A reader posts the following comment.
Thought you might be interested in Gates latest “Request for Proposal: Literacy Courseware Challenge.” More teacher-less, computerized learning to support his Common Core [National] Standards. “Adaptive digital learning tools” are his robo-teachers, because apparently the standards [read: curriculum, no matter how many people say that the CC are not a curriculum] are teacher-proof. Just create a huge quonset hut, or even better, a stadium, full of computer cubicles, sit the kids down, and, voila! A perfect Gates-ian school. Disgusting.
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/learning/Pages/rfp-literacy-courseware-challenge.aspx
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is one area where higher ed might be “ahead” of K-12: We have gotten a big push for online and hybrid for as long as I’ve been teaching community college, fifteen years.
The problem with teacherless and peerless learning is it only works for highly motivated students or subjects students are very interested in. Even then, it can be tough to stick with.
Why?
How did we learn for millions of years (or thousands if you don’t believe in evolution)?
Up until twenty to thirty years ago, it was face to face with a parent, relative or surrogate adult–the relationship was the spoonful of sugar that made otherwise boring topics easier to swallow.
Experts still say this about reading to your kids: it develops a positive association (your relationship with your child) with reading that might otherwise seem more like work than fun.
There is a way to use online delivery on education, but the teacher should decide how to use the tool, not the other way around.
Teaching is not just about delivering content. Online “learning” is a disaster, a societal disaster, just waiting to happen.
Just clicked on the link…read the first paragraph…see this sentence:
“experiencing the deep, one-on-one engagement with their teacher and other students that is often missing from today’s classrooms. We and many others call this vision personalized learning.”
How do Bill and his minions even have the audacity to say this is missing? How does he know? Other than his once a year trip to a public school of his choice, who is he to stay what is missing from today’s classroom?
If it is personalized it is HIS vision. If it is personalized, it must be on a device?
I suppose he wouldn’t understand relationships and experience. That would be too human.
So when I personalize my lessons, plan a follow-up discussion, reformat a long term project for a new set of kids, create book recommendations for certain students, it wasn’t my vision? It was Bill’s all along.
Forgive me now. What a pompous ass!
Check their slogan in the top right hand corner: All lives have equal value. Really?
And now cue in Animal Farm: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Hey Bill, you ARE clueless.
Of course Animal Farm is not read in the current non fiction centered English CORE .
And the last line….just substitute reformer for pig and privatizer for man or vice versa, what does it matter?
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
And that whole “We and many others…” sounds like you (the reader) are supposed to be some starry eyed “Waiting for Superman” zombie just believing that some once unachievable ideal has been realized-only by the dedicated folks who brought you the ever-changing operating system that has enslaved your home and work computers.
The “vision” THEY call (because they are the innovative educators) “personalized learning” is what true educators call “differentiated instruction”. And guess what? It has been available at public schools all across this nation for decades, delivered by incredibly dedicated professional, trained, gifted educators who use whatever resources they could to reach diverse learners. They are being disrespected and disempowered by this brand of reform. Their time, their tools, and their patience are being drained.
Education reform – computer learning goal is the elimination of the middle class. Teachers are the educated, socially conscious,unionized middle class. As soon as teachers are eliminated police and firemen will be the next target because the super wealthy can always buy machines and fire and police protection.
I’ve no doubt they are next on the list. It’s easier to pick off people one by one
Where are our feminist supporters? Education has long been an educated, union, female dominated profession. What the heck? How many other jobs provide a living wage, benefits, a retirement package and still allow family types to be available to well, their families?
Is it just not sexy enough? Is it assumed to be an irrefutable strong hold? Hallo? Perhaps teachers should start networking with their feminist sister groups?
I’ve heard teachers witness to their Christianity, as if to protect themselves from hostile disrepute. Why aren’t faith based groups supporting public ed? Unless they’re in competition for vouchers.
I know some teachers aren’t allowed, or are afraid to display pictures of their same-sex life partners for fear of hostility of parents. Maybe its time to solicit the support of the likes of the human rights campaign
Start reaching out to allies …build a broad base of support.
