Let’s stop talking about personalized learning… and start talking about privilege.
A little over a year ago, after working for an education technology start-up company in Silicon Valley for almost three years, I came to a professional impasse. Our goal was to help every child reach their full potential through personalized learning, and we thought with an overhaul of the system itself, we could transform education. We opened micro-schools; we built technology tools; we curated personalized playlists for each child, all for the purpose of enabling personalization. And at first, it sounded like an incredible idea. But the hypothesis that technology tools alone could enable personalization was flawed, as you might expect.
Nevermind the fact that personalization does not have to be synonymous with individualization, the data needed for this is hard to collect in a valid and reliable way, especially when coming from so many sources. For the technology to function, the data needed to be precise, which was especially challenging, considering the nuances of competency-based assessment. Without precision, the data could neither reliably suggest activities nor accurately reflect student achievement.
Many Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook rely on big data and complex algorithms. Social media and search engine platforms are meticulous mechanistic systems, meaning they can run on strict algorithms composed of if/then statements. Education, conversely, is a complex social system, one where the choices determined by and for individuals require a response more humanistic than an algorithm composed of ifs and thens.
Most importantly, I realized we were solving the wrong problem. Personalization, while interesting and important, is not a problem at all — at least not for everyone. Personalization is a problem of privilege; it’s a problem for families who have the resources for an individualized program. It’s a problem perpetuated by a self-interest that dominates our capitalist society, a society that, in order to survive, requires the success of some and the systemic oppression of many. And the technology in Silicon Valley provided what seems like the perfect solution to this problem of self-interest and privilege at scale.
However, this means they’re ignoring the actual problem that’s plaguing education. It’s not a lack of data or personalization: it’s privilege. And until we begin talking about it — and taking stock of it — the education system will remain unchanged for the foreseeable future.
Unpacking My Privilege
For the better part of the last decade, I’ve worked primarily for affluent schools, and I get that it might seem a bit odd for me — a cisgender, white male from the suburbs of Chicago — to be writing an article on privilege. In fact, as I began writing this, I felt like a fraud, commenting on the problem of privilege when I have benefited from it so much, living in a society that has set me up for success.
Privilege, by definition, refers to the notion that some individuals in society have the deck stacked in their favor. For a while, I’ll admit, I refused to believe this. I went to a good college, and knowing how hard I worked, it made me think things like affirmative action were unfair. In fact, I went so far as to post an article about it on my Facebook one day. One of my professors commented, challenging me and my ignorance of privilege. Just weeks later, our class — a class of predominantly white young adults — rolled up our sleeves and talked about what privilege actually was. I learned that it meant not having to worry about if you’ll go to college, but where you’ll go to college; it meant not having to wonder if you were being followed in a department store; it meant finding band-aids that match your skin tone.
But I didn’t begin my journey in unpacking my privilege until someone had the courage to challenge my perspective. And as a white, cisgender, male — as someone who wanted to better the world through education — it made me uncomfortable, angry, and defensive, to think that I had something I didn’t rightfully earn. In fact, it still does sometimes, and so my never-ending journey of unpacking my privilege continues, probably until the day I die.
If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you and I have a lot in common. I started my career in a high-achieving public school district, where my students’ parents were mostly doctors, lawyers, and business owners, with a small subset qualifying for free-and-reduced lunch. Likewise, my families in San Francisco were similar: predominantly white, they owned start-ups which they sold for tens of millions of dollars. They lived in or even owned high-rises in the wealthiest parts of the astronomically expensive San Francisco.
And if you and I have this in common, you may very well be feeling the same discomfort, anger, and defensiveness that I felt when my professor checked me on my privilege. You may be thinking about how challenging it is and how hard you work teaching in a wealthy school, but I want to remind us that we’re not here to talk about the challenges associated working with the wealthy. There are challenges in every school. Teaching is, by trade, a challenging profession. It’s more important to recognize that only some educators are forced to face the challenging reality of a lack of privilege.
So, when professional moratorium came crashing down on me earlier this year, I felt the same discomfort that I felt less than a decade ago. The fact of the matter is, I don’t want to say that I’m perpetuating the problem of privilege by working in affluent schools; I don’t want to admit that I sometimes feel powerless and guilty that I “lucked” out in the Darwinian game that is modern America; I don’t want to admit that I specifically chose not to pursue Chicago Public Schools, despite the fact that I know I could help children there. You probably don’t want to say it either.
Despite my discomfort, taking stock of our privilege is imperative. Too many educators are either afraid to discuss it or simply unaware of it. They believe that solely hard work and ingenuity has gotten them their job or helped their children perform well on standardized assessments. The fact of the matter is, however, that those who teach and learn with privilege are set up for far more success than those who don’t, regardless of pedagogy. Neglecting to talk about our discomfort with our own privilege may superficially absolve the guilt we have, but it leaves us a missed opportunity. For after acknowledging it, it becomes clearer how we can make a change.
Wellness Metrics that Perpetuate Privilege
“Our schools cannot be improved if we ignore the disadvantages associated with poverty that affect children’s ability to learn. Children who have grown up in poverty need extra resources, including preschool and medical care,” says education historian Diane Ravtich in The Death and Life of the Great American School System. In it, she criticizes privatization initiatives like charter schools and school choice, and lambasts high-stakes testing, the general metric by which the success of any given school is measured.
