The EdTech Revolution Has Failed

As someone who's worked in EdTech for around two decades, I know why people think this. It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this. Just like money, you can't just throw tech at education and expect it to solve anything.

There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism, and won't hold their leaders as accountable. Power generally resides with those who benefit from an ill-educated populace, so anything that would actually help educate children and people at large is discouraged.

I'll repeat what others have said here. Giving teachers the means with which to properly work with their students, and investing in students at a more individual level, is what's needed. Sadly, my refrain with regards to public education is that is has become little more than glorified babysitting. Those that succeed do so in spite of the system, and not because of it. Meanwhile, students that suffer from one or more disadvantagements (poverty, disability, social issues, mental or physical health issues, and so much more) tend to just...suffer more. And then they fall into cycles where preventable issues repeat or enhance into the next generation. They'll still spend all of their little income excessively, so profit is still to be had, or they'll end-up in prison, which, again, thanks to privatization, is also immensely profitable, so no problem there, right?

The system is setup to fail because that's what's profitable in the long run for those seeking such profits. And because they can lobby, and use their wealth to influence politics, it won't change. Something else needs to happen first.

Well put, all around! If it makes you feel better, state-funded education has, as a rule, pretty much always been babysitting. As we fight together for a brighter future, I think it’s important to know that we’re building something new and glorious, not restoring some natural status quo.

Tho I’m no history buff. Maybe some civilization had really great public schools? Designating only a small portion of your population as True Pure Citizens does tend to help with stuff like that

> There are too many profitable incentives to poor education that are conspiring to perpetuate it. An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism, and won't hold their leaders as accountable. Power generally resides with those who benefit from an ill-educated populace, so anything that would actually help educate children and people at large is discouraged.

I want to believe this but I can't honestly imagine someone actively thinking about this and dedicating part of their work to misinforming the poor intentionally.

In the US, it's easy to imagine, or just see, politicians actively opposing expansion of the currently-poor education system. Some actively seek to further defund it (see school vouchers).

As for actively misinforming poor people, that is the day job (campaigning) for countless politicians, who usually spend less than half their time drafting or voting on legislation.

> It's what a lot people here have already said. Education is what is failing, EdTech didn't magically solve this.

To expand this more globally - anything that requires human interaction fails at scale. Healthcare, trade skills, education, housing, etc. is all "failing" to some degree no matter how much technology we throw at it. The costs continually go up and the value isn't paired to it.

Why did all the civics classes go after the Vietnam protests?

> actively thinking about this and dedicating part of their work to misinforming the poor intentionally.

I'm reminded of the quote

> “No one involved in an extralegal activity thinks of themselves as nefarious. I'm a businessman, okay?" - Quark, DS9 S6E25

I don't believe anyone nefariously sits there and says "lets make sure people aren't educated" but I genuinely believe there are people who say "I did this thing and people keep voting me in to keep doing that thing or keep paying me to do that thing, so I'm going to continue doing it that way"

I don’t think this is the case for several core reasons:

- higher income people spend more money. The middle and upper class is by far the largest market and source of tax revenue.

- poverty generally turns areas into low trust higher theft spots that need expensive security.

- high income places generally have good public schools because a majority do know how important education is

- this requires a pretty vast conspiracy of people saying “keep people dumb so we can profit”, which I haven’t heard of at all

I think the much simpler explanation is that there is no accountability for inept pockets in the education system. Schools can’t really be punished for sucking and parents can’t move their kids in most states without just switching to private. There is no feedback loop for broken schools.

> An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism, and won't hold their leaders as accountable.

This is a reactionary take.

Math, science, and basic language skills do not lead to political upheaval, and are incredibly valuable skills to the capital class. Leadership would be more apt to propagandize social studies and suppress dissent.

China easily comes to mind as a counter argument.

I'd apply Hanlon's razor: education languishes due to poor funding, lack of competition, and low salaries that attract mediocre teachers. We don't even properly fund development for blue collar jobs! Also the problem compounds since one generations students become the next generations teachers.

Seems like you're listing highly regulated industries not human interaction.

You are 100% correct, people mostly follow incentives. The problem is that, for many politicians, "this thing" in "I did this thing and people keep voting me in, so I'm going to continue doing this thing" refers to the starving and/or defunding of education.

I can almost admire how you manage to think that but that is just ignoring reality. Politicians have created entire media giants that are designed to either lie to you and trigger an emotional response within you. Maybe not out of pure maliciousness but they benefit from doing it.

