And they do it poorly:
The seed of rebellion was planted in classrooms. It grew in kitchens and living rooms, in conversations between students and their parents.
It culminated when Collin Winter, 14, an eighth grader in McPherson, Kan., joined a classroom walkout in January. In the nearby town of Wellington, high schoolers staged a sit-in. Their parents organized in living rooms, at churches and in the back of machine repair shops. They showed up en masse to school board meetings. In neighborhoods with no political yard signs, homemade signs with dark red slash marks suddenly popped up.
Silicon Valley had come to small-town Kansas schools — and it was not going well.
“I want to just take my Chromebook back and tell them I’m not doing it anymore,” said Kallee Forslund, 16, a 10th grader in Wellington.
Eight months earlier, public schools near Wichita had rolled out a web-based platform and curriculum from Summit Learning. The Silicon Valley-based program promotes an educational approach called “personalized learning,” which uses online tools to customize education. The platform that Summit provides was developed by Facebook engineers. It is funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician.
It’s almost like teachers have something to offer students beyond just wikipedia searches and that hundreds of years of pedagogical research actually has been important. If there is a group of people who work harder with less respect yet contribute more that is unappreciated than public school teachers, I have no idea who it is. Not to mention, they put up with your annoying fucking kids every day, something you breeders can’t even stand.
This is not about education, btw. It’s about money. It’s always about fucking money with these guys. Oh, and ALEC is involved, because of course they are.
On the Road and In Your Backyard
Emma
If I were paranoid I would think that they are trying to create an educational system that can be used to program children into a pre-designed future. Cannon fodder and cheap labor. For the record, I don’t think it’s consciously meant but a lot of sins hide behind the “innovative educational technology” label.
Logan Brown
As someone who has worked in digital education, it is a lot more complex than simply throwing a handful of slides and multiple choice tests in front of kids and the *magic* happens. It’s frustrating to watch, because blended learning or flipped classes can work in the right situations. There is no quick fix here especially with the digital divide with the students.
MomSense
Sorry, but I’d rather be with “annoying fucking kids” than about 50% of the so-called adults. You’d be amazed how shitty people are to kids out in public. It’s no coincidence that we keep short shrifting schools. For all the talk about how children are our future, we treat them terribly in the present.
The online learning thing happened here in Maine when Paul Koch Brothers LePage was our Governor. It started as a way to save money by eliminating the gifted and talented programs after the GOP here also fucked with the school funding formula throwing all the school systems into a budget shock.
Walker
I use online systems in flipped classrooms all the time. But I use them in highly structured ways and do not individualize them. Individualized learning means the students are going at different rates and this is incredibly isolating. If your educational tool prevents collaborative learning, you will have serious problems.
MattF
The whole “kids will educate themselves” theory… well, maybe a few can do that. But even self-taught kids need social skills as well. Where will they learn that?
Wag
I don’t know. The disrespect afforded to nurses is pretty close to that afforded to teachers, as evidenced by the State Rep in Washington who blew up my wife’s FB feed with her disparaging remarks about nurses and card games…
OzarkHillbilly
Having one experience with on line learning via my youngest, let’s just say I was not impressed. It’s major flaw? Parents have to take over a lot of the teachers’ duties. First, how many parents are capable of doing so? 2nd, how many parents have the time to? 3rd, how many parents have the desire to? As the parent who saw him every Wednesday and every other wkend, it was impossible for me to make up for his mother’s lack of giving even the slightest of loose shits about his education.
Don K
@Walker: Yabut, the techbros crave isolation and hate interacting with other people, so for them this is a feature, not a bug.
khead
@Wag:
I keep saying teachers and nurses should unite. If the nurses would put just a fraction of the effort into the labor movement that they put into bitching about the dumbass card game woman on FB this weekend, labor would be revitalized in a week.