“Accountability makes no sense when it undermines the larger goals of education,” she continues, precisely identifying what high-stakes testing is doing as the primary wellness metric for our schools. It’s not only a poor barometer for the true success of a school; it sets many communities up for failure, perpetuating the cycle of privilege, committing us to a widening of the achievement gap, the proliferation of inequality, and an increasing number of school failures.
After all, children with privilege already come to school with more experiences, paving the way for more potential to integrate new ones into a rich and diverse schema; they come to school having spoken nearly 2 million more words than children in underfunded schools (Hart and Risley, 1995), setting them up for success in early literacy (Juel, Griffith & Gough, 1986). It comes as no surprise, then, that children with privilege consistently outperform their counterparts in low socio-economic settings on standardized tests, repeatedly proven to be biased towards affluent, predominately white communities (Ravitch 2000).
It’s bad enough that high-stakes testing has diluted pedagogy and promoted primarily test-centric learning; what’s worse is that this very metric has diluted the social institution it was intended to help us better understand in the first place. American education is supposed help us actualize the vision for freedom that our forefathers envisioned: its larger goal is to increase social mobility, to promote intellectual freedom, and to perpetuate a democratic society where each of us have an equal chance to succeed.
This phenomenon where the metric itself dilutes and erodes the original process it was intended to monitor is not unique to education. In fact, it’s a well-known law in epistemology known as Campbell’s Law, stating:
The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicators) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
I liken it to having a fever. One of the ways to get rid of a fever is to take a fever reducer like Acetaminophen or Ibuprofen. While it may lower one’s body temperature, many doctors advise against this, as it’s only curing a symptom — an indicator of unwellness. The rise in body temperature is caused by something, usually an infection or virus. Until the infection or virus is eradicated, the fever will continue to spike, proliferating sickness and increasing the risk for spreading the virus to others.
This is analogous to what’s happening in education today, both publicly and privately. Elite private schools are able to tout their success because they don’t “have the fever.” Their test scores are high, partially due to the fact that dedicated teachers care deeply for their children. But we mustn’t ignore that the deck is stacked in their favor. Conversely, in under-resourced schools, while there are also dedicated teachers who care deeply for their children, they are fighting systemic oppression. Parents need to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet; they have little to no access to health care; they struggle to support children academically at home.
To actualize the vision for democratic education, we must change the metric by which we measure our schools. We must make Campbell’s Law work in our favor. If we begin to measure our schools by the number of children coming to school fed and well-cared-for; if we measure their efficacy by the number of parents that can afford the time and money to fill their homes with books and give their children rich experiences from birth, we will suddenly begin to distort the social processes of the education system in favor of all children.
So what can we do?
Before we can change the metric, we must change our mindset. I understand feeling powerless in this situation, especially as only one individual. Education is an ocean, a complex ecosystem filled with millions of monumental, unsolved problems. But thousands of ripples, no matter how small, can begin to make waves that everyone will see and feel. We must use whatever privilege each of us has to help minute change become monumental reform.
First, educators must acknowledge and unpack their privilege. It starts with us, the teachers. It’s our responsibility to set the tone in our classrooms, and we cannot possibly preach what we have not yet practiced ourselves. It’s important for us to know and believe that skin color is more than just a production of melanin, that gender is more complex than the male-female dichotomy, that we all can’t simply work harder and expect to achieve the American Dream. We must acknowledge our privilege, take stock of it, and make our children aware of theirs. It will, in fact, get us closer to the true vision for a democratic education.
After you’ve begun to unpack your privilege, talk about it with children. The Teaching Tolerance Framework is an excellent place to find help. It has standards that specifically target privilege: they provide knowledge and skill descriptors and even anti-bias scenarios to show what it looks and sounds like when children speak and act in a tolerant manner. As unfair as it may seem, the deck is, in fact, stacked in favor of the children who go to school in predominately white schools of high socio-economic status, but instead of shaming or blaming them, we must empower them to become the next great civic leaders of the world, using their influence to lift others up instead of perpetuate a pre-existing cycle of oppression.
Finally, society must put resources towards school readiness, parent education, and family wellness in underprivileged communities. The Primary School in East Palo Alto, started by Priscilla Chan, is doing some remarkable work around health care and preschool readiness. Their mission? To foster each child’s well-being as a foundation for academic and life success. They plan to achieve this by starting preschool at age three, offering “deeply integrated health services” and using a continuous model of support for parents, beginning prenatally. Who knows just how successful it will be, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction, as it truly attempts to get to the root of the problems plaguing education.
Closing Thoughts
Paulo Freire once said, “The educator has the duty of not being neutral.” Privilege may, at first glance, seem like a moral issue, one that’s subject to opinion. As a result, many educators shy away from the topic, afraid to upset parents or administrators. But this is not a matter of morality or opinion, and as a result, we mustn’t remain neutral. Privilege is a fact of life, proven by incarceration rates, college acceptance rates, and representation in white-collar jobs and corporate leadership by primarily white, cisgender men.
Change starts with us. The thoughts we have, the words we utter, and the actions we take to combat privilege matter. We are molding the thoughts, words, and actions of the next generation. While understanding privilege and working against the mark it’s made on our society will be a slow and laborious process, it is imperative that educators in all settings to have the courage to speak up about it. It is by having the humbling courage to let our privilege be seen for what it is — an advantage that we did nothing to deserve — that we open doors for our students, for others, and for ourselves, freeing us from the myth of the American Dream so we can focus on the collective health of a truly democratic and equitable society.
