This is why I love what I do and the folks I do it with. DTLT Today is a total blast, every EdTech shop should try this—it’s a great daily exercise for conversing, sharing, trust and thinking. Below is a republish of today’s episode in which the group cuddles up on the DTLT casting couch 🙂
In recent years we’ve seen the rise of a culture of acceptance with corporate vendor interests and a simultaneous decline of investment in the educators in the field and the schools they work at. The equation is simple: Take the money you’re handing to corporations and invest it in your own school system and people. We’ve got the whole group together to talk about corporate and personal culture and investing in people, not products.
Links we talked about:
<3 this episode, and not just cause I'm shout-outed. What Mark is really writing about is a misappraisal of the problem facing so many K-12 institutions. The problem isn't failing schools, it's communities that are riddled with abject poverty and thus not able to marshall the resources necessary to help our youngest realize a better future. Such an approach helps us to articulate why school reform is problematic while not completely condemning the school reformers.
I’m struggling to synch my understanding of these issues as they apply to primary Ed with me work in higher ed, and this episode points to some of the problems of assu Ed solutions, lazy thinking, and a failure to invest in change where it resonates. As always, DTLT. ROCK ON.
Luke,
Thanks for tweeting out Naison’s stuff, his blog is awesome, and I think his first rule in this post about if he had Arne Duncan’s job is right on with what you are saying:
I screwed up in framing exactly what he was saying in his recent post on Dissent, but you nail it here, as he does above. Education will not solve miraculously solve our problem of hemorrhaging social services and bleeding already starving communities. What’s more, a plutocracy of money-ridden tech solutions that often take the money away from potential local jobs and community investments is simply replaying a disinvestment in neighborhoods capital has enacted in poor areas for decades. What interesting, and Tom Woodward has talked about this for years and Naison gets at it clearly as you note, is that schools become burdened with solving all of these other socio-economic problem which they never could, and because of that they are seen as failing and inadequate and become the sites of further disinvestment and cuts. It is a vicious rhetorical cycle that is bleeding all of us dry in all too many ways.
And as usual you clear that up for me, and apologies to Mark Naison who I give the wrong title in my haste to quickly give an overview of his article that is anything but clear—but I am learning. What’s been cool about DTLT Today is we have been really suing these shows as a way to experiment with “blogging” ideas that are percolating around the office during the day together. They are half-baked and quick, but it really goes along way towards keeping our conversations fresh, a bit more focused, and regularly evolving.