Butch
Seventy-seven percent of parents want their kids out of the Summit program and yet the principal is somehow able to claim that the vast majority of parents are happy with it? That’s some world-class tone deaf there.
laura
@Emma: your not, and they are. George Carlin’s “Owners of America” is still instructive on these particular points -they want obedient workers just smart enough to do the menial tasks, not question authority, and no sense of common purpose or shared allegiances other than the approved one’s like the local sports ball team.
laura
@Butch: someone should check that principal’s wallet.
MattF
@Butch: One has to wonder about the principal’s incentives here.
khead
Also, I saw this story at LG&M over the weekend and my first thought was “Who really thought this was a good idea?” The quote from the principal about “students taking ownership of their learning activities” is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen. Students. Taking ownership. Of their learning in MIDDLE SCHOOL.
OzarkHillbilly
@MattF: With all the money his school district saves on teacher’s salaries, they can pay for this garbage and still have plenty left over for him to get a nice boost in salary.
Nicole
The amount of contempt American culture has for children is pretty astonishing.
And last I checked, an MD, even in pediatrics, is not the same as a PhD or Masters in Childhood Education or Development. And as for Zuckerberg- ugh. So tired of Clever Boys foisting their ignorance on the rest of us.
Sloane Ranger
I’ve done lots of online courses since retiring and found them very enjoyable. I’ve even learned a thing or two from some of them but they are not suitable as a primary tool for most people, particularly children. If you have a query you may have to wait hours for someone, either the course leaders or mentors or a fellow learner to get back to you.
And all the best ones I’ve done have had a very active online community of fellow students whose comments add value to the formal input and bring new and unexpected perspectives to it. But even this community is a pale shadow of the wider socialisation that helps a child function in the wider society and grow into a well rounded adult.
satby
I would feel more sympathy for the parents of it wasn’t practically guaranteed that the majority vote Republican “to keep taxes low”. They don’t want to pay for a decent education for their kids and they’re getting exactly what they paid for.
Nicole
This part from the article is particularly rich:
(emphasis mine)
Reminds me of the charter school chains here in NYC that have very punitive discipline, and advertise it as a feature, not a bug. Make a lot of money for the people who control them, people who would never, ever send their kids to the schools that they profit from.
Ohio Mom
I’m having flashbacks. In junior high, Ohio Son was placed in an on-line, individually-paced language arts class called “Reading 180” by Scholastic.
The administration must have spent a lot of money on it. It was exactly what Ohio Son did not need. He lost reading skills that year because it was so dumbed down, and because he took the easiest way out. He was not going to work any harder than they required, and they required next to nothing.
Perhaps my favorite part were the spelling tests, which were timed. If you don’t do them fast enough, you have to do them over and over. Well, Ohio Son has always had fine motor issues and he isn’t always the fastest processor. If you wanted to design something for special needs students, it’s the opposite of what you’d come up with.
I spent the entire year fighting with the school, until they finally agreed to place him back in the traditional classroom the following year.
He was put into a co-taught room — one general ed (regular) teacher and one spec ed teacher. They read “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and at the end of the year, Son did the best he ever did on the standardized LArts test, something I gloated about in tne “I told you so” letters I sent to the various administrators I had spent the year before hounding.
In his senior year of high school, they were assigned writing a thank you letter to a former teacher. He wrote to his eighth grade LArts teacher, thanking her for “introducing me to adult literature.”
Of course I copied the letter and sent it to the main administrator I’d fought with, saying, “Look his wonderful it was that you put Son in that class!” She’s not stupid, she heard the subtext loud and clear
(There is no one who misses fighting with teachers as much as a special needs mom of a recently graduated child. In the adult world, there is no one who has to respond to your disagreements, you can be dismissed. But that is another topic).
satby
@Sloane Ranger:
Also sadly lacking in many homeschooled kids, especially if the reason for homeschooling is religious beliefs. Education in this country is a mess, with too many exemptions granted to allow people to screw up their kids (or other people’s kids if theirs aren’t vaccinated). We let amateurs decide.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: They were conned, told repeatedly that it was only those people benefiting from govt spending. As such I have the same sympathy for them that I do for all suckers who feel that “somehow, someway, this time I really will get something for nothing.”
