Youtube's Take on the Future of Education

I’ve been spending some time looking at Youtube videos about math education and education in general and came up with two  interesting ones with contrasting points of view. First there is “This Will Revolutionize Education” (7:06/1,558,501 views) where the speaker's main conclusion is: "For as transformative as technology seems to be (…) what really matters is what happens inside the learner's head and making a learner think seems best achieved in a social environment with other learners and a caring teacher.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Not terribly earth shattering. Hard to disagree with that one. But a revolution? I don’t think so. We have had great teachers for ever. (You can find out what it takes to be one with a simple google search.)  In other words, the speaker in the video still believes that this low tech approach will spurn a revolution. Unfortunately the great teachers live on the high end of the bell curve and in all of the years of school reform movements the bell curve hasn’t shifted all that much so I have little confidence that just focusing on improving teachers will make the revolution happen any time soon.

On the other hand CGP Grey in "Digital Aristole: Thoughts on the Future of Education” (5:43/1,511,488 views) doesn’t claim that a revolution in high tech tools will alter the teacher performance bell curve, but rather will send the average teacher from their central position at the front of the class to being a guide on the side. And if the curriculum materials are more engaging for students they may actually learn more than the average student in a more traditional setting. What the author suggests is that every student be given a “digital Aristotle” since having a real Aristotle

available for 1-1 tutoring is not humanly possible, too expensive and not as gifted a teacher as Aristotle was. The Internet has opened up the possibility for great learning. But this doesn’t mean teaching the same old curriculum with shiny new things. Also having personal tutors like Salman Khan available doesn’t guarantee effective personalized learning. What Grey does envision is adaptive technology that will personalize learning in a way that will motivate, inspire and empower students to learn things they are interested in. His vision of a digital Aristotle for everyone will tutor students individually and adapt appropriately over time to produce the most effective resources for each individual student to determine scientifically what works best. He uses Khan Academy as an example of where we are now, but in the future the software will result in a more personalized and effective learning modality that is better than what the average teacher can do with students today.

Being the president of a technology oriented organization you might suspect that I would lean towards Grey’s vision and less towards the human revolution promoted by the previous video. But I’m inspired by both visions. The problem is that we pundits take sides and that doesn’t help in creating a future for our students and teachers that is better than what we have now. What we need is a future where students are pursuing learning things that they are interested in in a deep way. And the teachers job is to guide their students to achieve not only their goals, but also their dreams.