Education needs Bravehearts

"Sometimes I feel like a man in the wilderness
I'm a lonely soldier off to war
Sent away to die - never quite knowing why
Sometimes it makes no sense at all"

                                      ("Man in the Wilderness," Styx)

The Internet is buzzing with articles accusing, rightly so, President Barack Obama of being somewhat two-faced in his education policymaking.

In 2011, Obama said the following at a Town Hall meeting: 

Too often what we’ve been doing is using [standardized] tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we’ve said is let’s find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let’s apply it in a less pressured-packed atmosphere; let’s figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let’s make sure that that’s not the only way we’re judging whether a school is doing well.

But Race to the Top is exactly that – a program where schools literally bend over backwards, often breaking themselves in the process, to reinvent themselves in the federal government’s image, to win a small piece of the federal money allotted to the program.  The amounts, in many cases, really aren’t that much, and could be achieved with increases in efficiency, or simply better capital management.  In Syracuse, for example, the amount was something like $1.8 million, or a fraction of one percent of the annual budget.  For that, the district’s high schools have been transformed into gulags of never-ending bureaucratic hell (rigid and forced adherence to Common Core, regularly submitted lesson plans of excruciating detail that must demonstrate alignment to Common Core, hours upon hours of mind-numbing and soul-crushing “professional development,” submission to a teacher-evaluation process that is as inane as it is useless, and worst of all, the knowledge that all of the changes simply serve to create extra work for the teachers while actually doing nothing to enhance the educational experiences of the children).

In fact, while still an employee of the Syracuse City Schools, I drafted a proposal that would  restore the vocational education component to high school education and create a hybrid externship/work-study program for students electing a vocational pathway that would have netted the schools almost exactly the same amount of money that they were killing themselves to win from the Race to the Top program (through a very creative revenue stream I worked into the proposal).  The proposal was received approvingly in general principle by the city mayor, although she expressed concerns about logistics and liability issues (having students working on an externship basis at actual work sites around the city).  I saw this as a very promising non-endorsement endorsement (sort of like a non-answer answer), and interpreted it as encouragement to keep working on it.

But at the district, the proposal fell with a thud, despite a very high level of support from the rank-and-file (teachers).  Why?

Because the gold standard of NCLB and Race to the Top is a 100% standardized test passing rate, and all students completing a full battery of college-preparatory coursework, by hook or by crook. If students are receiving vocational training and job skills training, they are likely not participating in the college-prep academic track, and that would hurt the schools’ “numbers.” And standardized tests are the barometer of all this.

Recently, Tom Pauken wrote the following:

When the No Child Left Behind Legislation was signed by President George W. Bush 11 years ago, it required that by the end of 2013-2014 school year, “all students… will meet or exceed the State’s proficient level of academic achievement on the State assessments.”

If you find it absurd that we can make all our students above average with the stroke of the presidential pen, you’re not alone. The 100 percent proficiency goal of NCLB is now widely acknowledged to be a pipe dream. Recent trends indicate that schools are not even headed in the right direction; and, in much of the press, the 100 percent proficiency goal has become something of the punch line of a joke. Meanwhile, in a move that tacitly acknowledges the unworkability of the current law, the Department of Education is granting NCLB waivers to states which will make it easier for them to skirt the requirements.

A policy isn’t much of a policy if, as soon as passing it, you start to issue waivers on-demand to opt out from it.  What’s the point?  Besides which, the very notion of 100% college-readiness is insulting to the very real (and LARGE) segment of the student population who are simply not college bound.  What’s worse, teachers stand to be punished for failing to raise their students’ performance (on the often meaningless test batteries) to the desired level.

Valerie Strauss, in an article in today’s online Washington Post, wrote the following:

In his [2012] State of the Union address …, [Obama] said that he wanted teachers to “stop teaching to the test.” He also said that teachers should teach with “creativity and passion.” And he said that schools should reward the best teachers and replace those who weren’t doing a good job. To “reward the best” and “fire the worst,” states and districts are relying on test scores. The Race to the Top says they must.

Deconstruct this. Teachers would love to “stop teaching to the test,” but Race to the Top makes test scores the measure of every teacher. If teachers take the President’s advice (and they would love to!), their students might not get higher test scores every year, and teachers might be fired, and their schools might be closed.