Barry
@MattF: ” One has to wonder about the principal’s incentives here.”
I don’t wonder at all.
karensky
Can’t believe the Fuckerbergs tried another attempt at school reform after their abject failure in Newark, NJ. Stop now, you entitled idiots.
schrodingers_cat
Techbros is plural, you don’t need the apostrophe.
From Both Sides of the Pond
@khead:
This insanity is all too common – my son’s elementary school wants him as a fourth grader to fill out a lengthy form on how he’s taking ownership of prepping for reassessments for every time that they get a failing grade – even if the failure is because the teacher screwed up. The form requires him to detail everything he, his parents, his teachers, and everyone else has done to prepare him to reassess – each one with its own separate section and paragraph required. It’s usually three times as long as anything he’s retaking. It’s Office Space for the elementary school kids.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom:
My oldest sis got wore out by it. As a teacher she knew how things worked, how to change them, what to expect and when to expect it. It still wore her down. Thank Dawg for summer vacation, she needed the down time to recharge for the next year’s battles.
Major Major Major Major
@Don K:
This is… not accurate?
NotMax
Reinventing the wheel generally results in something which is … not a wheel.
Barney
Well, there are a couple of “professionals” who are completely clueless. Or, in Buckendorf’s case, maybe just a plain liar who doesn’t care about his pupils or the truth.
cliosfanboy
Our university president wants to triple our enrollment in 10 years, and almost all of the of the crease online
Why yes, her background IS in tech and business. How did you guess?
Sloane Ranger
@satby: Same here in the UK. We have home schooled kids visiting the Museum where I volunteer. Wandering around with Mum talking them through the exhibits is NOT the same as a properly organised lesson plan.
A lot seem to belong to some organisation or another because a few times a year about 6 or 7 will arrive and be encouraged to play together while their Mums look on worried that one of the other kids will do or say something to upset their little snowflake. Sometimes it can be heartbreaking seeing them trying to interact.
jeffreyw
@Major Major Major Major:
Techbros may be weighted heavily toward that end of the scale but they do not have sole ownership of it, or even a majority.
NotMax
Remember Language Labs during the late 50s/early 60s? SSDD.
NotMax
Tech is a tool, not an answer. Also too, GIGO.
cliosfanboy
My school system back in the Dayton area was pretty progressive back in the day. We had year-round school and quarter and semester electives. We also tried a self-guided algebra class it was a disaster and abandoned. I managed to finish almost half a school years worth of material in a full year and had to retake the whole class. If I remember right only a couple of the best students actually finished the whole years material. And that was high school. I can’t imagine an average junior high kid doing self-directed.
Ohio Mom
@OzarkHillbilly: I only had two fights with the school in fifteen years (counting preschool and two years post-high school). Both times it was an administrator behind the problem.
And though I thought about it, I did it without calling in a lawyer (unlike some other special needs parents in my acquaintance).
Otherwise, I enjoyed good relations and wonderful collaboration with most of the teachers and staff (there were remarkably few stinkers on our system but that’s what unfairly well-funded suburban districts are about).
I appreciated all they did for Ohio Son, he wouldn’t have made as much progress over the years as he did without them.
In the world of adult disability programs there is next to no collaboration. It’s take it or leave it. Unlike schools, there is no legal obligation to provide services. It’s that law that makes parents feel free to “advocate” for their kids so loudly.
Ohio Mom
@Sloane Ranger: I wonder if some of the more socially awkward kids aren’t on the autism spectrum or have another disability that impacts social skills. A fair number of special needs moms pull their kids out of public school because they don’t think the teachers understand how to teach their kid or their kid is being bullied.
Then they join home schooling co-ops because they don’t want their kid to be isolated.
I try not to judge because my family could afford a school district with s very strong spec ed services. Not everybody has that option.