The first step down this road was the invention of the book.
Excuse me for not following the logic. The invention of the book began the erosion of the public square?
I did not take the concern to be anything about the public square, rather that the objection was to increasing the distance (in both space and time) between the teacher and the student. Before the book, all student teacher interaction was, of necessity, immediate and face to face. This all changed with the book, and most especially with the printing press. I did not need to go to Boston and listen to Paul Samuelson talk about economics, I could (and did) read his book on the foundation of economics.
It was the book that first made “teacher-less” (as stated in the original post) learning possible.
I’m retired, but stay in contact. Next year, school district 201 (maybe the whole state) will honor teacher license and/or certification. My information is sketchy. I googled and found a teaching license may be obtained by taking ALL online courses at a cost of less than $3,000 a semester. Transfer in 2 years of credit and the license may be obtained in 2-2 1/2 years. Student teaching is $1,000. Anybody have more information?
I will be submitting a proposal. It will include innovative ideas like providing the necessary support to our public schools-or as we and many others call it “fully funding” them. If I could, I would smugly italicize instead of quote-wrap- the way this proposal request does in a few places, and make up kitchy new quasi-educator phrases for things REAL, DEDICATED TEACHERS already do, and would do more of if they weren’t shackled to the test/reform wagon, being dragged to build the Gates Cubicle School Pyramid.
The tone of this proposal request irritates me. While I appreciate an offer of funding innovative ideas an enabling teachers, there is a nasty little message embedded that is like a hug with a knife in the back. It clearly implies that classrooms aren’t doing things that they ARE doing, COULD do better than anyone, and WERE doing MORE of before reform vultures began circling and politician and policy jackals began trying to thin our herd. Worse yet, it preaches a collaborative ideal while in practice sounds like filter, isolate, separate.
My proposal will include minimal technology and isolation, increased collaborative, in-person, eye-contact required approaches to literature and responses to literature.
I love you for dreaming, Dan. Unfortunately, you probably don’t meet their ridiculous criteria. I bet that one of their rubric items is “Is the applicant currently or has ever been a teacher.” If the answer is “yes,” the application is tossed to the reject pile. They don’t want our voices, ideas or input.
A proposal submitted by an automated program/computer drone would win before any of us. Gates relates better to algorithms.
If online “learning” replaces K-12 education, be prepared for a society of sociopaths. I am not joking here.
This should NOT be allowed AT ALL in K-12 except under very limited circumstances.
What the privatizers want is to turn teaching into a call center type job that can be offshored.
This is horrifying to me.
Perhaps you could describe the limited circumstances under which you think it should be allowed?
susannunes: your postings are much appreciated. Please keep contributing.
Permit me to add—and it can never be said enough times—that this is not the type of education that the leading lights of the charterite/privatizer movement want or advocate for, or provide to, their own children. While there are the inevitable minor exceptions, the main thrust of their efforts is to provide the type of education for other people’s children that most closely resembles the sort of training that people pay for when they send their dogs to obedience school.
And yes, that is horrifying. To us. But not to them. They have no skin in the game they created for us. When they do have skin in the game, they create a whole new playing field, with different rules and resources and standards in which their children are almost always guaranteed to be winners. And no surprise, when we play by the rules and resources and standards they want to mandate for us, on a playing field that severely restricts any chance of success, the results predictably disfavor us and favor them and their children.
That’s what they call “fair competition.” Others might call it a “dual-school system” or as Diane once said, “In schools for the rich, children get taught. In schools for the poor, children get tested.”
Least surprising of all: rather than a twenty-first century educational innovation it is, in fact, at its core a very old attitude and practice. Or as that paragon of B[efore the]C[ommon]E[ra] educational seer Michael J Petrilli might say “Why give a shekel worth of support to the vast majority of unworthy losers when we should be supporting the few meritorious strivers!”
Point of Personal Privilege: for those who find this blog an uncomfortable fit with their ideological blinders, yes, I am making things up a bit re Mr. Petrilli in order to make my point. Satire alert!
Reminder: if you can’t stand the heat, don’t go into the kitchen.
