MYSTERY MACHINES OR MASTER TEACHERS: WHICH DO YOU PREFER?
What’s optimal for education, the teacher as adjunct to the machine—or the other way around?
Whatever the rest of us might decide, Silicon Valley has answered this question to its own satisfaction—one way for other people’s children, another for its own. While the kids of tech millionaires study in small groups led by expert teachers accompanied by minimal technology, these same parents peddle cheap educational “solutions” like the Summit program to cash-strapped schools across the country. Classic rich-folk attitude: what’s sufficient for the masses will never do for our precious babies.
In an unintentional parody of Fred Keller’s Personalized System of Instruction, the programs these millionaires are making more money on are lauded as also “personalizing” instruction.
Personalizing? Oh, come on.
They take the person out, both the student and the teacher. Their idea of personalizing is much like the auto industry’s of customizing. In both cases, an array of choices created by marketers and designers is claimed to make the options “personal” or “custom.” They are neither; all they really are is controlled variety.
Again, adapting machines from afar to individual ends isn’t “personalizing.” It’s “enfolding,” wrapping the individual so tightly in a commercial and/or mechanical web that the individual effectively disappears. Just look at Disney fans: They are so wrapped in product that you can’t see who they are.
Trying to “personalize” something for someone from a thousand miles away of necessity does the opposite. If you want to personalize something, you need to be right there with it. Look at the word: It involves a person.
But let’s get back to education: If you want to educate someone, it takes two. Two there in person. You can’t CONTINUE READING: Mystery Machines or Master Teachers: Which Do You Prefer? | One Flew East