Sheldon Vogt
2 pet peeves.
How about a heads up that the link is to. new York Times article?
Wellington is no more “nearby” to McPherson than Philly is to the Bronx.
lee
The flipped classroom program was just starting here when my kids where in highschool.
The oldest had 1 or 2 classes and the younger (3 years apart) had maybe half a dozen.
It works really well under some circumstances. Others not so much.
The Moar You Know
My wife is a high school teacher and we don’t have kids. Her job is the best form of birth control ever devised.
Your kids are awful. Yes, yours too. No exceptions.
rikyrah
Zuckerberg in support – that’s a no automatically for me.
Major Major Major Major
@jeffreyw: eh. Everybody in tech I know is as sociable as anybody else I know.
Ohio Mom
@cliosfanboy: Your school experience was before No Child Left Behind and the rest of the standardized test regimens.
Schools nowadays don’t take any chances or experiment because their eyes are always on what they need to do to get good schoolwide scores (see @From Both Sides of the Pond: ).
The tyranny of The Test is why my kid got placed in that computerized class. It backfired because he got his lowest test scores ever at the end of that year. But the school system is always anxious because the entire property value of the district’s jurisdiction rests on them.
Duane
The old ” you’re on your ownership society.” Failed zombie idea that conservatives fall for everytime. Their empty ideology leaves them nowhere to turn except con artists and charlatans.
azlib
I am in tech and have been professionally for many years. Tech is a tool no different than a pen and paper. Used well, tech can be an effective aid. Part of the problem is the tech is seen as a substitute for well thought out instruction programs. The belief is just putting the tech in the classroom makes something magical happen. It never works out that way.
Lyrebird
@Major Major Major Major:
Dunno if I can say exactly the same, but I can say that the “nerds are antisocial” stereotype has been a destructive force in my life and others’. More true: “nerds get tired of no one around them getting their jokes” “nerds give up on trying to socialize with people who put them down and then get labeled antisocial”
My guess: The folks creating tech innovations are probably not the ones making or selling Summit Education.
Lyrebird
@Ohio Mom: If you’re still reading, may I ask if you would be willing to share contact info via a front pager? A member of my extended family may have to start some of those battles for her son next year.
Sloane Ranger
@Ohio Mom: This is almost certainly the case with some we see in the Museum but, judging from what we overhear from conversations among the Mums, others belong to upper middle class professional families who would previously have sent their kids to a private school but can no longer afford to do so. So, if they can’t get them into the State school of their choice, they go the homeschool route. Much better than their kids mixing with those rough children!
Original Lee
Back when I was in 5th Grade, the principal was working on his doctorate in education and picked my class to experiment on. We were to be examples of combining self-directed learning with each-one-teach-one. We were each given a 3-inch binder with all of the assignments for the year in all of the subjects, and a timetable of “must be completed by” dates. We were also assigned a study buddy. Ideally, we would work through the assignments at our own pace and turn them in to be graded. If we got less than an 80 percent, we had to redo the assignment with the help of our study buddy and then had a worksheet with similar exercises that we had to do and turn in. Tests were administered in the library and could be retaken until we were happy with the grade or we passed the drop-dead date. We were free to work on other projects, either alone or as a part of a group, pretty much whenever we wanted – the main exception being one hour first thing in the morning, which was reserved for administrative things and P.E., which was twice a week and the only traditional part of our curriculum.
I remember feeling sorry for my teacher, who was always grading things and not allowed to teach anybody anything unless their study buddy was absent. I also remember the enormous feeling of freedom, because I was finished with almost everything before Christmas. I would have been done sooner if my study buddy hadn’t been so horrible at math. And I remember quite a lot of what I learned that year, much to my current surprise.
Tech is the tool. Teachers need to teach.
Neldob
Its sweet how they call it “personalized learning”. Very cosy.
Embir
This is both less evil and more stupid that it appears on the surface.
