13 ms·

Monopoly Technology Platforms Are Colonizing Education

207 points by partingshots 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
This is a bait and switch. Forcing you to do business with Google (which involves giving up some of your civil rights in their ToS) to get what you've already paid tax dollars to receive is... bogus, to put it lightly. We really need to do better around enforcing laws related to gating access to public services behind signup walls. I was recently interviewed and the discussion ended up on this exact topic: https://criticalfuture.tech/issue-2-december-2020-jeffrey-paul-cb072e5e8f/ https://criticalfuture.tech/issue-2-december-2020-jeffrey-pa...
- christophilus 6y ago
  This is my biggest problem with it. Students have no choice in what technology they run. It is forced on them, and they have no choice but to accept the ToS. Now, I’d be all for a course on why those ToS are BS, and how to go about running free software on the devices.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  This is also notable because in EU GDPR, under 16s/under 13s can't consent to corporations handling their data (can't open a regular Google account) An educational purpose gives corporations a "legitimate interest"-type argument for collecting whatever data they want, anyway.
hombre_fatal 6y ago
I'm so tired of articles like this that never enumerate solutions. Anyone can enumerate the bad things about something. You don't need to know anything about the situation to do that, so why leave the analysis at the minimally-developed step? Analyzing the situation before schools ever used cloud platforms and why these platforms are alluring to begin with should be a big part of this discussion, because you must understand how you got here to ever understand where to go. For example, when I was high school in the early 2000s, the most advanced setup my high school had was for students to use USB sticks or email the teachers assignments, and it sucked for everyone. The teachers each came up with their own effort to track files. And there was a lot of work for teachers, e.g. students forgetting to attach the file. Or, a clever hackerman such as myself, deleting a couple bytes in the file before attaching it to buy myself an extra day. In university, the school used Blackboard which is apparently very expensive and definitely very underwhelming. After those two experiences, I'm not surprised that Google suite is a true breath of fresh air for schools and students alike. I know nothing about the education system beyond this post, so I would love to hear something more informative about the situation than "capitalism bad".
- dreen 6y ago
  Blackboard is terrible software. I have a feeling it's the most classic example of "design by committee" where all decisions lie with admin staff who never ever have to use the software. They just approve whatever has the biggest list of features. They earn so much money from tuition fees and care so little for usability of basic tools its astounding. I'm not in education software myself but it seems to me a solution of sorts would be to push for standardization: - open data exchange formats - open communication protocols - open social identity platforms This doesn't fix the problem but at least it gives power to the people to do so. However, it won't happen on its own because it's not in the best interest of anyone currently in position to do anything about it.
  - jka 6y ago
    Do you have any experience with EdX[1], out of interest? While I can't speak for the specific formats and protocols they use, they're a non-profit, are founded & governed by educational institutions, and develop their service using an open source software model. Those aren't guaranteed to result in a better result for users and institutions of course, but they would seem to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios that fee-based for-profit platforms might find themselves developing into. [1] - https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us
    - ghaff 6y ago
      EdX was trying to create a community around their software as well. Although the person I know who was there working on that left and I don't know the current status. That's only part of the solution though. Even if EdX, as far as it goes, is an open platform, someone needs to run and support it for schools, you need email and doc sharing, etc. etc. It's fine to say that everyone should just run Linux, OpenOffice, and so forth and just shrug if that's too complicated for a lot of students and teachers. But that's not an actual solution. In principle, the government at some level could do its own collaborative/learning software and host it but people would perhaps rightly then ask why the government isn't using readily available commercial off the shelf software like most companies do.
dijit 6y ago