Why does President Obama think that teachers can “stop teaching to the test” when their livelihood, their reputation, and the survival of their school depends on the outcome of those all-important standardized tests?

How incredibly insulting.

As I wrote in my 2010 proposal to the Syracuse City School District:

It is very important that we come to realize that: a.) a university is not for everyone; b.) an “education” means different things to different people; c.) there is a long tradition of blue-collar pride in this area that academic elitism inadvertently snubs, to our detriment, we believe; and d.) a GED is not a bar to college.

Look, full disclosure here:  Personally, I’m a bit of an academic elitist snob from way back.  My dad is a Princeton man, I went to Cornell, and all four of my parents/step-parents are or were teachers or professors.  If I could afford to just be a graduate student for the rest of my life, I’d seriously consider it, flitting from one Masters or Doctoral program to another like an insatiable butterfly supping on the nectar of academia. 

But the reality is that as Americans, we value diversity, and “diversity” necessarily implies a variety, not just of races, colors and creeds, but of interests, skills, avocations, professions and life paths.  How dare we as educators tell a student who enjoys working with automobiles that her career path isn’t good enough? Or a 17-year old student who does home construction work in the family business, and has since he was 14 or 15, and has real skill?  Or the girl who just wants to do hair?  Or the budding artist?

True story: I once had an 18-year-old student in a 9th grade English class. (Think about that for a second.) The student, an English-language learner, was taking the course for the third time.  He was not only in my English 9 class, but also in my after-school Algebra support class; he was, as I recall, also in 9th grade Algebra for the second or third time.  He hated school. This boy also happened to be a recent father.  (Judge not, lest ye veer off-topic.)  He had problems with truancy, and, if rumor had it right, a fondness for the sweet leaf.  On the surface, he appeared the very prototype of an administrator’s nightmare student – truant, using drugs, impossibly behind on his graduation requirements.  But here’s the thing:  He had been, for at least two or three years, helping out in a family member’s roofing business. I had a conversation about this with him once; he really liked the work, and was (if he was to be believed, and I had no reason to doubt him) really good at it.  But the perspective of the school, district, state and federal government was that his blue-collar desires were anathema to the mission of all schools, and so he was forced to sit in 7-10 hours a day of classes he did not want or need to pursue the career path he had already begun, a path where his marketable skills could earn him a substantial living so he could take care of his infant child and get his life moving forward.

Now what the hell is wrong with that?

Hell, we’re ready enough to send 18-year-olds to other countries to die trying to build their countries up from the rubble; why the ever-loving f*ck don’t we love our children enough to keep them here, alive, and let them train them in the areas of their interest to do the very same thing in our own country?

So we sacrifice our students’ futures, we sacrifice our teachers’ well-being (and sanity, and good will – remember Gerald Conti and Kathleen Knauth?).  Why?  For a few dollars more from the educational crack dealers we call by any of their various names – NCLB, Race to the Top, Common Core – like Satan, they go by many monikers, and bear a pleasing countenance to those primed and ready to receive them.

Wow, that got dark all of a sudden.  Dial it back a notch.

Schools’ behavior in this regard reminds me of a quote from the movie Braveheart.  (Don’t dis, it’s a great flick, haters be gone!)  Try reading it, but replace “England” and “English” with “public education” and “administrators,” and replace “[King Edward the] Longshanks” with “Race to the Top,” and replace “Craig” with “Obama.”  Humor me, just try it:

William Wallace: I will invade England and defeat the English on their own ground.
Craig: [laughs] Invade? That's impossible.
William Wallace: Why? Why is that impossible? You're so concerned with squabbling for the scraps from Longshanks’ table that you've missed your God-given right to something better. There is a difference between us. You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom. And I go to make sure that they have it.

I am William Wallace, and my weapon is a blog, not a broadsword.  You think I’m over-dramatizing my point?  Maybe I am, but that doesn’t make me wrong! 

I dunno, I’m just A.S.K.ing…

Educational Technology: Purchase Should Not Pre-date a Plan.

[Updated August, 2017]

This is (sort of) a sequel to my lighter, fluffier post from earlier.  That was the jab, this is the uppercut.  This will read better after having read that one.  Warning: This post is a bit more dense than most.  Educators will be fine, laypersons might need a Jolt Cola or something to get through it...

