My latest gripe. How the word “personal” has shifted its meaning so that machines are now programmed to pretend to be people in personal contact with children.
Is there any word or phrase left to us to describe authentic human relationships? And how might we define it so that we can differentiate the one from the other? Meanwhile, BEWARE any conferences, speeches or programs that claim to be promoting “personalized learning.”
Ron Wolk, the original publisher of Ed Week, has a good piece on this in the January 6th issue of his old paper (link). He describes what we all used to think the phrase “personalized learning” meant and how it was, and in some places is still, practiced. He ends with a warning: “The reason nothing important changes in education is because if one significant change is made, everything would have to change.” That is why Ted Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools laid out ten principles that went together for real change to occur. Many signed on, few got very far, and some of those who went the furthest were murdered along the way. But we need to revisit the ones that have survived and the ones that have started lately. We need a way to keep these principles, and the schools that represent them even incompletely, alive—in one way or another. They won’t all look alike and to live in today’s world they have each made some compromises. But even in a perfect world there would be trade-offs. That is the ornery and also wonderful nature of institutions designed by the people who will live in them.
Filed under: 2016, education | 4 Comments »
Deborah Meier on Education 