Are? Don’t you mean have? I grew up in a Microsoft classroom. “Computing” was excel and word.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  I was probably quite lucky to have a former programmer teaching me. As a 15 year old the teacher was absolutely hammering us about readability, variable names, and more philosophical aspects of writing good code. I didn't exactly do him proud by writing a Turing complete interpreter for my coursework, when we were supposed to be making a troubleshooting guide, but it definitely rubbed off on me. He also taught us to touch-type. I'm not that fast (95-ish WPM) but seeing people my age fumble around pecking away at the keyboard is a bit sad.
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    I learned touch typing from out head football coach/athletic director (my school required you taught one class as a fte). Giant man. Basically said "don't be like me kids" and comically fumbled through 20wpm. For some bro kids back in the 90s having someone like that mock your typing was very effective. (He was nice to non jocks). College football coach cemented it a bit more saying he had to pay someone to type his master's project in for him. By that time I had started coding classes and that's what really upped my wpm. I think not being able to type is one of the more ironic reverse sexisms currently. Many schools didn't allow boys to take typing or home ec, nor girls to take shop. Now you see granddad's struggle to communicate (my uncle doesn't even have a phone my aunt does), and the grandmother's being quite fluent.
    - throwaway201103 6y ago
      > Many schools didn't allow boys to take typing or home ec, nor girls to take shop. When/where was this? There were most definitely boys in home ec and girls in shop when I was in middle school (late 1970s). And many boys took typing in high school. This was in a conservative midwestern state.
boomboomsubban 6y ago
I wonder if initiatives like this could play any role in things like the Gates Foundation donating billions of dollars to k-12 education policies.
rmrfstar 6y ago
Chromebooks are fine, if they boot from coreboot to debian. If you don't teach people to value individual liberty, a lot of people won't. Maybe that makes good workers, but I doubt it makes a good civilization. "The deepest reason for using free software in schools is for moral education. We expect schools to teach students basic facts and useful skills, but that is only part of their job. The most fundamental task of schools is to teach good citizenship, including the habit of helping others" [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.en.html https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.en.html
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Veen 6y ago
  Moral education according to the Gospel of GNU is not what schools and teachers are incentivized to achieve. They don't give a crap about that because they're too busy trying to get kids through tests on shoestring budgets. The problem won't be solved by preaching, but by providing software at least as capable as Google Drive without the monopolistic tendencies. If you have a solution to that dilemna, I'm sure teachers will be all ears.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > The problem won't be solved by preaching, but by providing software at least as capable as Google Drive without the monopolistic tendencies. If you have a solution to that dilemna, I'm sure teachers will be all ears. Teachers have zero time or resource--tools like this need to be managed by not teachers. Schools have no budget--tools like this will land where the cost is least. That solution exists--it's called G-Suite on Chromebooks. The admin time and cost drives everything in the schools.
- souprock 6y ago
  Individual liberty is not so great for a kid who likes games and useless videos more than doing homework. Somewhere around 1% of the kids can be responsible. Letting the rest go feral isn't proper parenting or school administration.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
No mention of wikipedia and khanacademy.
pelasaco 6y ago
TL;DR I would love to see the schools in Germany using Google G. Suite for education. Long story: Shortly before the first lockdown was announced in Germany, I helped one school to setup the Google G. Suite for education and run a pilot. Cheap solution, everything works, easy to share exercises and the solutions. Mobile first solution, features-wise was everything that every teacher dreamed of. Then as expected, because of "privacy issues" (none of them really existed, we talk about them later) the School had to move to a closed source, half-backed state solution (that nobody knows how much costs to develop and run). From the user point of view (Teachers and Kids) and web development best practices in 2020. Most schools are not using it and instead are trying to do everything offline. We keep running G. Suite for extracurricular activities, which are optional, but mostly used by kids that want to go to the High School. As usual I'm sure that the state-based, closed source, tax-payer supported solution, isn't the best one. References: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/the-absurdity-of-germanys-privacy-obsession-li.122671 https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/the-absurdity-of-germanys... https://www.thelocal.de/20200908/german-schools-lag-behind-other-countries-when-it-comes-to-digital-learning https://www.thelocal.de/20200908/german-schools-lag-behind-o...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- souprock 6y ago
