Beyond “Electronic Flashcards”

So are you saying that it's mistaken ideas and ideology about learning itself rather than pressure from big tech that leads schools to adopt these problematic approaches?

Sure.

I mean, when I'm at an educational technology conference, invariably colleagues who share our perspectives on teaching and learning will say to me, but look at the exhibit hall.

It's all because of these folks who are trying to make a killing on this stuff.

And the The tech budget isn't like the annual revenue of ShamWow or the Scrub Daddy.

It's a rounding error.

The ideology, I think, drives this a lot more than profits.

Although, if you could get humans out of the system entirely, if you could dismantle the public education system – I think the tech bros are much more interested in turning public treasure into a private play thing.

I often think of Bill Gates and Gomez Adams with his train set blowing up the trains.

That, I think, explains it a lot more than any kind of profit motive because there's been good money after bad thrown at this fantasy forever.

I don't think that it's purely capitalism that's infected this.

And I think some of this is an application of – of the role of educators.

In the late 1970s, early 80s, there used to be discussions about what's a computer for in education.

Bob Taylor of Columbia University wrote a book called Computers in the Classroom, Tool Tutor 2T, that there were different perspectives on what the computer could be used for.

In my work with Seymour Papert, He once said that the computer can benefit one of three constituent groups, the system, the teachers, or the learner.

And my emphasis is on the greatest return on investment, which is, as I said before, amplifying the potential of each learner, of allowing them to do creative things that are intellectually rewarding and sophisticated, as opposed to... being a prop for the teacher, you know, to manage unruly children or to anesthetize them or to get them to comply with some mediocre standards or from the system, which is to like control what the teachers and students are doing and for record keeping and surveillance.

So when you talk about return on investment, of course, you're using the phrase figuratively, but the literal return on investment that Alphabet, that owns Google, wants only go so far, you seem to be saying.

They can offer crap to schools, but if the schools say no thanks, then there's only so far they can get.

So the question is why so many schools are saying, yes, please, let's have more of this.

Well, Alphabet's an interesting case because Alphabet's playing a long game where they want to lock you into their ecosystem forever.

Right.

So they're not selling third grade curricular flashcards.

They're selling, you're going to use our stuff in every moment of your day forever.

And it's interesting how they got into schools today.

Um, again, because of the gullibility, I think of educators who, who really believed in free, you know, there, there's no such thing as free software.