Transcript: Schouten's Speech on Education
Scenario for The Future of Technology in Secondary Education in 2020
Transcript: Schouten's Speech on Education
Monday, November 30, 2020
Tortuga Island — The full text of King-elect Schouten's November 30, 2020, fiery speech on the current state of education:
We write the year 2020. Let's take a good hard look at the use of technology in secondary education. Let's look at how this evolved in the last 13 years, and we find that it hardly has...
Yes, we use computers more now than we did then, but usage of existing technologies does not a revolution make! Think of it: we have started phasing out the printed book in favor of eBooks, but we're still using the same books and yes, we're being more multimedia and location-independent, but in fact we're just broadcasting what was then the teacher's monologuous lecture across the internet so that students no longer need to even get out of bed to consume (and that's what it is!) the lecture.
Truth be told, we have certainly experienced benefits since the beginning years of the technological revolution in education - but we haven't even started yet! Since the Google Books project was announced in 2004, the world has 'saved' the environment and brought knowledge to one and all by using eBooks; but think of this as well: it was all done by (and hence all works have been re-copyrighted by) Google. Furthermore, almost discontinuing the print press has decimated the book printing industry, costing millions of jobs. And at the end of the day, the most powerful function of Word 2020, the first one new users search for, is still 'print'. Printer manufacturers do still thrive, as do paper mills. So in effect, the benefit to the environment hasn't been all that great. All that it has achieved is that students can now use Google's fulltext index to download a book instead of buying it.
And then there was the Digital Learning Environment (DLO). Pioneered by products like WebCT, it was the Blackboard Learning System, version 1.0 of which saw the light as early as 1997, that achieved such a strong market presence that by the year 2005 one could safely speak of a monopoly when Blackboard acquired its former competitor. As time progressed though, nothing really changed. When version 10 was released in 2010, it was still nothing more than a repository for powerpoint sheets and pdf's copied from JStor. It still didn't even have a search function. Unfortunately, as could have been predicted, a commercial company that holds the patent to 'Internet-based education support system and methods' was not exactly one to innovate. Thus, even now, ten years later, all educational institutes still follow Blackboard, Inc. like tame sheep. Nothing more, nothing less. Still just a repository for materials that are in effect the same as the were 30 years ago. Granted, they are now typed in Office 2020 instead of hand-written, but no value has been added.
Remember that after the DLO came the 'grand revolution' of media-richness? Remember how it was suddenly en vogue to blog and to podcast and vodcast? Remember how we just noticed that a teacher's formerly hand-written overhead sheets that now look so pretty through the beamer have actually not significantly been altered? Sure it was all nice and dandy to be able to follow electives at another educational institute without having to travel, but we still could and we didn't mind traveling as it meant *beware of big and scary word* social contact. Let's not forget, in the 20th century we could still jokingly have an in-class award for he/she that looked worst at a 9am class. Nowadays, the concept of being late for class no longer even exists as lectures can be viewed at a time of convenience and alertness chosen by the student him/herself.
Taking all this negative feedback into consideration, let's spend a second on thinking why the revolution everybody expects has not yet occurred. Why have we evolved, but not revolutionized yet? The answer is simple: nobody has taken responsibility for it yet. A follow-up question would be then: well, who is to take responsibility? Answer: the government. Adding new technology and introducing these in the classroom is one thing, but it only leads to evolution - for a revolution, one should change the basis of education. Currently, we still have the same system that is based on a teacher lecturing about a subject. The teacher is still (somewhat of) an authoritative figure, older than the students, outside of their peer group. Basic modern marketing tells us that such a system is dubbed 'push', and that push systems have lost their strength along with the vacuum cleaner salesmen of the 1940s. Furthermore, we can add the factor that a person being older often means that this person is less tech-savvy resulting in slow adoption. In other words, adding computer labs does not mean teachers can operate these computers. Going back to marketing, a vital element of viral marketing is infiltrating the peer group. Something that in the current education system is most definitely not happening.
Today, it is the year 2020, but even though we've been kept waiting for a good 20 years, it's not too late yet. We CAN still start the revolución! We just need to convince the government to upturn the education system and to commit to it.