In education, AI is not the problem...
An EdTech industry and Ed Tech consultants are the problem.
Both of these groups have uncritically accepted the promotional rhetoric of Big Tech and its unsubstantiated promises as gospel, and are working overtime to subject students to a technology that has not been around long enough to prove itself.
For years, Ed Tech consultants have followed unquestioningly every new gadget that comes from Silicon Valley, and immediately engage in the same promotional rhetoric. They did it with the PC, with the web, with Web 2.0 and social media, and what do we have to show for it?
Ed Tech evangelists and consultants try to manipulate educators by framing any refusal of their wares as failure to provide students what they need, as if they have some kind of crystal ball. They don’t. Why would we gamble a child’s future based on the same tired promo-rhetoric Ed Tech uses over and over again?
Ed Tech evangelists and consultants try to manipulate educators by framing any refusal of their tech gadgets as a danger of becoming obsolete or irrelevant. They are wrong. Again, relevance and purpose can be found with or without technology. It is not black and white as they would have it.
Ed Tech evangelists and consultants offer a pathway of ease and efficiency, and any refusal of that path is seen backwards. It’s not. What if ease and efficiency fundamentally deforms what one does? What if the path to ease leads to a distorted world where what is worthwhile takes time, effort, and tedious work?
AI is not the problem, but Ed Tech evangelists and Ed Tech consultants are making it a problem. They are pushing AI like a cure-all drug without any critical thought about what it will do to us long term. They also ignore the ethical questions and sustainability questions of the technology.
The cure for this problem is to ignore the Ed Tech promotional rhetoric and be sober about the possibilities. If AI survives, it will do so because it truly is useful.
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