I noticed technology’s real and tangible impact for the first time as a teacher in the realm of mathematics.  When I was a student in high school and college, all math textbooks had an appendix consisting of various tables and charts.  When I needed the sine or cosine of a certain angle, or had to calculate a logarithm, I would consult a chart in the back of the book, and the figures would be there for me.  If the precise figure that I needed was not there, I would perform a mathematical interpolation to calculate the number I needed.  One day, sometime in the early 90s, when I was a new-ish teacher, I had the opportunity to work with students in mathematics, and I noticed that these charts were not in their (newer) textbooks.  I searched everywhere in the book, and then I realized the hard truth: Of course they weren’t there. Every student had a scientific calculator to more quickly and precisely do the job for them.  I also noticed, however, that none of the students really understood the relationships between sine and cosine, what interpolation was, or the greater mathematical context of logarithms.  They only knew how to “get an answer.”  I became very fearful for this generation of young students.

It has only gotten worse.

As a former foreign language teacher, I have likewise found auto-translators, computerized dictionaries, spelling-checkers and grammar checkers to be double-edged swords. A fun exercise:  Take your favorite short story, essay or article.  Copy the fist 2-3 paragraphs into Google Translate.  Translate to any common high school second language (Spanish, French, whatever…).  Then cut the foreign-language translation and paste in back into the translation engine, and re-translate it back to English.  Behold the mutated crap that the process yields.  This is what it looks like to a Spanish teacher when a kid turns in something in Spanish that has been auto-translated instead of organically written.

As an English teacher, I have found the Internet to be an incredible source of content, but also a tempting opportunity for plagiarism in what seems to be an increasing tendency towards immediate gratification and lazy shortcut-taking.  Just this semester [Spring 2013], I have logged six egregious incidents, one of which resulted in an expulsion (the student was apparently a multiple offender).  I explored the dark side of human nature with regards to plagiarism in an earlier post.

To successfully incorporate technology, a teacher must therefore know what to incorporate, when to incorporate it, how to incorporate it, and most importantly, must know what technology can and cannot do. Teachers need to know their students’ needs, and be able to merge the technology seamlessly into a carefully wrought educational plan; computers are not like sprinkles on a cupcake – just putting them there does not make things sweeter.  (Or maybe it’s better to say that it is like sprinkles on a cupcake; they make things look better and fancier, but actually do nothing to improve the quality of the cake itself.)  Lastly, it is crucial for teachers to know how to educate themselves about technology – where to go for resources, questions, information, and help. 

Technology is not a panacea, nor can technology swoop in and save the world for teachers, programs, schools and districts in peril.  As a teacher, lack of funding is often blamed for lack of success in the classroom; similarly, lack of resources is often invoked as a cause of woe.  The problem with the way that these complaints are framed is that the clear implication is that more money and more resources would miraculously clear up the problem(s).  And given that educational technology can be very cost-intensive, an axiom is set up that does not necessarily compute:

        (Fig. 1)  More money --> More technology --> Better education

A number of studies show that this statement, though perhaps intuitive, is utterly unsupported, the outcome of which is all too commonly visible in schools everywhere: “…an overemphasis on hardware with scant attention paid to the pedagogical and curricular frameworks that shape how the computers are used is common in educational technology projects throughout the world” (Mark Warschauer, “Demystifying the Digital Divide”).

Warschauer tells of two situations where merely throwing resources at a perceived problem did little to resolve it. An effort by the government of India to provide computer and Internet access publicly to children, in what was dubbed a “minimally invasive education” (Warschauer, “Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide”) project, failed when the social structures were not put into place to monitor and instruct and collaborate in the effort.  A more poignant example perhaps can be found in the town of Ennis, Ireland, population 15,000, which was awarded some $20+ million in 1997 as part of digital grant program to help bring technology-starved Ireland, rapidly emerging from the third world to the first world, into a level to technological sophistication befitting a country on the world stage.  Warschauer reported:

“The prize money that Ennis received represented over $1,200 US dollars per resident, a huge sum for a struggling Irish town.  At the heart of Ennis’s winning proposal was a plan to give an Internet-ready personal computer to every family in the town.  Other initiatives included an ISDN line to every business, a website for every business that wanted one… Ennis was strongly encouraged… to implement these plans as soon as possible.”