> China easily comes to mind as a counter argument.

I mean, cultural revolution was still going on 50 years ago lol

"There are too many profitable incentives... Power generally resides with those who benefit... The system is setup to fail because that's what's profitable in the long run for those seeking such profits. And because they can lobby, and use their wealth to influence politics, it won't change. Something else needs to happen first."

Who exactly are you talking about?

> I want to believe this but I can't honestly imagine someone actively thinking about this and dedicating part of their work to misinforming the poor intentionally.

Populism is exactly this - misinforming poorly educated people with bad scary words, "others", "easy" fixes.

> Inflation is bad! Crime is bad! We'll just deport 20 million "others" and everything will be allright!

Or:

> Let's send all the money we're spending on the EU on the NHS, 350 million pounds per week more for the National Health Service!

In some countries, like the US, there are active efforts to sabotage education, or at least cripple it - by reducing funding to a point where educators have to spend their own money for supplies, get burned out, have poverty-level wages, etc. Those can't be accidental.

These industries, more or less, need to be highly regulated because we've faced the alternative and it's worse. The quality of education went up SIGNFICANTLY when the state took more control over it.

If the US electorate had better economics education, they would have thought both the [2024] candidates were economic idiots.

If the US electorate had better economics education, the 2024 candidates might have been forced to present sane and reasonable economic platforms, because doing so would have actual political value. Dare I say at least one of those candidates wouldn't even have made it to the primaries. Which I leave as an exercise for the reader.

They aren't economic idiots, they just know most American voters mistrust any economic concept more complex than "taxes bad. China bad. jobs good."

Google?

I think it's worse. Regardless of the amount of education, they would have to care about policy enough to read and act on candidates' policies.

That's fair, and someone told be there's a distinction between politics and policy, but when politicians pander to the crowd, it's really hard to get an idea of what their actual policy will be.

Focusing solely on the “babysitting” aspect of your post:

Since babysitting is essentially required in our current social framework, why do we need physical schools with in person teachers. It seems to me that we could have babysitting facilities spread to lots of small commercial spaces with in person babysitters for kids who are doing school on computers with synchronous teachers online.

I realize that the model I’ve laid out here is simplistic, but it would solve so many problems that it seems worthwhile to flesh it out and mitigate the issues.

>An ill-educated populace is easier to manipulate, gravitate towards consumerism,

Very wrong. Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it. And then part of education is indoctrination to trust authority (eg. trust the science).

That said, basic education reading/writing/simple math/science is indeed valuable.

To put a name on this, it's the Baumol effect, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect. Essentially, as productivity increases in most industries (from automation), it drives up labor costs in the industries that can't be automated (healthcare, education, performing arts, etc), which drives up the price of those services (healthcare), or drives down the quality to find a market clearing price (increasing student to teacher ratios).

Part of that is questionable, because the state gets to set the means by which the quality of education is measured. However, a more objective measure is the extent of education; certainly, the introduction of national education has always produced a much greater literacy rate.

That's because you aren't viewing it in the proper context and think that the result of the action is isolated. I can't honestly imagine that you couldn't come up with a single incentive for misinforming people on topics in such a way that would result in your own benefit.

Just curious, how would you describe the motivations of a stereotypical sleazy car salesman offering predatory loan rates: A hard working person doing what they need to do to survive, or a con artist trying to find more victims? Only one of those choices represents reality, and you should really be wary of anyone who would suggest the other choice.

> anything that requires human interaction fails at scale

What do you mean by "fails"? It doesn't have the zero-marginal-cost dynamic favored by the investor class of the tech industry?

Don't confuse "you can't scale human interactions" with "human interaction fails at scale". The former is talking about the venture-capital-accelerated winner-takes-all business strategy, the latter is a misunderstanding of civil societies and living a rewarding life because you can only envision such things through the lens of owning a zero-marginal-cost process.

You've just described half the charter schools around here.

"Education only camouflages stupidity, it does not remove it."

You are arguing that low intelligence is innate, unchangeable. Which sounds very much like saying stupidity is genetic.

I understand education and healthcare, but how do trade skills and housing require human interaction? For housing especially, a lot of foreign/remote investors can own houses and just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner. Housing is supply-limited, sure, and heavily regulated, sure, but I don't think it requires human interaction, and certainly not to the scale of education or healthcare.