  Assign pseudonyms to the kids. Hans Pfeil --> Lo Wang Consider also: tor browser, other VPN, blocking connections from browsers not in private mode, browser in VirtualBox, etc.
  - pelasaco 6y ago
    We used pseudonyms. The other extra layers of technologies are simply not a reality in the schools (Elementary Schools). Either the parents don't care or in some cases (Refugee kids), they just have one mobile telephone to access the internet.
nsxwolf 6y ago
What was wrong with paper?
- iNate2000 6y ago
  I hate the way it gets fuzzy when I erase and rewrite the same sentence over and over. And don’t get me started on marker ink bleeding!
- nsxwolf 6y ago
  Literally just now I realized my daughter was finishing an e-learning assignment where she was recording her own voice on this web app on her school provided Chromebook. She caught me discussing a private matter in the background and it is now uploaded and can’t be deleted. Yes, the Zoom calls have the same potential but those are scheduled so we at least know when we are being listened to. What am I to take away from this? That you should just assume you’re always being recorded in your own home and act accordingly? All because paper isn’t cool anymore. I suppose I’m expected to audit every feature of every piece of ephemeral e-learning software that blows like a whirlwind through my home. But 10 years ago, I didn’t have to ask if an assignment had a listening device in it. If I had, people in white coats would have come to take me away.
  - indymike 6y ago
    Right now, the schools are treating the kids as they have not rights. For example, no right to delete the video with the private conversation. I had to lawyer up to deal with my kids school pushing "safety" software on the computers my kids use (that I own, that connect in my home network) that was leaking data to Chinese and Indian servers (there was some kind of affiliate background ad clicker that was bundled with the software or something). This will have to change.
    - Nkuna 6y ago
      > Chinese and Indian servers Was this distinction necessary to make your point? Last I checked, the Chinese and Indian population do not have a duopoly on ad fraud/malware. Your racist projections conveniently sidestep the elephant in the room. Said monopolists: 1) are aware of ad fraud on their platforms, 2) enable this fraud, 3) have been caught in their own lies about ad metrics, and 4) are wilfully ignorant of said fraud because $$$. Specifically calling them out for something everyone does is irresponsible and backward. This will have to change.
tdburn 6y ago
Privatize schools
friedman23 6y ago
Their use of language is so ham fisted it's comical.
Reedx 6y ago
If anything, tech is breaking up the education monopoly. Giving people more choices than we previously had.
jccalhoun 6y ago
I think the largest tech monopoly platform in education is the text book publishing racket. They have moved on from trying to come out with "new" versions every couple years to selling "ebook" platforms that are, of course, drmed and proprietary and students can only access for a limited time. So even if you wanted to keep your books you can't. To make things worse, at least in my field, the only "interactive" platforms are pretty pointless and consist of watching a video and answering questions about it. I was using a creative commons book but I was "asked" to use the same book as others so it wouldn't be confusing for the bookstore (which is owned by Barnes and Noble who run tons of college bookstores)
- judge2020 6y ago
  This. Cengage is the one I've had to use - your take tests within cengage's website, which is only accessible by buying the book, and the grades are reported back to the school's online course platform (blackboard for me). I didn't ask, but I would be surprised if the instructor offered any alternative to taking those tests and hands-on labs.
  - jccalhoun 6y ago
    Yes, I didn't even mention that these "ebook" and "interactive platforms" are really just ways to eliminate the used book market so that students can't buy used books or use older editions that are 90% the same.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      In a way, I'd prefer books that are licensed to just me and 50% cheaper just so I don't have to deal with selling books back at 40% of their purchase price.
      - p1necone 6y ago
        They're only 50% cheaper because they want to make them more attractive than physical copies. If they ever kill the physical publishing they will charge whatever the hell they want for DRM'd digital copies again. The actual printing/shipping costs are a rather small percentage of the full cost of textbooks.
threesmegiste 6y ago
I am really done with this kind if tech news. Most biased times for tech news. Article starts with Facebook but nothing mentioned in article about Facebook. Its a bandwagon. I will never believe any articles mentioning Facebook.