Alas, a 2000 visit to Ennis revealed that many of the programs had been disbanded or abandoned, and many of the computers had ended up on the black market.  The technology had been imposed upon the people, and had not been integrated into the people’s social structure.  Warshcauer paints these as cautionary tales for American schools and school districts newly aglow in the warm light of technology, and stresses what he calls “technology for social inclusion.” (The concept of social inclusion is tied in to Freire’s critical literacy, and the notion that educational processes should to some degree invoke, validate, utilize and incorporate those social practices, values and priorities to make the process salient and meaningful for the language learner, but that’s perhaps a blog post for another day; I applaud the general concept, but not the extent to which many Freireans tend to embrace the notion that education is somehow synonymous with hegemony.) 

The goal then, is not to merely heap technology on a people, as if technology were a grand paradigm-leveler that would “even out” or somehow render more manageable all societal, cultural and traditional differences in the world.  Likewise it is folly to assume that technology may be equally applied to all areas and all people without special consideration of how to integrate it. Warschauer pleads for what he calls “culturally-appropriate interaction” (Warschauer, “Language, Identity and the Internet”). Citing difficulties encountered when computerizing schools in deeply traditional Hawai’i, Warschauer makes an observation that must be applied to the educational realm at large: “A number of patterns of Hawaiian interaction have been identified, and these patterns are all too often at odds with how classroom instruction is organized.”
 
Warshcauer’s comments go to the heart of the difficulties that many have with technology’s incorporation into the classroom and into society in general:  It is so prevalent, so powerful, and very quickly growing so important, that either you’re with it, whether or not it fits into your traditions or experiences, or you must abstain from it altogether.  In this he speaks of what some have called “intellectual colonialism” (Anatoly Voronov).  This is the “progressive” (read: “guilt-fueled self-flagellation”) notion that the Internet itself, with the vast majority of its sites in English, and the text-based, literacy-dependent format of its presentation all speak to a subversive re-colonization of the world by White Euro-American cyber-literati. Even Warschauer struggles with this dichotomy:  “To use the Internet fully usually requires access to resources … which are only available to a minority of the world’s people.  In that sense, the Internet can heighten unequal access to information and power.  But in other senses, the Internet is the most liberating medium ever invented” (Warschauer, “Does the Internet Bring Freedom?”). And true, it is well worth it to consider that your students may well cut across all cross-sections of language, culture, poverty, upbringing, custom and expectations. Still, the indictment is a telling one, suggesting on the part of the accuser the errant and overzealous belief that technology is education, as opposed to just one component of a full educational experience.  My advice?  Recognize the “liberating” aspects of technology, as Warschauer calls them, and embrace those aspects even, but never forget that it is the educational process in toto that can and will liberate youth.

Calling technology a highly liberating medium might seem to reinforce the idea that the “poorer” areas are more in need of technological enhancement, and all poor schools need is a nice fat educational technology grant and all will be solved. This, however, makes the faulty assumption that the so-called Digital Divide is an economic Divide.  In Warschauer’s writings, he claims that the so-called Divide is not one of access to technology or techno-dollars.  It is, rather, a divide in literacy, both in general and literal sense, but also in the sense that in lower-performing schools – which also tend to be poorer schools, hence the common confusion – technology tends to be seen as a fix, and is thrown at a problem, not carefully and fully integrated with the pedagogical infrastructure and nurtured with proper teacher training and support.  (Though, I should point out editorially, it is not unreasonable to surmise that this type of training/consultancy is cost-prohibitive in poorer schools, hence its conspicuous absence.) This idea of the problem being not the lack of technology, but the lack of successful implementation of existing technologies, is pervasive.  The lesson for any new teacher is clearly to learn and understand the various applications of available software, hardware, media, platforms, devices, sites, and services, and become fluent in their use.  There is and always will be something new and more modern or flashy, so the alternative is to always be unsatisfied with what you have, and attitude that can only taint a teacher’s daily work with its pessimism.  Remember that money, like technology is a way to get to a destination, not the destination itself.
 
