It's a frustrating area for "techies" to get involved with because, like a lot of areas where there's an "establishment", decisions get made by political proc

It's a frustrating area for "techies" to get involved with because, like a lot of areas where there's an "establishment", decisions get made by political processes and "techies" don't have the right credentials. For instance, to be taken seriously as an "educator" I'd need to get a Masters or PhD in education. This (1) would cost a lot of money, and (2) not raise my income (though it might get me a better benefits package), would (3) qualify me for a job I don't want to do, and (4) [most importantly] steal time from hacking on things that might have an impact on education. Another half of it is that, from a systemantic viewpoint (what does the system do vs. what does the system say that it does?) the real thing that "the public" wants from education is a way to pass (i) values and (ii) social status onto their children. Overall, the purpose of the system is to sort people out in social status by something that corresponds somewhat to ability [broadly defined] but as much to the social status of the parents... and to do so in a way that people perceive that "I failed" rather than "I was failed." As Habermas says, this creates a feeling that the 'system' is legitimate which can somewhat compensate for the irrational and erroneous decisions that are made by governments and corporations. (Questions of legitimacy don't come up so much when governments & corporations are successful at managing the economy, since people are busy working and spending...) The other major stakeholders are all self-interested, and they've got pretty good rackets going. You can't entirely blame, say, textbook publishers or teacher's unions for all the problems of education, but they'll fight to the death any change that threatens them. Personally I'm very interested in diffusing knowledge to people who want it -- be that free or for a fee. Some people may differ, but I'm not at all interested in selling products to governments... Because it's not about fun marketing and technology, it's about lobbying (that is, bribing politicians.)