boxfire 6y ago
Uh I always saw the analysis packages specific to a domain being pushed so hard on students as their exclusive means of learning material to be this form of colonization. Matlab, SAS, Mathematica, each pushed in programs I enrolled in and students out of them are dependent so much they are guranteed buys (and set the next generation into working 'ONLY' via those software). Sure they have competitors, but there is so much lock-in that practically if you learned how to do all your analysis for a particular program in one you are never leaving and totally dependent. Some like me resist. Use R! Octave! Maxima! Of course the classes would ask for things specifically not easy to do in the free versions that are nearly turn-key in the commercial ones. This form of 'get-em before they know any better' should be regulated (by the university, not the government), and professors should be encouraging unique solutions, not punishing out of the box thinking. Whatever, its an empire, carved up for the industrialists and investors. Nothing to see here, move along.
- merely-unlikely 6y ago
  I agree and I’d go further that when possible having the student code their own solution would be far more educational than using a package/software someone else built
young_unixer 6y ago
> The most successful colonizer has been Google. A recent report indicates that Google’s G-Suite for Education is being used by half the teachers and students in the U.S. Are you fucking kidding me? The most successful "colonizer" has always been Microsoft! In most schools around the world the PCs are running Windows exclusively and you are taught how to use Microsoft Office tools. The influence and vendor lock-in Microsoft have had in the education sphere during the last 2-3 decades is much bigger than whatever Google is doing now.
- ravi-delia 6y ago
  That absolutely was true, but today Google reigns supreme, at least in New Jersey. Almost all class laptops are chromebooks, and the low end models are so cheap that it actually isn't crazy at all to hand them out to every student. G-Suite, especially Google Docs has completely supplanted Microsoft products. Few middle- or high-schoolers ever touch them.
  - rvense 6y ago
    I've already read people complaining that kids leave school without knowing how to use a "real computer", meaning Windows.
    - sircastor 6y ago
      This was the same complaint people had when Macs were in schools.
      - rvense 6y ago
        Egh, well, I'm a Linux user and software developer, and I've had one job that forced me use a Mac but none that forced me to use Windows.
        b5 6y ago
        You're not most people: most people will work in environments that use Windows PCs. I've worked a bunch of office jobs, and every one has used Windows.
dchess 6y ago
As someone that works in K-12 technology (and has for 15 years), the real monopolies aren't the tech giants, they're the Pearsons and Houghton Mifflins of the world that buy out competitors and lock school districts into platforms they can't escape without substantial migration costs. And don't even get me started on the way they have kept education hostage to high stakes tests.
- ngold 6y ago
  Education already does not have enough money, then these vampires come in with lock in anti competitive agreements. Ugg. I wish that money went to teachers.
  - SllX 6y ago
    Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money, but too much of it is leeched out by low value vendors charging high premiums for easily replaced commodities, low value administrative staff performing easily automated tasks, and public-sector unions filling their coffers and the coffers of friendly politicians, long before teachers receive a penny, many of which then have to shell out for materials out of their own pockets, materials which ought to be provided for by their employers. I went to public schools which were thick with staff, and for the life of me I could never figure out why there was any more staff than the faculty, the principal, the vice principal, a secretary and maybe a janitor and lunch lady. Even the libraries, IT tasks and sports equipment were maintained by faculty. Janitorial tasks and catering could be good exercises for the kids if you wanted to cut some staff because frankly a good number of kids, myself included, could have used the extra discipline growing up. Meanwhile there were too many unused classrooms, too many kids per class, too few seats and tables and too few lockers. Teachers were paying for printouts and unreturned textbooks (that the students didn’t return to the teacher) but the administration sure had a thick wad of newsletters, handbooks, forms, reports (not all to do with the students, mostly administrative crap) and all manner of garbage for us to take home every single week.
    - bsder 6y ago
      > Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money It doesn't--even if you get rid of the "administrative staff". The Gates Foundation went through and analyzed this for younger students (early middle school and younger). It takes roughly $15K per student do what you need: two fully qualified adults in a classroom of 15 with sufficient resources. This allows you to bring your poor performers up to average in 3 years. Not good--just average. Every single one of those initiatives were cancelled because of money. People claim they want better education systems--until they have to actually pay for it.
jejones3141 6y ago
It's ironic that the Institute for Public Education should be concerned about monopoly technology platforms. The educational monopoly to be concerned about is government schools.
- quacked 6y ago
  Gatto? Is that you?
vulcan01 6y ago
For the other high school (maybe even college?) kids out there that want a free alternative (especially if your teacher doesn't specify a textbook), OpenStax by Rice University is pretty good. I've used their textbooks for the past few years. https://openstax.org https://openstax.org
- ngmc 6y ago
  OpenStax books are a great resource! I reference them in the high school math classes I teach.
throwawaysea 6y ago
> The way these monopolies have been colonizing public education has, however, gone almost unnoticed. This is rampant privatization sneaking in as essential to “21st Century learning.” There is a great deal of irony to the premise of this article, and the careless use of the term 'colonizing' is downright offensive. Actual colonization of education has happened on the backs of public education as a means of centralized indoctrination and cultural control. Private education does not have the same consistent history of colonization. For example, in India the British introduced the English education system as part of a push known as Macaulayism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaulayism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaulayism). Macaulay literally believed that the British empire had a moral right to colonization. In India, he helped realize this through the English Education Act of 1835 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Education_Act_1835 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Education_Act_1835), which put a end to traditional education systems. Those traditional systems (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurukula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurukula) were much more decentralized and distributed, and relied on spoken language to forward the inherited language of the Indian peoples. The change to a one size fits all public education system cut off inherited learning and broke cultural continuity in a way that is hard to recover from to this day. This played out again more recently in Tibet (https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-education-policy-tibet/tibetan-medium-schooling-under-threat https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-educa...). The introduction of centralized public schools in Tiber, with an emphasis on bilingual education (slowly displacing Tibetan with Chinese languages), and shared education standards (a way to indoctrinate children with one set of political/cultural views) are all really pathways to completing the colonization of Tibet by China. The true education monopoly tends to be in centralized government-driven education systems where parents are forced to pay into the system and children are forced to attend. Public education is exactly that. In America for example, we largely have a single system, with shared standards like Common Core (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_In...) and with a monolithic workforce. After all, the National Education Association is the largest labor union in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association). This makes education a common route for implementing political goals, which we see in things like the NEA pushing its educators to deploy the factually-incorrect "1619 Project" into classrooms because it aligns with their body's political culture. When the same patterns played out in the Soviet Union, through institutions like their Ministry of Culture, Americans were happy to label it as propaganda and indoctrination. And yet they can't see the same problems in their own system. What we need is decentralization of education, which does require introducing private education as a competitive alternative against public education. Parents should be able to choose which schools their children attend. They need more choice in terms of what they are taught and what they spend their time on. Local jurisdictions need locality of choice, rather than being chained down by unions or top-down standards imposed by state or federal governments. Competition in education, both through private and public channels, is critical. The lack of it amounts to a monopoly held by the public education institution. And as for this article - it's focus on technology choices is a red herring at best, manufacturing a problem and summoning outrage when the real problems with the "colonization" of education lie elsewhere.
3gg 6y ago
https://my.fsf.org/give-students-userfreedom https://my.fsf.org/give-students-userfreedom This is an old problem that the FSF has been warning about for years, if not decades.

