Why Technology Will Never Fix Education

chronicle.com

10 points·jseliger··5 comments

Technology is a tool. If you think education can be fixed by one tool you don't have much experience.

From the article:

"But even an equitable distribution of technology aggravates inequality. Students with poor high-school preparation will always find it hard to learn things their prep-school peers can ace. Low-income families will struggle to pay registration fees that wealthy households barely notice. Blue-collar workers doing hard manual labor may not have the energy to take evening courses that white-collar professionals think of as a hobby."

People with higher IQs will learn more from MOOCs, just as they learn more from books. Education is an IQ multiplier and therefore will not benefit everyone equally, but it is not politically correct to say that.

Granting that education is an IQ multiplier, let's remember that both sides of the multiplication sign affect the product. The multiplier found at the private school charging private-college level tuition is going to be a good deal larger than the multiplier at the public school in a bad neighborhood.

Education is not a multiplier.

Personally I was a Resident Director at a University. My job was to make sure students succeded. It was always the kid that worked hard that made it no matter the IQ. Work Ethic is much more important. Here is some research that shows this http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2005/12/14/high-iq-no...

Another IQ failure but this one is on under achieving due to low self-motivation. http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/siegle/publications/VTBookUndera...

Thanks

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