[Edu-sig] An OLPC comment ("Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools")

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Art-

More on the points you raised.

Personally, if there is one thing I've learned from participating here on
edusig and reading people's feedback (direct and between-the-lines) is
that it is the compulsory aspect of pedagogy which I feel is the big
problem, as that is what prevents the other possibilities from sorting
themselves out as needed. Coherent arguments can be made for a range of
educational experiences (both for all kids to sample and for specific kids
to use in depth depending on their own strengths and weaknesses).
Mentoring, tutoring, apprenticeship, educational simulations or other
computer-mediated learning experiences, intensive workshops, open-ended
constructivist tools, and even well crafted lectures or documents
(pedagogically, in terms of a coherent progression of ideas) all have a
role to play in a good education, or in learning a specific set of skills,
like Python programming. What is the python reference manual after all,
but a sort of lecture? :-)

But, any pleasant or educational activity, when
forced upon you, with no intrinsic interest on your part and no immediate
utilitarian value, takes on a different dimension. Granted, a really good
teacher who is very enthusiastic can sometimes produce excitement in the
student or convey a sense of future worth -- but that is a stretch, and
teachers then start having to become entertainers and salespeople instead
of masters-of-craft or masters-of-presentation.

The computer (including OLPC) makes a lot of things more possible in
education of the masses by reducing the costs of search, distribution,
communication, and availability of educational resources.
Beyond that, it makes possible "learning on demand". That was the
promise even when I was in high school in the 1970s. I could see it even
then -- how much cheaper it would be to have a Commodore PET on everyone's
desk and distribute cheaply copied cassette tapes instead of expensive
text books, and then how you could also have CAI systems which let you
progress at your own pace through material. But what I did not fully
understand then was how the entire school system was essentially created
to prevent people from progressing at their own pace (or leaving the class
they were assigned) -- so no matter how cheap you made distributing a
diversity of text books or related educational materials, schools would
not want any but the standardized ones to be used at the standardized
times. The point of conventional schooling was then ansd still is to
produce a standard graded product, not amplify differences. As I point out
in my previously linked essay
      "Why Educational Technology Has Failed Schools"
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
computers linked to the internet have revolutionized just about every area
of life today related to information access and education -- except,
ironically, schooling. I think there is a reason. Schools are *actively*
in the way of everything the better side of the world wide web promises --
diversity, expression, disintermediation, innovation, etc. (Of course I
see the online world as also a race between the dark side of surveillance
& control versus expression & diversity, to see which will triumph).

With cheap networked computers, a good lecture can reach a million minds.
An educational simulation can reach a million mice. A constructivist
toolkit can be in a million hands. All essentially for no additional cost.
But more than that, a million kids (or adults) can make something
interesting for just one or two other people, which adds up to a lot of
experience making content, plus a lot of diverse content. And a million
people can user VOIP to help with one-on-one learning over a meshwork. And
the cost of admission to all that is about $100 per person globally.
Granted the true cost is much higher when you consider infrastructure
aspects, but even at, say, $1000 it is cheap compared to twelve years at
$12K a year (= $144K ignoring interest) as is typical in the USA (as Gatto
writes, you can buy a house for that -- and most kids would be better off
getting a free house at age 18 than an increasingly worthless high school
diploma).

But you don't need all that technology -- you are right if it is your
implication that a few concerned adults or older kids can provide much of
that for any child, and have for much of human existence. It takes both a
family and a village to raise a human being. Unfortunately, in the USA at
least, much of that has been replaced with the compulsory classroom as an
ersatz family and the TV as an ersatz village. Unfortunately, the
compulsory and timetable aspects of what we have now (designed for turning
rambunctious children into factory workers for 19th century style
factories) prevent much real learning for happening in the school
environment. And as Gatto points out, TV soaks up the rest of time, along
with two-income or broken family issues which also consume a lot of time.
     http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

Clearly this issue is finally becoming mainstream though, both as shown
both because I am finally aware of it :-) and also when you consider
things like this recent national report:
     "To fix US schools, [bipartisan] panel says, start over"
     http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1215/p01s01-ussc.html
Of course, they still look at the problem from an "economic
competetiveness" aspect, ignoring the individual and his or her own
personal experiences or quality of life. But even narrowly within the
sphere of economic competitiveness, compulsory schooling is failing --
precisely because it continues to succeed at the aims for which is was
institutes - it's just that the economy no longer needs many people to do
repetitive factory jobs involving sitting in one place, which is the
message in the medium of schooling.

--Paul Fernhout

Arthur wrote:
> What I hear when I look over the Squeak shoulders is that of course we 
> are not claiming that any of this is a substitute for an involved, 
> caring, creative teacher working in a caring, creative environment. But 
> given such a teacher in such an environment do you really suppose that 
> Squeak, or the OLPC, or Python, or PyGeo, or PataPata is actually of 
> much importance?
> 
> I don't.