207 points by partingshots 6y ago

This is a bait and switch. Forcing you to do business with Google (which involves giving up some of your civil rights in their ToS) to get what you've already paid tax dollars to receive is... bogus, to put it lightly. We really need to do better around enforcing laws related to gating access to public services behind signup walls. I was recently interviewed and the discussion ended up on this exact topic: https://criticalfuture.tech/issue-2-december-2020-jeffrey-paul-cb072e5e8f/ https://criticalfuture.tech/issue-2-december-2020-jeffrey-pa...

christophilus 6y ago
This is my biggest problem with it. Students have no choice in what technology they run. It is forced on them, and they have no choice but to accept the ToS. Now, I’d be all for a course on why those ToS are BS, and how to go about running free software on the devices.
throwaway2245 6y ago
This is also notable because in EU GDPR, under 16s/under 13s can't consent to corporations handling their data (can't open a regular Google account) An educational purpose gives corporations a "legitimate interest"-type argument for collecting whatever data they want, anyway.

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I'm so tired of articles like this that never enumerate solutions. Anyone can enumerate the bad things about something. You don't need to know anything about the situation to do that, so why leave the analysis at the minimally-developed step? Analyzing the situation before schools ever used cloud platforms and why these platforms are alluring to begin with should be a big part of this discussion, because you must understand how you got here to ever understand where to go. For example, when I was high school in the early 2000s, the most advanced setup my high school had was for students to use USB sticks or email the teachers assignments, and it sucked for everyone. The teachers each came up with their own effort to track files. And there was a lot of work for teachers, e.g. students forgetting to attach the file. Or, a clever hackerman such as myself, deleting a couple bytes in the file before attaching it to buy myself an extra day. In university, the school used Blackboard which is apparently very expensive and definitely very underwhelming. After those two experiences, I'm not surprised that Google suite is a true breath of fresh air for schools and students alike. I know nothing about the education system beyond this post, so I would love to hear something more informative about the situation than "capitalism bad".

dreen 6y ago
Blackboard is terrible software. I have a feeling it's the most classic example of "design by committee" where all decisions lie with admin staff who never ever have to use the software. They just approve whatever has the biggest list of features. They earn so much money from tuition fees and care so little for usability of basic tools its astounding. I'm not in education software myself but it seems to me a solution of sorts would be to push for standardization: - open data exchange formats - open communication protocols - open social identity platforms This doesn't fix the problem but at least it gives power to the people to do so. However, it won't happen on its own because it's not in the best interest of anyone currently in position to do anything about it.
- jka 6y ago
  Do you have any experience with EdX[1], out of interest? While I can't speak for the specific formats and protocols they use, they're a non-profit, are founded & governed by educational institutions, and develop their service using an open source software model. Those aren't guaranteed to result in a better result for users and institutions of course, but they would seem to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios that fee-based for-profit platforms might find themselves developing into. [1] - https://www.edx.org/about-us https://www.edx.org/about-us
  - ghaff 6y ago
    EdX was trying to create a community around their software as well. Although the person I know who was there working on that left and I don't know the current status. That's only part of the solution though. Even if EdX, as far as it goes, is an open platform, someone needs to run and support it for schools, you need email and doc sharing, etc. etc. It's fine to say that everyone should just run Linux, OpenOffice, and so forth and just shrug if that's too complicated for a lot of students and teachers. But that's not an actual solution. In principle, the government at some level could do its own collaborative/learning software and host it but people would perhaps rightly then ask why the government isn't using readily available commercial off the shelf software like most companies do.

dijit 6y ago

Are? Don’t you mean have? I grew up in a Microsoft classroom. “Computing” was excel and word.

mhh__ 6y ago
I was probably quite lucky to have a former programmer teaching me. As a 15 year old the teacher was absolutely hammering us about readability, variable names, and more philosophical aspects of writing good code. I didn't exactly do him proud by writing a Turing complete interpreter for my coursework, when we were supposed to be making a troubleshooting guide, but it definitely rubbed off on me. He also taught us to touch-type. I'm not that fast (95-ish WPM) but seeing people my age fumble around pecking away at the keyboard is a bit sad.
- grogenaut 6y ago
  I learned touch typing from out head football coach/athletic director (my school required you taught one class as a fte). Giant man. Basically said "don't be like me kids" and comically fumbled through 20wpm. For some bro kids back in the 90s having someone like that mock your typing was very effective. (He was nice to non jocks). College football coach cemented it a bit more saying he had to pay someone to type his master's project in for him. By that time I had started coding classes and that's what really upped my wpm. I think not being able to type is one of the more ironic reverse sexisms currently. Many schools didn't allow boys to take typing or home ec, nor girls to take shop. Now you see granddad's struggle to communicate (my uncle doesn't even have a phone my aunt does), and the grandmother's being quite fluent.
  - throwaway201103 6y ago
    > Many schools didn't allow boys to take typing or home ec, nor girls to take shop. When/where was this? There were most definitely boys in home ec and girls in shop when I was in middle school (late 1970s). And many boys took typing in high school. This was in a conservative midwestern state.