> anything that requires human interaction fails at scale

Regulations are neutral. Some are bullshit. Some are written in blood.

The thing is extent and execution are intrinsically linked. Meaning, unregulated markets mean the extent will be limited because people will just choose not to get educated. Which makes sense, if they themselves are uneducated they don't have perfect reasoning skills or future outlook.

A market relies on the participants having visibility and ability. They need to see the alternatives, understand them deeply, and have access to them. Turns out you can't do that in a bunch of markets, education being one of them. So, it can never be a true free market.

Yes, it is innate, with a high degree of heritability. No one questions physical traits are innate, but some how when it comes to IQ it become highly contested...

Why, do think otherwise?

This is reductive. Even PhD economists are crap at predicting effects of certain policies (see the Federal Reserve - it has thousands of them!). The economy is very complex to model (and has reflexivity), and generally you will find credentialed experts on both sides of anything short of a trivial debate.

Tariffs have pros/cons, as does any other policy proposed by the two candidates. And the most tricky thing when computing the effects of these policies is: "what is the quantity we're trying to optimize for?" - where the "welfare of the people" is not really a measurable thing.

Economists have a pretty poor track record of predictions themselves... so I wouldn't be too smug about this. The economy (the real one, not the one in textbooks) is very complex, and most "obvious" things that you think about the various proposed policies are probably wrong.

Trying to quantify genetics and intelligence is fraught because of history and ethics. We cannot put one twin in a box of food and water and the other in schools of varying quality. We also cannot clone Einstein and put them in various schools then test them.

Everyone has to live and grow within unjust societies. Some groups will suffer from racism, others may benefit. So it's going to be hard to prove much of anything without a lot of twins and decades of natural experiments.

The eugenics movements and Nazi experiments have also made the whole subject taboo.

Finally IQ is quite arbitrary and the tests evolve over time too.

>The eugenics movements and Nazi experiments have also made the whole subject taboo.

I know this.

>Finally IQ is quite arbitrary and the tests evolve over time too.

The IQ test may be flawed, but is the concept flawed?

Can you see any downside in not acknowledging differing intelligence among individuals?

(we know the downside of acknowledging it - right from the Natzis, to individuals who may not try hard enough to achieve something)

And oh well - there are both twin studying and studies on kid adopted by their non-biological parent. Given the taboo, it may not be easy to find them.

Is not the absolute cost that goes up per se. It’s the cost relative to cost of things that scale. Education, nursing care, even doctoring all have significant human to human interaction at a personal level for there to be success. When the cost of other things like commodities drop 100x, those human interactions services don’t and therefore become relatively more expensive even despite massive productivity gains those fields

> trade skills

Who installs pipes, builds walls, installs electrical conduits? Humans.

> just collect rent checks from tenants in a pretty hand-off manner

Dwellings still require regular power, heat, security, support and regular maintenance. Those all require human beings.

You are using the word "heritable" as evidence for the "innateness" of a trait. "Innate" can mean multiple things, but the implication here is that it implies genetic determinism. Heritability statistics do not establish genetic determinism and, for intelligence, there's now substantial evidence in the other direction.

>You are using the word "heritable" as evidence for the "innateness" of a trait.

Hmm... not quite... ( 2 different things with overlaps, and remember I never used the term genetic)

>there's now substantial evidence in the other direction.

Links, please. ( would be surprised if it overturned all past observations)

Before I do that, can you confirm for me what you believe "heritability" to mean?

Heritability: Black kid born to black parents. The blackness is heritable

Innate: Albino kid born to black parents ( mutation, etc..) So here Albinism is innate to kid but not inherited.

That's a black and white definition ( for the sake of conversation). There can be intermediate states. For example even if the kid's skin is black there can be variation in skin tone, so slight mutation, but still largely inherited.

Heritability is the ratio of genetic variance to phenotypical variance. How heritable do you think the number of fingers on your hand is?

Anyway to answer your question the number of fingers in one's hand would be nearly 100% inheritable. A more accurate figure would be 99.<something>

tptacek , I'm not sure why you are hung up so much on the specifics, haven't we veer well past the main topic? My getting the definition of heritability, innateness etc. in this should not matter beyond a certain point. I understand that if we were experts debating a certain tropic definitions matter. Quirks , physical trait, depression, mental illnesses, and by extension IQ would run in families, this was common knowledge in the pre-modern era. ( and probably is still so in many parts of the an on urbanized world). Ofcourse one has to separate out the external factors like common food habits (that was common to these families) would impact psychological traits.

