Gordon Haber

American education in the 21st century. Photo: Library of Congress.

The tide of bullshit keeps flowing.

Techno Sapiens is a technology podcast that asks if “machines will solve our problems, or make them worse.” One host ostensibly takes a boosterish view of technology, the other skeptical. After listening to their recent podcast on MOOCs, I found it hard to discern who was supposed to be which.

Anyway their guest was Daphne Koller, a computer science professor at Stanford and president of Coursera, the MOOC company. Quelle surprise, Koller is bullish on MOOCs.

Whatever. It’s her business, it’s not like she’s going to say, “MOOCs suck. We’re shutting down tomorrow.” I found it more problematic that 95% of the podcast focused on how MOOCs would effect the professoriat. There was talk about how MOOCs might create a “star system” among professors, making life hard for teachers at B- or C-level colleges. To which I would respond, who gives a shit if the students are learning? But students didn’t come up much in the podcast, nor education in general. Unless you count the lawyer shoehorning in that he went to Harvard Law.

Really it’s not surprising that there was little mention of students or (God forbid) how MOOCs fit into the purpose of higher education. Because behind it all is the assumption that (a) market forces are as immutable as gravity and (b) the purpose of education is always instrumental.

Now, unlike many of my colleagues I have nothing against capitalism. I only believe that there are some segments of American life where market forces need not apply. We should stop all this nonsense about running government like a business, for example. And we should stop thinking about education as a product.

Education is long, messy and inefficient. It is an investment in human beings. Yes its goal is to prepare young people for the marketplace. But don’t we also educate to teach a young person how to arrive at informed decisions? To help them become literate? To provide a basis of general knowledge?

(If you believe that American education is already doing the above, then ask a college student when the Civil War occurred. Go ahead, try it. Then try not to jump out the nearest window.)

I find it deeply ironic, in a depressing way, that our intensely individualistic nation has turned the education of its young people over to the standardizers. The lowest common denominator is now the only denominator. Because that way you make more money.

Make no mistake: the destruction of American education is in large part due to the application of the profit motive. When a corporation owns (say) a charter school, it might do a great job with the students, but its primary purpose for existing will always be to make money. (By suckling at the government teat, I might add.) No matter what they tell you, students come second.

So when MOOC companies talk about providing educational materials to non-traditional students and blah blah fuckety blah, you better believe that what they really want is to provide certificates and degrees just like bricks-and-mortar universities, because everybody knows there’s money to be made in the education business, even when they pretend otherwise.

Again, I have nothing against people making money, and like a good American, I hope to earn some myself one day. I am, however, against the entrenched assumption that education is just another market, and frankly I am nauseated when that assumption is reflected by people who should fucking know better.