Basically when the tech billionaires look at education they want to create the system that would have worked best for them. Highly motivated, self-directed, nerdy, technically literate. In their world if they had just been left alone to geek out all day it would have been perfect. Given the number of them that dropped out of school that isn’t hyperbole (see Gates, Jobs, Zuck).
That isn’t a generalizable educational concept however, it applies to a very very narrow slice of students. But with billions at your disposal it becomes a siren song.
Want another example – they believe EVERY student should learn to code. That isn’t just because they want workers (although that is definitely a factor) but again – it is because that is what worked for them. We don’t make every kid learn how to build a car – but most of us drive. Why should all of us know how to code to be considered technically literate (as in literate about tech, not literate in some minor technical way…)?
So – less evil in that they are just trying to create the system that would have worked best for them. But stupider because for the vast majority of kids it is the wrong approach. It is in the end a failure of empathy and imagination and a perfect example of how money doesn’t make you smart, it just makes you rich.
Kent
High school scence teacher here, and something of a techie.
Problem with these online curriculums is that they tend to be created by techbro types (Summit is the article is a creation of Facebook) who look back to their school years and remember how bored and disengaged they were. And so they create an online curriculum designed to engage the lonely genius techie type. You know, the type who can go to the library and teach themselves nuclear physics in a weekend. Every teacher gets one or two of those types about once a decade.
The reality is that the Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg types are going to be brilliant no matter what kind of education you put in front of them. So maybe creating a self-paced online curriculum designed for and by them isn’t necessarily the best way to reach the majority of kids. As any teacher will tell you, there are a vast variety of learning styles. And there are many students out there for whom a guided collaborative inquiry based approach is what works best. I’m not one of those types personally. Drives me crazy to study at other student’s paces. But for a lot of students that is what works and what engages them.
There are some students for whom an individual-paced online curriculum is most effective. They tend to be bright introverted types. But they are also a small percentage of the total population. And that sort of learning doesn’t lend itelf to every subject anyway.
Kent
@Embir:
As a teacher this attitude drives me crazy. I always respond “According to your logic we should teach every student neurosurgery and corporate law at the high school level too. Because those professions pay even more than most tech engineer jobs. And it is a whole lot easier to become a neurosurgeon or partner in a white-shoe corporate law firm than the next Steve Jobs”
Kent
@Embir: Embir, this is perhaps the most astute and accurate description of this phenomenon I have read. Excellent.
Major Major Major Major
@Embir:
FWIW, I happen to think many people would benefit from knowing some basic scripting. In your analogy, learning to code would be more like taking woodshop or a cooking class, even though most of us won’t be carpenters or chefs. Learning how to make a website is not the same thing as learning software engineering.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
Congratulations on catching another wild apostrophe. Wife and I are driven, well, not wild, but seriously irritated by wild apostrophes, which seem to be getting worse and worse. Almost as bad as ticks! Wife really hates them.
Also while watching TV news and having the Chryon text using wrong words, misspelled words, town names wrong, etc, etc. She was a journalist and editor, I was in software, where a misspelled variable could cause serious mischief. Grrr!
Embir
@Major Major Major Major: As someone who did a lot of coding a couple of decades ago and then moved into less productive management work I agree – the discipline of thinking that comes from coding basics is good for most people. Most of that and some familiarity with the tools can be covered in a Principals of Computer Science class (several good curriculums out there for that) rather than making everyone become programmers. To extend my analogy – they need Driver’s ed.
FWIW I’ve spent 30 years in ed-tech and I was lucky early on to have a Superintendent push a pad of paper and a pencil across a desk at me and say “that is all I need to teach – now tell me why I need a computer in the classroom.” If you can’t answer that simple question you are not doing kids any good. There are places tech makes an amazing difference, but it isn’t a panacea and frequently it is the wrong tool. Often is is an expensive (but sexy) alternative to a simple cheap solution.
For my money, if we are adding things for schools to do I’d much rather see a Financial Literacy than a coding as a High School graduation requirement.