The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

The problem is that it should be the present. Oh, I've been an engineer for a while and I know the system can't turn on a dime, it would take some time.

However, we should be seeing visible progress towards this goal, and frankly, if anything, the system continues to be moving in the other direction, lowering bars to try to get everyone into the exact same level long after it should be clear that lowering the bar still isn't even achieving that goal, even as it destroys everything around it in the process.

The system isn't even trying to customize skill-based education, beyond a bit of clearly-ineffectual lip service.

Large bureaucracy wants people to be as fungible as possible, so that systems can be designed that interact with fungible units instead of complex, multifaceted individuals.

Computerization barely helps with "customized skill-based education" outside of parts of certain topics (some areas of math, notably, are very well-suited to it). Detailed feedback from humans is vital in many topics and for learning many skills, and, as they say, that doesn't scale. We can do it, but it means spending a lot more on teachers, so we aren't going to. We may eventually get a half-assed version involving LLMs or whatever nonsense, but that will be brought in mainly as a way to get by with fewer teachers (they're cost-diseasing into something we can't afford any more, it seems) not to increase educational quality.

My expected outcome for all of this is that the gap between rich and poor students will grow, as only rich students will continue to have decent student:teacher ratios (their ratios already tend to be a ton better than public school kids). Paid tutoring will become common somewhat farther down-market than it currently is, as more people choose to pay extra just to cover what their tax money used to, but no longer does.

I reject this kind of thinking.

To be clear, most engineers at FAANG would describe their own companies as a "large bureaucracy", yet, the engineers at these places are highly skilled, "complex, multifaceted individuals". Their hiring strategy has demonstrated this time and time again on HN discussions. It is insanely hard to get hired into these places. There must be at least 10 qualified candidates for each role. And, weirdly, I would say that almost all of the most highly skilled software engineers that I have known in my career are also the most dynamic. By definition, that makes them fungible because they can learn new skills so quickly.