🙂
My child took an online course in high school. Not the best course he ever took, but it did allow him the flexibility to fit several other traditional courses into his schedule (These were courses taught outside of his high school, so matching schedules was a problem). Perhaps this would be one of the exceptions susannunes would allow.
The Gates Foundation courseware is intended “to support students in mastering the Common Core State Standards for literacy at the 4th–8th grade levels.”
It’s not about developing courses for high schoolers.
Susannunes proposed a ban for all of K-12, though left an out for some unspecified conditions. I wonder what she would allow my children to learn.
Courseware properly prepared can do amazing things.
It can allow students to work at their own pace according to their own abilities and needs.
It can be highly customized to meet a student’s goals.
It can reach into the nastiest slum and the most remote villages.
It can provide cheaply, democratically, a breathtaking range of options and resources that would otherwise be available only to the wealthiest of students.
It can provide immediate and precise feedback.
It can be multi-modal.
It can accommodate diversity, linguistic and otherwise, among students.
It can cut the Gordian knot of access for billions to whom access is now denied.
It can facilitate the creation of learning communities with extraordinarily diverse members.
It can bring together teachers and students who otherwise would never have the opportunity to encounter one another.
Right now, today, a poor kid in a slum in Lagos or Calcutta can go online and take, for free, exceptionally well-vetted, complete courses from the Khan Academy or any of a great number of universities worldwide. This is a VERY good thing.
Of course, courseware can also be dreadful. There is a LOT of junk courseware being marketed right now–stuff that is little more than computerized worksheets and quizzes accompanied by dumbed-down edu-tainment-style “lessons” with little real content.
The real thinking about how do design empowering courseware remains, for the most part, to be done. I’ve been working on that. Others are too. Don’t judge what can be done in this area by what has been done, most of which, admittedly, has been godawful.
I am judging because I have seen firsthand the kinds of harm that have been done to kids by educational reform.
Poor kids need relationships with their teachers. I don’t think Billionaire Gates understands that at all and I don’t think his plan will include teachers in any form.
Unless Dan’s proposal (see above) is accepted, which it won’t be.
Understands? I don’t think he cares.
True, Linda. He could not possibly care less.
What it lacks is the ability to benefit from the human, right there and real (not a face on a monitor or screen) presence, response and support of actual people who share in the efforts to reach goals. Our resources should be focused more socially, since technology and data have already been turned against the bulk of society to the benefit of the few-who still, by the way, gather in person in beautiful, tropical isolated locations to figure out how to measure, control, and create policy that protects their agenda.
The access to information and the ability to facilitate communication is a benefit of technological advances-but we need to be cautious about substituting training for a stratified low-wage service economy in the place of truly empowering (not enabling) education.
And in case you don’t see my additional comment above, the Gates Foundation courseware challenge is “to support students in mastering the Common Core State Standards for literacy at the 4th–8th grade levels.” While some of your ideas may describe the “wonderful things” that courseware can do, that isn’t what Gates is looking for in this circumstance.
It’s too bad the hardware and infrastructure to access INTERNET aren’t available in those remote poverty stricken areas and Calcutta slums.
I agree with you, Robert. Technology has opened a world up in ways we could never have imagined. However, we have yet to figure out how technology can prepare children to live in a world of people. We are reacting to an apocalyptic vision of future generations being turned into worker drones for the overlords. In our calmer moments, we all know that there are good and bad uses of technology tools. We also know that children need to interact with living, breathing people in order to grow up to be compassionate and caring as well as productive, contributing members of a society. I don’t see this view of society as one that Bill Gates and those he represents embrace.
One small problem not yet mentioned here is that schools don’t even have the bandwidth to implement any of this supposedly wonderful high-tech stuff. Along with our decaying bridges, water supplies, sewage systems and tunnels, the US has a problem with slow computer connections nationwide. Most of this new-generation high-tech software requires lots of data to be sent back and forth on the Web.