boomboomsubban 6y ago

I wonder if initiatives like this could play any role in things like the Gates Foundation donating billions of dollars to k-12 education policies.

rmrfstar 6y ago

Chromebooks are fine, if they boot from coreboot to debian. If you don't teach people to value individual liberty, a lot of people won't. Maybe that makes good workers, but I doubt it makes a good civilization. "The deepest reason for using free software in schools is for moral education. We expect schools to teach students basic facts and useful skills, but that is only part of their job. The most fundamental task of schools is to teach good citizenship, including the habit of helping others" [1] [1] https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.en.html https://www.gnu.org/education/edu-schools.en.html

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Veen 6y ago
Moral education according to the Gospel of GNU is not what schools and teachers are incentivized to achieve. They don't give a crap about that because they're too busy trying to get kids through tests on shoestring budgets. The problem won't be solved by preaching, but by providing software at least as capable as Google Drive without the monopolistic tendencies. If you have a solution to that dilemna, I'm sure teachers will be all ears.
- bsder 6y ago
  > The problem won't be solved by preaching, but by providing software at least as capable as Google Drive without the monopolistic tendencies. If you have a solution to that dilemna, I'm sure teachers will be all ears. Teachers have zero time or resource--tools like this need to be managed by not teachers. Schools have no budget--tools like this will land where the cost is least. That solution exists--it's called G-Suite on Chromebooks. The admin time and cost drives everything in the schools.
souprock 6y ago
Individual liberty is not so great for a kid who likes games and useless videos more than doing homework. Somewhere around 1% of the kids can be responsible. Letting the rest go feral isn't proper parenting or school administration.

amadeuspagel 6y ago

No mention of wikipedia and khanacademy.

pelasaco 6y ago

TL;DR I would love to see the schools in Germany using Google G. Suite for education. Long story: Shortly before the first lockdown was announced in Germany, I helped one school to setup the Google G. Suite for education and run a pilot. Cheap solution, everything works, easy to share exercises and the solutions. Mobile first solution, features-wise was everything that every teacher dreamed of. Then as expected, because of "privacy issues" (none of them really existed, we talk about them later) the School had to move to a closed source, half-backed state solution (that nobody knows how much costs to develop and run). From the user point of view (Teachers and Kids) and web development best practices in 2020. Most schools are not using it and instead are trying to do everything offline. We keep running G. Suite for extracurricular activities, which are optional, but mostly used by kids that want to go to the High School. As usual I'm sure that the state-based, closed source, tax-payer supported solution, isn't the best one. References: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/the-absurdity-of-germanys-privacy-obsession-li.122671 https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/the-absurdity-of-germanys... https://www.thelocal.de/20200908/german-schools-lag-behind-other-countries-when-it-comes-to-digital-learning https://www.thelocal.de/20200908/german-schools-lag-behind-o...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
souprock 6y ago
Assign pseudonyms to the kids. Hans Pfeil --> Lo Wang Consider also: tor browser, other VPN, blocking connections from browsers not in private mode, browser in VirtualBox, etc.
- pelasaco 6y ago
  We used pseudonyms. The other extra layers of technologies are simply not a reality in the schools (Elementary Schools). Either the parents don't care or in some cases (Refugee kids), they just have one mobile telephone to access the internet.

nsxwolf 6y ago

What was wrong with paper?