Case in point, Warschauer has suggested that an approach involving “a combination of well-planned and low-cost infusions of technology with content development and educational campaigns targeted to social development is surely a healthy alternative to projects that rely on planting computers and waiting for something to grow” (“Demystifying”).   The United States has its share of poorer areas; one does not need to travel to India or rural Ireland to find abject poverty.  One also does not need to leave the United States to see tragic wastes of technology dollars on classroom situations not ready for the jump to hyperspace:

“The reports were nearly finished, and the teacher was feeling pleased with the results. When I asked to see one, she steered me to a young man whose report she felt was in particularly good shape. Sure enough, as the student clicked through the presentation, I was immediately struck by the clean graphics, the strong colors, and the digestible writing. Then, suddenly, he was done. This was the extent of his report. But its content was no deeper or more complex than what one commonly sees in civics papers done elsewhere, with pencil and paper, by seventh and eighth graders. Mystified, I asked the student how he'd used his time. He estimated having spent approximately 17 hours on the project, only seven of which had been devoted to research and writing. The rest went to refining the presentation's graphics” (Oppenheimer, “Point. Click. Duh”).

In this case, a Massachusetts 11th grade classroom in a relatively well-off area, the millions of dollars that had gone into funding for computers had not gone into adequate training for instructors, who in turn were having students use the computers to do little more than high-tech mimicry of the functions of the pens and pencils that they used to use.  Computers had no higher purpose; there was no gestalt quality to the instruction or the learning, post-technology.  Clearly my earlier axiom (Fig. 1) is revealed to be bogus. The Massachusetts scenario is a delicious, though tragic, example of Warschauer’s characterization of the Digital Divide, which I described earlier.  There was adequate funding in the Massachusetts example, but that clearly did not solve the pedagogical problem of incorporating technology to enhance the learning experience.

Again, the key is well-trained, careful, and skillful planning and incorporation of these technological elements into instructional practices.  Skill, care, and planning are not economically-driven characteristics, and a motivated and industrious teacher can make technology work for him/her. Warschauer simply says, “The key issue is not unequal access to computers but rather the unequal ways in which they are used,” (“Demystifying”).  This is followed up dramatically with a comparison of two studies conducted in California’s Anaheim Union High School District, in which it was clearly demonstrated that, with a nod to Bernie Poole’s Eight Pillars (see below), the program in which online content was supported with and supplemented by “face-to-face teacher and peer interaction” was much more successful than the programs that relied entirely upon students’ intrinsic motivations and auto-tutorial sense of responsibility in the face of little or no feedback or support.

There are numerous scenarios in which a fully computerized classroom can be a benefit.  It is important, however, in situations like this to recall that it is not $60,000 in laptops (or iPads, or tablets) that makes a program work for the students; it is the careful and thoughtful preparation by a team of dedicated teachers and technology specialists who do more than merely offer the computers of as divine sacrifices.  Proper integration of technology into the classroom, ironically enough, requires a human component, offered by Bernie Poole in the form of eight “pillars,” or commandments:

1. Active support must come from the top.
2. A non-dictatorial approach is best.
3. Every school should have a core of teacher-computerists.
4. User-friendly technical support must be available, ideally onsite and on demand.
5. Teachers must come first.
6. Parents and students must be involved in the evolutionary process.
7. An ongoing technology training program must be in place.
8. Teachers must be given the time and freedom to restructure the curriculum around the technology.

Poole’s Eight Pillars are part of an entire online book that is available for free download.  I would strongly recommend that any teacher who is to have a strong technological component in their instruction read it first.  [What is amazing is that even though the piece has not been updated in 11 years (2006), the eight pillars are just as valid now, in 2017, as they were then.] Poole does a respectable job of satisfying both skeptics and devotees, and finds a safe middle ground where technology can be discussed on its merits, rather than focusing on the dizzying potential costs of implementing a “dream” technology set-up which, without proper training and management, would be a squandered investment anyway. 

And so, remembering that we reject utterly the quick-fix notion of more money equals more technology equals more success, we come to the issue of how schools that do not have the means to “fully” computerize can “keep up” in the 21st century.  But even this has been answered in the literature countless times.  The so-called “one-computer classroom” or “single computer classroom” is a reality in many parts of the United States.  The Internet is replete with resources that can serve as a springboard for discussion within a department on how best to maximize the use of available technologies, as opposed to how to maximize the budget for purchasable technologies.  Put another way, a purchase should not pre-date a plan.

