FROM an article in The Daily Caller by Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins:

Headmaster John Vallance pronounced the billions of dollars spent on classroom technology a “scandalous waste of money” that “distracts” from quality teaching. “We see teaching as fundamentally a social activity,” Dr. Vallance said. “It’s about interaction between people, about discussion, about conversation. We find that having laptops or iPads in the classroom inhibits conversation – it’s distracting.”

Dr. Vallance identified a related problem with technological “personalized learning” – when conversation is removed from education, the students find themselves confronted with a uniform point of view. “The digital delivery of teaching materials across Australia has had a powerful normative effect,” he observed. “It’s making it quite difficult for children to learn how to disagree, how not to toe the party line, because they can’t question things – the possibility of questioning things has been taken away from them.”

So according to a prominent educator who has seen the results in the classroom, digital learning increases the likelihood of, well, indoctrination. Bill Gates, who through his vast wealth pushes his well-known political and cultural predilections, apparently sees no problem with this. Parents might disagree. [emphasis added]

Please follow and like us: