display, which uses monochromatic ‘e-ink,’ not LED.  E-ink also has the advantage of being much less power-hungry so you can use the e-books for days without recharging the batteries.  There are many others on the way, including two student prototypes and Fujitsu’s color e-ink offering.

A couple of points to note about what Maria Montessori called “the prepared environment”:

No desks.  The kids work on the floor, at low tables, in armchairs, wherever they feel comfortable.  According to my exasperated son, the two stacked benches (right center, behind the bell table) are “chowkies” (a term unfamiliar to me; Indian English?), benches that they can carry to a quiet place in the classroom to work on.

Music.  There’s a stereo in the back corner that’s usually on during the day, playing classical music.  The classroom prominently features a table of bells and other instruments.  The students spend a lot of time listening to, learning about, and playing music.

Supplies.  The low three-shelf case in the foreground holds pencils, colored paper, and other supplies that the students use during the day.  Everything is carefully arranged and visible without clutter.  The idea is that the kids can get their own supplies to do their work without having to ask permission to use, say, a pair of scissors.  (Even younger children, three or four years old, learn how to properly use scissors.)

Child-centric.  Everything is at a child’s level; the furniture is scaled appropriately, the windows are set low so that the kids can look out; nothing is placed on high inaccessible shelves.

Lots of natural light from the big windows and clean, simple lines inside the building.  Leon Armantrout, one of the founders of the school and the architect of the buildings, made very effective use of inexpensive materials; the exposed rafters and building mechanical equipment look good, I think.

No computers; not exactly true, since there is one (running Ubuntu) off in a corner not visible in this photo, but it’s a rarely used tool and not a focal point, which is as I think it should be.

Early childhood education, like any important topic, inspires partisan zealotry; I am firmly in the Montessori camp.