America’s diversity is a strength, and technology in the classroom can help us tap into that strength.  But merely throwing technology at the classroom, or merely throwing money at schools and ordering them to “acquire” technology… well, that’s no better than throwing language textbooks at a child and asking him or her to “acquire” English.  Whether the school has one computer per classroom or per student, it is in teacher training, teacher education, strong supportive measures and good quality instruction that technology will find its most useful home.  New teachers should greet this technology not with a healthy curiosity and legitimate desire to test the efficacy of available programs. If nothing else, this exploration on the part of a teacher will confer a comfortable familiarity with educational technologies that can only serve to broaden the teacher’s palette of experiences from which to draw upon in the classroom, and make it much less likely that s/he will be sold on the first flashy thing a tech salesperson suggests, which would only serve to perpetuate the technological travesty of more = better. 

Educational research traditions are constantly in motion, always changing and being upgraded.  Much like our technology.  One thing all educators have in common is the desire to engage their students in the learning process.  Technology, though it be a valuable component in that process is not itself, by definition, the process.   And so above all, teachers should remember that, as Warschauer (“Demystifying”) says, technology must become “a means, and often a powerful one, rather than an end in itself.”

Note:  The above is an only slightly modified version of a treatment I wrote in 2005.  I took it out, dusted it off, and much like my recent revisiting of The West Wing, still seems downright prescient, in that it still feels incredibly timely.  Sure, much has changed since then, and the leaps in technology in the seven years from 2010-2017 far outstrip the gains of the seven year period 1998-2005, from which my initial research sources originally largely came. That this commentary is still vital and applicable is itself noteworthy.

Disclaimer: I myself am a slow adapter and a slow adopter, so maybe I am not (or maybe I am) a choice representative of all of teacherdom.  I love technology’s promise, even as its incursions make me uneasy. I’m not anti-tech, but I often find myself reflexively anti- the people who push tech. 

Do I just need to evolve into the twenty-teens?  Or is education losing its humanity in the face of a technological onslaught?

The Prisoner - What Classic TV Can Teach Us About Tech

[Updated August, 2017]

I have a love-hate relationship with technology in education. 

I love to use technology in my classroom.  In fact, in some ways, I can’t do without it.  Not long ago, I arrived to an 8:00 class all ready to do a scintillating lesson that required use of the computer and LCD overhead projector in a so-called “smart classroom.” The tech didn’t work; there was a problem with the toggle that switched the feed from the Elmo to the computer, and I could not get the computer monitor’s contents displayed on the big screen. For a few minutes I tinkered with it to no avail.  Then I shut down and restarted everything. No dice. I even tried to go all “The Fonz” (you younger teachers fresh out of school will have no idea what I mean by that, and believe me, I weep for you…) and aside from a few chuckles out from my students, reaped no positive results. I glanced up at the clock and realized I had wasted a good 6-8 minutes, out of a 50-minute class, on this pursuit. I paused, uncertain for a few moments. More time wasted. For a short while, I felt quite stupid that my brilliant and carefully choreographed lesson was dashed against the rocks of fickle fate.

See? Technology makes me so crazy, even my metaphors are stupid.

Long story slightly less long, I called an audible, lateral-tossed the football to an alternate me (stupid metaphor #2), and got on with the class, and my extemporaneous lesson was fine. Why?  Because as much as I was hoping to be able to use the technology, I still was well-prepared and conversant in the subject matter, I knew where I was in the course sequence, I had good personal relationships and rapport with my students, and I built the course to be responsive to their needs, as opposed to dragging them kicking and screaming through the course on some pre-determined and inflexible pace. In short, when the tech failed, the human element was there to save the day.