No, it is the opposite: the number of fingers on your hand has virtually zero heritability. Variation in the number of fingers on your hand is virtually always a result of environmental influences (for instance: thalidomide during gestation).

If you don't understand what heritability means, (a) you shouldn't be using it to make points about the connections between phenotypical groups of people and their measured IQ, and (b) the links I have for you aren't going to do you any good.

Fair enough. I that case I don't understand what the formal definition of heritability. ( I could some time and understand it but that beside the point)

So what term would you use to describe individuals inheriting trait from their parents eg, skin color ? especially the colloquial term.

(and again aren't we veering way off topic?)

Edit/Addendum - I looked at the colloquial definition of heritability/heritable, I think I'm essentially correct: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heritability , https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heritable . You need not reply. I have a feeling that our discussion is missing the forest for the trees. (And yes you can have your gotcha moment)

The technical definition matters because the evidence people supply about the genetics of intelligence is based on that technical definition, not your intuitive definition. You said intelligence has been shown to be heritable. Indeed, it has. But that doesn't mean what you think it meant.

Did it really improve, though? There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated, and that education had been gradually going downhill as the United States gradually adopted the Prussian model of education -- an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets.

There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure". Yet there is this endless cycle of increasing regulation, where a politician or bureaucrat identifies a problem with the market -- real or imagined -- and then offers a solution. That solution the situation even worse, but politicians and bureaucrats will blame this on "market failure", and then insist on another solution ... and so it goes.

Yes, it's true that some regulation is necessary. But how much effort is put into place to make sure that the regulations put in place do what they are supposed to do? What effort is put into place to identify the nasty side effects of otherwise good regulations? The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed.

And that's even before we get into the fact that regulations have their limits: people can handle only so many rules, particularly if they are onerous, and will start ignoring regulations when it's the only way to get things done. An example of this is a report from the FAA, where they identified around 2,000 pilots who didn't report disqualifying health conditions. Why? Because the conditions were quickly resolved, and their livelihoods depended on flying, so they didn't want to go through the hassle of waiting three months for their license to fly to be cleared again. What's worse, of the 2,000 or so pilots who did this, only 4 or so had serious-enough conditions that they shouldn't have been flying!

Again, fair enough. ( I'm pretty sure that when I used the word heritable first, the person understood it, although he/she may not have agreed with me.)

And if I may defend myself most terms with a formal definition start out being used colloquially and later if/when adapted scientifically may have a more nuanced definition. And after it is adapted scientifically the word continues being used colloquially. Isn't it generally assumed that when 2 people talk the colloquial is assumed? Unless they both decided to use the formal definition, or they are both experts in the subjects.

I don't think you should feel bad for using heritability in its colloquial sense. I'm just saying that you won't be able to support the claim you made with the evidence you had available. That's how discussions work: you make claims, some of them hold up, some of them don't.

> Did it really improve, though?

Yes.

> There's evidence that Colonial/Revolutionary-Era American populace was highly educated

I've never seen this evidence, but to speculate: probably since the colonist were, well, colonists, and literally building every industry from the ground up, they had to be.

After this though, in the 19th century, we knew most people could not read or write.

> an education system designed to produce loyal soldiers and interchangeable worker widgets

True, but worker widgets who can read.

> There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure"

I experience the opposite, but granted I live in Texas. The default mode is regulations are bad, and the less the better.

> The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed

It's not an assumption, it's an observation. When it comes to education and others.

The thing is the free market relies on there being a free market. Not every market can be a free market. That's a problem. I've already explained how education can never be a free market above, but another example is healthcare. I can't compete in healthcare because of the HUGE time investment in schooling. I also have zero choice as a consumer - I just go to the nearest hospital. There's also no visibility in price because you have to diagnose me first, and that can be wrong or things can pop up later.

Healthcare is not, and will never be, a free market. Even now the US has a largely socialized healthcare system, it just so happens to be the worst socialized healthcare system. Primarily because we've handed it off to the private sector, who have incentives to actually make it worse. Meaning, insurance thrives when you receive less care. The inefficiency is built into the profit motive, and you can't get around it.

> I've never seen this evidence, but to speculate: probably since the colonist were, well, colonists, and literally building every industry from the ground up, they had to be.

