To be clear, I was already well-aware of our ongoing technology fetish — my first job in a school was as a computer lab director. But what’s particularly striking is how similar the underlying concerns are: tech implementation necessitated a move away from the human aspects of education.
Schooling has gotten increasingly transactional for decades for numerous reasons (that others have detailed well); tech has only intensified that — as schools have faced more and more pressure from various directions, the focus on speed and efficiency of information flows & “content” continues.
Back in 2008 — in response to LAPTOPS — McFarlane begs a question that was as simple as it was prescient: why are we not more carefully and patiently weighing the cost and benefits of this thing we’re spending so much time on? Why are we in such a rush to embrace technology?
I don’t have any good answers to this even though I began my career as “the tech guy”…but this question from that 2008 article is going to ring in my head for a while: we all see what’s happening here, but do we see a problem with it? And do we laugh off the question or slow down to think about it?
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*Here’s more tech to make it easier to use the tech that you adopted before!*
And we’ve been in free fall down this spiral rabbit hole for decades.