I’m not so sure we’re headed in a good direction with tech. It’s bad enough standardized tests have become practically the gold standard for educational assessment. It’s worse that rigid adherence to bullet-point lists of standards are all that is required to “prove” to an observer that the education is sound and of good quality. In fact, in many schools, as long as your lesson plans have the appropriate sections, list the links to the State Standards, and as long as your instruction follows a particular sequence of steps and a designated format, and as long as you incorporate all the relevant trendy buzzwords from the district’s educational philosophy du jour – probably the product of the ministrations of some high-priced and charismatic outside consultant – you are a “good teacher,” and it doesn’t really matter if your students are benefiting or not: as long as your instruction at least superficially follows the prescribed norms; there just simply isn’t time to provide more thorough analyses of teacher performance, so superficial indicators have to do.

But the superficiality does not stop there. An onslaught of trendy new technological platforms, gadgets and processes are threatening to take the human element even further away from the educational experience.  Now, when most people talk about integrating technology into the classroom, they’re talking about much more than simply projecting traditional content or using web-based communications to interact with students.  Now, students can do class "presentations" with no content, but they look good, and that's just as good as an essay, right? (Buzzword of the day: "alternative assessment.")

Now there’s talk of “a tablet for every student,” or “an iPad for every student.” Wot?

Have you ever seen how well students take care of textbooks? Notebooks? Their own papers? A school I worked at recently didn't even have procedures for being compensated for lost materials such as books, and used to lose some $20,000-$30,000 per year in unreturned supplies.  Just sayin'.

How bad has our love affair with tech gotten? Now, out of expediency (I say laziness, stupidity, and is there an adjectival form of "bandwagon?"), some institutions are even starting to computer-score essays. No, not multiple-choice tests... essays. For the record, I once submitted an essay to be machine-scored.  It got a perfect score (a 6, top score on a six-point rubric).  And it was a very well-written essay. (Duh.) Except for one thing – the essay was total nonsense.  Not only was it not even remotely related to the assigned prompt, but it was not internally consistent. If an Alzheimer’s patient wrote a paper while high on cocaine (yet somehow managing to maintain good grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc…) that would have been my essay.  I did it on purpose. I wanted to see what would happen.

Never put all your trust into something that cannot trust you back.  Except my ’04 Camry.  Love that thing. [Edit - As of August, 2017, it has 294,000 miles or so on it, and is really showing its age. It will not last to the new year, alas.]

I don't think tech is necessarily a bad thing, but I do get the distinct sense that tech is being forced into classrooms because of its "cool" factor and not because students (or faculty, for that matter) are developmentally ready and primed to receive the changes. I think that can and will have disastrous effects.  Too much tech without the human element and you basically have, well… The Matrix.

At just 17 episodes, the British TV series The Prisoner was short-lived, especially by modern standards.  The fact that it’s not a title that’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue might further lend one to think it irrelevant or – gasp! – a failure.  Make no such mistake.

Number Six, the show's ex-secret-agent protagonist, does have a lot to teach us.  My last post on this illustrious television show answered that age-old question: Can’t we all just get along?  (Correct answer: What are you selling?)  In this post, I direct my gentle reader to the episode entitled “The General.”  In it, Number Six learns that a fellow named “The Professor” has created a revolutionary educational process that, by hooking students/subjects up to a sophisticated machine (called “The General”) they may be given the equivalent of a three-credit college course in a matter of minutes.  Soon, The Village (the setting of the show, basically a black site for interrogating and breaking rogue agents) is aflutter with newly erudite scholars of “Europe Since Napoleon,” the title of the first such “course.”  Number Six quickly realizes that everyone who tries to describe what they have learned in the course does so word-for-word each the same as everyone else he encounters.  Realizing that the machine completely eliminates the normally clearly demarcated line “between knowledge and insight,” Number Six correctly deduces that it is intended to be used as a form of mind control in order to control the denizens of The Village and extract information from them. The Villagers’ apparent trust in the process makes them even more susceptible, and Number Six reasons he must destroy The General (which he does, of course) in order to save both himself and his fellow Villagers.

View the full episode here. 

My very next post will be a research-based look at my general angst about our rush to over-technologize American public education.  It will be longer and denser, but more “scholarly.”  And it will read rather as a “Part II” to this post.  Read it!

For now, I leave you with this question: Are we going too far, too fast? Should we not pace ourselves a little bit more? Will upping the tech really change the culture, which is perhaps the real source and reason for school failure? And what exactly is meant by “change the culture,” anyway?  And why am I asking so many questions, when I only said I was going to ask one?