I would strongly recommend looking into John Taylor Gatto's "An Underground History of American Education", at least as a starting point. Indeed, that is where I learned that a literacy drop between WWI and WWII raised eyebrows, but when it came to the Vietnam era, the Army had to investigate "How can so many people fake illiteracy?" and found that the answer was "They aren't faking it."

> After this though, in the 19th century, we knew most people could not read or write.

Now it's your turn: I'd like to see your evidence for this.

> True, but worker widgets who can read.

That's assuming that everyone (including educators and politicians) think reading is important.

>> There is a strong tendency to recognize "market failure" as a problem -- but it is rather rare to see people discuss "regulatory failure"

> I experience the opposite, but granted I live in Texas. The default mode is regulations are bad, and the less the better.

Have you considered the possibility that what is happening in Texas is an attempt to recognize harmful regulations, and weed them out so that people can have more freedom to function?

>> The assumption that all regulations exist because the alternative is worse is deeply flawed

> It's not an assumption, it's an observation. When it comes to education and others.

I cannot help but worry that your observations are cherry-picked. There's plenty of regulatory fail to observe for the few who look to observe it.

> The thing is the free market relies on there being a free market. Not every market can be a free market. That's a problem. I've already explained how education can never be a free market above, [ed: I can't find that explanation] but another example is healthcare. I can't compete in healthcare because of the HUGE time investment in schooling. I also have zero choice as a consumer - I just go to the nearest hospital. There's also no visibility in price because you have to diagnose me first, and that can be wrong or things can pop up later.

> Healthcare is not, and will never be, a free market. Even now the US has a largely socialized healthcare system, it just so happens to be the worst socialized healthcare system. Primarily because we've handed it off to the private sector, who have incentives to actually make it worse. Meaning, insurance thrives when you receive less care. The inefficiency is built into the profit motive, and you can't get around it.

I have both experienced and seen what health care in Great Britain is like, and based on the statistics I hav come across over time, to this day, to suggest Great Britain's health care is better than America's is a big stretch. Something similar can be said of Canadian health care (Pittsburg, PA, has more MRI machines than all of Canada!), and certainly, Cuba's awful health care system should be considered "socialized". To the degree that American health care is better than these systems, it's largely because of the private aspects of it -- and what's worse, to the degree that it's harmful, it is because of government regulations that kill competition. How is it that the law requires that I have the freedom to choose where I want my car repaired, but that I must find an "in-network" doctor? Why can I purchase auto insurance from any company in any State, but I must have insurance sold in my home State? How the heck are these specific kinds of restrictions supposed to make health care better?!?

Many of the concerns you gave about health care apply to the car repair market too -- both in terms of insurance and in terms of car repairs and maintenance. Why is it that mostly-privatized car repair is market-friendly, but health care is not?

I'm really not going to bother replying any further because I don't think it's worth it. You're fighting and uphill battle here - virtually every country has agreed that having the government control education is a good thing and has been successful.

Conservatives, in the past few years, have fallen into a new sphere of lunacy. Anti-vaccine, anti-education, anti-workplace safety, anti-everything.

I don't have the patience to stamp out every single opposition people come up with.

To me, the "problem" that you, and others, have with education is that the government is involved. Sorry, that is not an argument. Just as blindly supporting something makes one a sheep, blindly opposing something also makes someone a sheep.

Our education is as successful as it is due to our government, and that is not up for debate. I've already explained the problem with free markets and why some services, such as healthcare and education, do not apply to a market and literally cannot.

As a thought experiment, consider what makes a free market a free market. Now consider the feasibility of implementing that into healthcare and education (hint: impossible). Now, assume it is possible, and consider the consequences of it. How many millions of people would need to die before you start caring?

In my experience, it's been just as difficult to convince conservatives to let go of the notion that only government can solve problems, as it has been for liberals. For this kind of "lunacy", you generally have to go full-blown libertarian -- and very few people listen to libertarians.

As for free market health care and education: Are they really impossible, though? And if it's "purely" impossible, is it really impossible to introduce some fundamental free-market reforms, like school choice, or the ability to choose your own doctor?

As for "government-run education being successful" -- ever since I started school in the 1980s, government-run schools have been in crisis mode -- indeed, it's what's led to things like the Department of Education and No Child Left Behind. What's more, there is no evidence things are improving, and plenty of evidence that it's been degrading over time.

How many children's futures are you willing to cut off at the kneecaps until you finally admit that government education, particularly in the United States, has serious problems?