Another Silicon Valley Myth: Reinventing Education
by Joseph Wilson
According to Vivek Wadhwa’s latest piece in the Washington Post, he has seen the future of education. He has witnessed the early signs of a “revolution in education,” and it is starting in Silicon Valley.
For the umpteenth time (see: here, here and here), wide-eyed optimists in America’s tech heartland have noticed a market trend and thought they invented it. Wadhwa seems to honestly believe that Silicon Valley is ground zero for reinventing the teaching profession, “a complete transformation of the way teaching is done.”
He describes “the computer taking the role of the lecturer, the teacher becoming a coach, and students taking responsibility for their own learning,” as if this is a new concept, not something that has been happening for at least 20 years across the globe, in Canada, Hong Kong, the UK, Sweden, and thousands of high quality schools across the US (like these).
If Wadhwa’s myopia applied only to the use of technology in the classroom, followers of educational innovation would just shrug and move on. But he seems to be giving Silicon Valley credit for a new ethical dimension where “the role of the human teacher is that of guru: to teach values such as integrity, teamwork, respect, caring and commitment; to be a guide and mentor.”
To be absolutely clear: good teachers across the world, and across the ages, have always seen themselves this way. One of the first teachers in the Western tradition, Socrates, spent his days wandering the Agora annoying people with his inquiries into values including integrity and commitment. The foundational question/answer technique teachers learn in teaching school is called the “Socratic method.”
On my desk I have a copy of John Dewey’s “My Pedagogic Creed,” published in 1897, which says quite clearly that “it is the business of the school to deepen and extend his [read: the student’s] sense of the values bound up in his home life.” Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s excellent “Teaching as a Subversive Activity” (1969) suggests teachers get to know their kids by asking “what are the most important affectors of student’s attitudes, perceptions, assumptions, beliefs, values, and choices?”
In Canada, before Europeans arrived to force the aboriginal population into residential schools, pre-contact teachings focused on the character education of the “whole person” focusing on values.
I like Wadhwa’s use of the word “guru” (meaning ‘teacher’ in Hindi), from the original school of moral education, the Vedic School from India, which existed hundreds of years before Socrates walked the Earth. But somehow, even after using that word, credit belongs back in Palo Alto.
None of these people live(d) in Palo Alto. Teachers as models of values (as opposed to purveyors of content) is a concept literally as old as education itself. The fact that Wadhwa seems so impressed with this ‘new trend’ suggests Silicon Valley is, if anything, a late-comer to understand the moral dimension of education.
In his post, Wadhwa refers to well-known Palo Alto high school teacher Esther Wojcicki who is no doubt doing some excellent teaching around collaborative learning, critical-thinking, and communication. The problem is that these efforts are described by Wadhwa as “Google-style moonshots” where teachers reliquish control of the learning process. (This is a wonderfully mixed metaphor. The actual ‘moonshot’ was funded through public government agencies, not by a technology company).
The shift towards student-directed learning is not something that started in Silicon Valley. It is a change that pretty much every major school district in North America, and much of the rest of the world, recognizes as inevitable. And there are some remarkable experiments going on, and some remarkable teaching. Check out:
Oasis Skateboard Factory: Students who are struggling in their regular high-schools in Toronto can apply to the OSF, a small public high school where kids work on making skateboards, street art or clothing, which are then displayed in galleries in Toronto and Brooklyn.
Ngee Ann Secondary School: Sure everyone wears ties in this Singapore school, but their teachers are skilled at making sure technology is embedded into every class in a way that serves the students, not the other way around.
The Independence Project: Embedded within a public high school in Massachusetts, the Independence Project is an entirely student-led program where students challenge themselves and their peers to perform projects that interest them.
Science Leadership Academy: This is a ‘magnet’ high school in Philadelphia, where there is a 1:1 student:laptop ratio. It is unabashedly “inquiry-driven” and “project-based” (read: student-directed) and has been around since 2006.
Hole-in-the-Wall: Not without controversy, this project showed that students could, under the right conditions, teach themselves in a manner suggested by Wadhwa. In an New Delhi slum. In 1999.
Reggio Emilia: The mecca of inquiry-based learning is this tiny town in Italy, famous for its post-WW2 student-led curriculum. Italy was also the home of Maria Montessori, the founder of an entire movement of discovery-based education.
None of these schools are anywhere near Silicon Valley. This is not because the West Coast does not have good teachers, but because good teaching can be found wherever there are conscientious teachers, curious kids, and forward-thinking administrators.
In principle, I agree with the five points Wadhwa summarizes from Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom. But this is not a manifesto invented in Silicon Valley as part of a master plan to disrupt education. They belong to the rich history of educators striving to do the best they can for their students every single day.
Wadhwa concludes by saying “the digital tutor I described is probably five or 10 years away, but it is coming.” Not true. There are plenty of examples of teachers like this. You just have to look outside the Valley.
