Some devil's advocating on innovation -- in education, and generally

I attended an educational technology conference (the annual VTC) recently and left with a mixture of delight and ambivalence at some of the implications for education of technology.

Looking at The New Republic, I keep thinking of its recent collapse as a cautionary tale for our Umgang with technology, both in schools and society-wide. That august intellectual institution was not too long ago bought out by a tech 20-something. He came in with soothing words but soon provoked mass walkouts. What's interesting from this example is that neither extreme, neither 'no innovation' or 'all innovation,' was tenable. Here is the (somewhat false) dilemma, simply stated: not as many people were reading The New Republic as before (due in part but not entirely to the rise of the internet), and it was losing more and more money every year. The plan, then, was to turn a once titanic publication into a slick media company with "snackable" stories (their appalling word, not mine). In the end, this was worse than neutering it: the use of new technology appeared to justify -- mandate -- inferior content. At least in this instance, innovation for innovation's sake has engendered an intellectual decline.

Quoting a former New Republic writer, from the above link:

 “We are not only disruptors and incubators and accelerators ... We are also stewards and guardians and trustees. The questions that we must ask ourselves, and that our historians and our children will ask of us, are these: How will what we create compare with what we inherited? Will we add to our tradition or will we subtract from it? Will we enrich it or will we deplete it?”

As educators and dreamers, we're caught in a very tricky moment. The New is flooding us, making so many things about the old appear newly dreadful. New standards and scrutiny draw outdated methods and now-obvious inadequacies into the sunlight. By today's standards, the education I received was in many ways quite flawed, both at public schools and elite private ones. I still daydream about having conversations with some old teachers to ask them about what it was like for them to teach me. A handful of my teachers were simply weak, but a greater number were extremely hard working and well intentioned. One of the great pleasures for me as an educator is to provide a better education than the one I myself received. If that sounds arrogant, well, I'm very good at what I do. Yet I understand the massive investment made in me by schools and teachers over two decades, and how it enabled me to live my current life. Surely there must be plenty that's worth keeping from the Old. The question is how much, what parts, and in what ways. 

The innovation that our newest technology enables, or spurs, or makes inevitable, gives us a chance to improve education in such exciting ways. But the task of educating is still left to institutions, in most cases public ones -- and if it weren't, how else could it be kept equitable? fair? democratic? systematic? Public institutions are of course sluggish and skeptical of change. This very sluggishness has at least one key advantage. Institutions have time for trends to work themselves out through trial and error before mass adoption (this would appear to me to be part of the unspoken contract our societies have with charter schools). They are less likely to sign on to fads. Conservative institutions view many trends askew. The Panglossian optimism towards technology is forced to justify itself first. I see this as reasonable and desirable, for the most part.

And yet, and yet, and yet. Reforms must not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but there is still desperate need for reform. Slow fine-tuning works best for the strongest institutions, whereas today many schools and teachers are focused on the very act of establishing new institutions, or remaking broken ones. The way forward in international education should be flexible, not utopian, and anything but one-size-fits all. One must develop one's own little tests to be applied to the new and the old alike. Institutions such as schools need an ethos that weighs new disruption against their ethical missions to benefit society. I'm still working on my personal test for more or less technology, more or less routine -- honing it every day, in fact. In the meantime, I relish the privilege that my situation as an international educator provides me -- to work in a setting of such reflection and activity.

Some innovation from Västerås, Sweden: a very small hydroelectric dam built in 1891 that turned a town into a city, and gave rise to a multinational corporation based in Zürich!