The biggest untold story we keep getting told

“This may be the biggest untold story of technology: when used properly, technology can amplify the human element in education.”

Bill Gates, addressing the Association of Community College Trustees, October 2, 2013

I was surprised to read this little epigram in last winter’s issue of On Campus. You see, although Mr. Gates presents this as a fresh insight gleaned from all his educational research, it reminds me a lot of another story.  This was the tale of a couple of smart young professionals who brought together business know-how and philanthropic resources to unleash the potential of technology to transform education. At the heart of their vision was the thesis that properly applied, technology would accentuate the humanistic dimensions of education, empowering the teacher to spend more time with students and less on administration and drill.
 
The year was 1958; those people were my parents.
 
Their firm was called the Center for Programmed Instruction, and they would be the first to admit that the plans for their “teaching machines” never quite came to fruition.  Later I heard the same narrative during the educational software boom of the nineties, told with great enthusiasm.  Yet somehow CD-ROMs never really had that much impact on my classroom.  Now online learning is cast as the hero of the same fable.  Which got me thinking; is it likely Bill Gates hasn’t heard the same tall tales? And if he has, why is he touting them as an “untold story"?

 The simplest answer is that he presents these opinions as original because what seems news seems worth trying, and he wants us to try educational technology as a panacea for our educational problems – again – because it serves the interest of people like, well, Bill Gates.  Diane Ravitch came at this from a different angle when she commented in the Huffington Post (5/2/14) on his support for the new common core standards: “all testing must be done online, so the new standards represent a bonanza for the testing industry, the hardware industry, and the software industry.”

His politely humanistic vision of technology goes on to claim that “the smart use of technology does not replace faculty – it redeploys them, to the benefit of the students.” I know that in other contexts Mr. Gates has asserted that teachers will be “redeployed” as learning coaches and superstar lecturers, and I hope that he is sincere.  But then why is he not spending all his bottomless resources on training and rewarding teachers like that?    

I completely agree that appropriately used, technology can amplify the human element in education.  I just don’t think Big Bill is putting his money behind the “appropriately” part, and I wish he would shoot straight with us about his priorities.  Somehow, I can’t get it out of my head that this is the same guy who claims that his operating system never crashes.