But in reality, as soon as a class-full of kids try to log onto some jazzy computerized learning system, the entire network freezes… and all hell breaks out in the classroom …
(Not that I’ve seen any supposedly personalized, interactive, web-based computer games or learning programs that were worth the money they cost… and I’ve tried to implement, or tried out in my own classroom, several… I spent a lot of time as Mr. Fixit…)
Here, as on your own blog, you make good points in a succinct and telling way.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for speaking truth to power. Shows that even when words and math are twisted into pretzels by very big money and even bigger hubris, one retired math teacher can help set the record straight.
I can just hear one of the students I worked with say, in a half-joking and half-serious way: “Kaarrrazy Mr. Brandenbrug!”
Props.
🙂
But teachers are absolutely key to any future that education might have. Here’s why: kids look to us. At our best, we are models for them of what a learner is. That can only be taught by a human being.
Yes, the existing infrastructure stinks. This is a HUGE problem. And one wonders where the political will to address it is going to come from.
Maybe that’s why Mr. Gates is pushing for so much technology to “teach” kids – he was taught BY a robot. to BE a robot.
This isn’t anything different than what he did with Microsoft – undermined other entitites to such an extent that they folded under his bullying pressure. And now he’s using his own “Squealer” to “explain” why what HE wants is good for all of us.
I’m afraid for a future of socially inept thugs patterned after Monsieur Gates.
And those that do not follow along or are proven to not be useful to Emperor
Gates will be butchered just like Boxer.
An example of how “courseware” is… well, I’ll let you insert your own adjective.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/professor-leaves-a-mooc-in-mid-course-in-dispute-over-teaching/42381
An interesting story, but it looks like a human resource issue rather than something to do with the mode of delivery.
Does anyone know what the top private schools are doing with respect to experimenting with technology to improve education? Perhaps they wouldn’t be accused of doing it for some sinister reasons that hurt their students.
Personally, I’ve used Udacity (a well-known provider of online courses) and found it to be excellent. I’ve encouraged many friends to use it for themselves and/or for their older children.
I predict that the near future (say 5 years from now) will make many of these comments look foolish, but technology has a way of doing that.
Ken,
The families I know who choose private schools do so because class sizes are no more than 12-15, the teachers are experienced and respected, and the curriculum is rich with the arts. If there is also technology available, that’s great but that’s not what draws families in the first place. I don’t know of any private school that operates like Rocketship, with 100 children working on computers for an hour a day, supervised by an aide.
Diane
Thanks Diane. Your comment is helpful, but it doesn’t address the question: Are some of the top private schools experimenting with technology in a significant way?
Did you read the NY Times Waldorf article?
Some public and private schools are using technology to empower students NOT as a test prep indoctrination devices.
Don’t you know for sure?
Aren’t you in schools everyday?
If you were, you would know.
Also , check out the philosophy of the Waldorf schools where many Silicon Valley execs send their kids. Be informed.
LOS ALTOS, Calif. — The chief technology officer of eBay sends his children to a nine-classroom school here. So do employees of Silicon Valley giants like Google, Apple, Yahoo and Hewlett-Packard.
But the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.
Schools nationwide have rushed to supply their classrooms with computers, and many policy makers say it is foolish to do otherwise. But the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.
Thanks Linda. The Wikipedia page on the Waldorf schools states the following:
“Waldorf education is based on anthroposophy, a spiritual philosophy developed by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Steiner described three seven-year stages of child development. In the first stage, early childhood, emphasis is on imitative learning of worthwhile skills. During the elementary school years, the emphasis is on developing pupils’ artistic expression and social capacities, fostering both creative and analytical modes of understanding. In the third stage, the emphasis is on encouraging critical understanding and fostering idealism. Throughout, the approach stresses the role of the imagination in learning and places a strong value on integrating academic, practical and artistic pursuits.”
Sounds like an interesting approach, but it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that they eschew the use of technology. The question isn’t “Are there top private schools that don’t use technology”.
I’m sure there are and so are public schools. It just isn’t all day long and it isn’t merely for assessments and testing.
That isn’t what Gates is proposing….cutting the labor costs and replacing teachers with electronics is a way to funnel money elsewhere. Be informed.
By the way Ken, many things will look foolish and in less than five years, and it won’t be the comments left here. Look closer.