Please read to the end! There’s some repeat here, but also a new-to-me piece of the puzzle at the end.
I’ve long been a skeptic about the use of digital technology in schools – and, while we’re at it, in the context of faith. She writes on her laptop.
I know, I know. But stick with me. It’s all about using the tools, but not allowing them to control the content and distribution. That’s the key.
But, over the past decades, people just…forget this. Taken in by the convenience and the promises, we just hand over our data and that control. They’ve got us. Especially after a year of a great deal of remote “learning.” Which I’m sure these companies are absolutely torn up about…..
There are two streams of conversation I’ve been having about this over the years. The first, related to Church, has been, essentially, glad to see churches (we’re talking Catholic here) use the tools to get information out there. But – but – I’ve been wary of parishes, dioceses and other entities viewing content on a screen as a replacement for one-on-one engagement. I’ve said it over and over again – for example here – your “digital outreach” is worth nothing if you don’t prioritize face-to-face outreach. Always. To recognize digital outreach, not only as a gift but as a temptation – a gift of being able to reach more people with some sort of content, but also the temptation to take the easier road – because throwing stuff out there for a bunch of anonymous eyes is a lot easier than knocking on someone’s door, encountering their pain and really and truly accompanying them on their journey.
And then education. I’ve written about this before – here and here. You can read some of my more substantive posts on these issues collected here.
Bottom line:
The push for screens and internet-based learning to replace books and paper is sold to us as an inevitability that is, of course, best for students.
I invite you to never, ever, accept that premise, and to question it, from top to bottom every time it’s presented to you.
Because the push for screens and internet-based learning is not about students. It’s about profit and data.
Let’s go back to the dark ages – the 1990’s, when Channel One entered classrooms. It’s an instructive example because it was so controversial at the time, and what’s happening now with computer-based learning, particularly Google Classroom, raises similar issues, but does not seem to be raising the same kinds of questions.
The deal was this: Whittle Communications provided classroom televisions and satellite receivers to schools in exchange for schools having their students watch a daily news show provided by the company – called Channel One. I taught in a school that took this deal, and yes, every day after opening prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, we had to watch this – what, maybe 10-15 minute news show with advertisements (that was the controversial part).
As I said – it was controversial – accusations of schools selling out students, forcing them to watch advertisements and whatever editorial slant Channel One offered in its programming.
And those are questions that should have been raised. It was certainly problematic – not to speak of being a pain and an intrusion. But hey! We got free televisions!
What’s happening now is no different – well, it is different – because it’s worse. What’s happening now in so many systems is an unquestioning, eager acceptance of faulty premises about what’s best for students, allowing tech companies to simply take over education, set the standards, and dominate every aspect of the process from pre-assessment, to instruction, to testing to information infrastructure.
And all the while scraping your kids’ lives for data.
Educational technology is a gift for many reasons. It’s not evil. It’s even a Godsend to some who, because of educational technology, can access information and develop skills they wouldn’t be able to otherwise because of home situations, cultural conditions or even disabilities. Certain classes require a lot of computer work. No question, no argument.
I think what I’m simply trying to say is that with this, as with everything else, we always have to be deeply aware of our temptations and our worst instincts: our temptations to take the easy way out, to grab attention quickly but then, on the other hand, make things quiet, manageable and quantifiable as a room full of kids in headphones swipe, tap and study their screens.
OKAY. NOW.
Basic point:
There was a time when a high school English class that was reading, say… let’s pick a title out of the air…oh, maybe…1984? Farenheit 451? Yeah, one of those – the school or the district would maybe buy a set of the books for the class, and maybe those books would get handed down year after year, scribbled in, underlined, covers worn…but whoever paid for those books would have paid once.
With the new wonders of digital education? No more!
Over the past decade, Silicon Valley’s tech behemoths have discreetly and methodically tightened their grip on American schools, and the pandemic has given them license to squeeze even tighter. By 2017, tens of millions of students were already using Google Chromebooks and apps for reading, writing, and turning in their work. Google Classroom now has more than 100 million users worldwide—nearly seven times the number reported in The New York Times three years ago. When we emerge from the pandemic, schools will be even more reliant on such systems. Industry is bolting an adamantine layer of technology onto the world’s classrooms, in what amounts to a stealth form of privatization.
The benefits of e-books may seem obvious. They should provide a cheap, convenient way to supply millions of kids with classic novels: They don’t wear out, they can’t get lost or be defaced with underlining, doodles, or the name of your latest crush, and, with a pandemic still raging, they provide a safe, instantaneous way to distribute books to students who are stuck at home.
But in practice, this convenience comes at a staggering cost. Billion-dollar companies like Follett and EBSCO are renting e-books to schools each year, rather than selling them permanent copies. By locking school districts into contracts that turn them into captive consumers, corporate tech providers are draining public education budgets that don’t have a penny to spare.
So how much does it cost for a school to rent a book? I asked Chrystal Woodcock, library media supervisor for the Menifee Union School District in Southern California.
The Diary of Anne Frank, “a really important, classic piece of literature that social studies teachers have taught forever,” Woodcock said, “costs $27 per student for a 12-month subscription.”
In other words, you buy the book for $27, and it just—expires?
Yes, Woodcock said. “You have to budget for that every single year … The Diary of Anne Frank, Lord of the Flies. The books that are part of our ingrained culture. Like in California we read Island of the Blue Dolphins, about a Native American tribe that lived on the islands off the coast.” (A hauntingly lovely book that I was assigned myself as a child, an agreeably raggedy paper copy that had passed through many other hands before mine.)
Paper books are much cheaper than e-books, and studies show that even the youngest readers prefer them. Some providers offer “library editions” with a lifetime guarantee. “So literally, like if a child wrecks it, I just send it back to them and they send me a brand-new book,” Woodcock said. “I’m only paying maybe $15 for that book, and it will last forever.” But the advance of technology in schools, coupled with the pandemic, mean that she has no choice but to pay up for e-books instead.
Menifee is a one-to-one district—each child has access to a tablet or netbook—with some 15 schools serving kindergarten through eighth grade; there are 10 books in the district’s English curriculum. “And I’ve got about 1,200 kids per grade level,” Woodcock said. “I’m looking at having to spend $200,000 to buy those 10 books for the year.”
You may recall – eh, you probably don’t, and that’s okay – that a year ago, I mentioned that the Internet Archive was making available tons of books, in the name of helping everyone out. Well, of course, publishers couldn’t have that, and this piece ends on that note:
Another obvious way to relieve the pressure on schools would be to expand the use of free public resources like the Internet Archive’s Open Library, which lends e-books on traditional library terms (you can’t download books from the Open Library; you can only borrow and read them). Early in the pandemic, the Open Library made waves by creating a temporary resource, the National Emergency Library, dropping restrictions on the number of people who could access a given title simultaneously. With bookstores, libraries, and schools closed all over the world, Internet Archive staff reasoned, students needed emergency access to books.
In a better world, Chrystal Woodcock would have been able to offer her students two weeks’ access to Open Library versions of Cat’s Cradle and The Bluest Eye. But Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House—four of the world’s largest publishers, representing in excess of $10 billion in annual revenue—jumped at the chance to sue the Internet Archive, and forced it to shut down the National Emergency Library.
The suit seeks to destroy the Open Library altogether. But what publishers truly want is the end of ownership. If they win, books will someday become like movies on Netflix—something that schools, and all of us, will have to keep paying for forever.
And that’s it. “The end of ownership.”
Well, don’t let them. Buy your own copies – books, music, films – and build up your own censorship-cancellation-removal-corporate profit- free library.
Charlotte was Both 