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Perhaps it’s no surprise that there was so much talk this year about education, technology, and emotional health. I mean, 2017 really sucked, and we’re all feeling it.
As support services get axed and the social safety net becomes threadbare, our well-being – our economic and emotional well-being – becomes more and more fragile. People are stressed out, and people are demoralized, and people are depressed. People are struggling, and people are vulnerable, and people are afraid. And “people” here certainly includes students.
All the talk of the importance of “emotion” in education reflects other trends too. It’s a reaction, I’d say, to the current obsession with artificial intelligence and a response to all the stories we were told this year about robots on the cusp of replacing, out-“thinking,” and out-working us. If indeed robots will excel at those tasks that are logical and analytical, schools must instead develop in students – or so the story goes – more “emotional intelligence,” the more “human” capacity for empathy and care.
Talk of “emotion” has also been the focus of several education reform narratives for the last few years – calls for students to develop “grit” and “growth mindsets” and the like. (So much easier than addressing structural inequality.)
Via Miloš Bajčetić
This is part four of my annual look at the year’s “top ed-tech stories”
Way back in 2012, I chose “The Platforming of Education” as one of my “Top Ed-Tech Trends.” Re-reading that article now makes me cringe. I have learned so much in the intervening years, and my analysis then strikes me as incredibly naive and shallow.
At the time, I wrote about the importance of APIs; the issues surrounding data security and privacy; the appeal of platforms for users and businesses; and the education and tech companies who were well-positioned (or at least wanting) to become education platforms. I was inspired, I think, to select that topic because talk of “platforms” was incredibly popular in Silicon Valley – it had been for a while – as companies strove to become “the next Facebook.” And I wondered at the time if that would be the outcome for MOOCs. (2012, you will recall, was “the year of the MOOC.”) It was certainly the outcome that investors were hoping for Edmodo, which raised $25 million in 2012, boasting that it had 15 million users.
Via Miloš Bajčetić
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It was one of the most frequently repeated stories of the year – a story that has, if we’re being honest, been repeated for decades now: college students, particularly left-leaning college students, are intolerant. The rise of “identity politics” on the left has created a moral panic of sorts on college campuses, or so we’re told, in which intellectually and politically conformist “social justice warriors” shout and stomp about and refuse to engage with ideas that might upset them, refuse to engage with “reason.” Political correctness and postmodernism have become twin threats – a “left-wing authoritarianism” – poised to dismantle the great tradition of liberalism once exemplified by the liberal arts college.
Via Miloš Bajčetić
“Fake news” is partly a crisis of journalism and a crisis of civics; but it is also a crisis of education and technology. It’s a crisis of knowledge and expertise and science. (It’s also an opportunity – surprise, surprise – for lots of folks to try sell us some sort of “digital literacy” product.)
Via Miloš Bajčetić
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