iNate2000 6y ago
I hate the way it gets fuzzy when I erase and rewrite the same sentence over and over. And don’t get me started on marker ink bleeding!
nsxwolf 6y ago
Literally just now I realized my daughter was finishing an e-learning assignment where she was recording her own voice on this web app on her school provided Chromebook. She caught me discussing a private matter in the background and it is now uploaded and can’t be deleted. Yes, the Zoom calls have the same potential but those are scheduled so we at least know when we are being listened to. What am I to take away from this? That you should just assume you’re always being recorded in your own home and act accordingly? All because paper isn’t cool anymore. I suppose I’m expected to audit every feature of every piece of ephemeral e-learning software that blows like a whirlwind through my home. But 10 years ago, I didn’t have to ask if an assignment had a listening device in it. If I had, people in white coats would have come to take me away.
- indymike 6y ago
  Right now, the schools are treating the kids as they have not rights. For example, no right to delete the video with the private conversation. I had to lawyer up to deal with my kids school pushing "safety" software on the computers my kids use (that I own, that connect in my home network) that was leaking data to Chinese and Indian servers (there was some kind of affiliate background ad clicker that was bundled with the software or something). This will have to change.
  - Nkuna 6y ago
    > Chinese and Indian servers Was this distinction necessary to make your point? Last I checked, the Chinese and Indian population do not have a duopoly on ad fraud/malware. Your racist projections conveniently sidestep the elephant in the room. Said monopolists: 1) are aware of ad fraud on their platforms, 2) enable this fraud, 3) have been caught in their own lies about ad metrics, and 4) are wilfully ignorant of said fraud because $$$. Specifically calling them out for something everyone does is irresponsible and backward. This will have to change.

tdburn 6y ago

Privatize schools

friedman23 6y ago

Their use of language is so ham fisted it's comical.

Reedx 6y ago

If anything, tech is breaking up the education monopoly. Giving people more choices than we previously had.

jccalhoun 6y ago

I think the largest tech monopoly platform in education is the text book publishing racket. They have moved on from trying to come out with "new" versions every couple years to selling "ebook" platforms that are, of course, drmed and proprietary and students can only access for a limited time. So even if you wanted to keep your books you can't. To make things worse, at least in my field, the only "interactive" platforms are pretty pointless and consist of watching a video and answering questions about it. I was using a creative commons book but I was "asked" to use the same book as others so it wouldn't be confusing for the bookstore (which is owned by Barnes and Noble who run tons of college bookstores)

judge2020 6y ago
This. Cengage is the one I've had to use - your take tests within cengage's website, which is only accessible by buying the book, and the grades are reported back to the school's online course platform (blackboard for me). I didn't ask, but I would be surprised if the instructor offered any alternative to taking those tests and hands-on labs.
- jccalhoun 6y ago
  Yes, I didn't even mention that these "ebook" and "interactive platforms" are really just ways to eliminate the used book market so that students can't buy used books or use older editions that are 90% the same.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    In a way, I'd prefer books that are licensed to just me and 50% cheaper just so I don't have to deal with selling books back at 40% of their purchase price.
    - p1necone 6y ago
      They're only 50% cheaper because they want to make them more attractive than physical copies. If they ever kill the physical publishing they will charge whatever the hell they want for DRM'd digital copies again. The actual printing/shipping costs are a rather small percentage of the full cost of textbooks.

threesmegiste 6y ago

I am really done with this kind if tech news. Most biased times for tech news. Article starts with Facebook but nothing mentioned in article about Facebook. Its a bandwagon. I will never believe any articles mentioning Facebook.

boxfire 6y ago

Uh I always saw the analysis packages specific to a domain being pushed so hard on students as their exclusive means of learning material to be this form of colonization. Matlab, SAS, Mathematica, each pushed in programs I enrolled in and students out of them are dependent so much they are guranteed buys (and set the next generation into working 'ONLY' via those software). Sure they have competitors, but there is so much lock-in that practically if you learned how to do all your analysis for a particular program in one you are never leaving and totally dependent. Some like me resist. Use R! Octave! Maxima! Of course the classes would ask for things specifically not easy to do in the free versions that are nearly turn-key in the commercial ones. This form of 'get-em before they know any better' should be regulated (by the university, not the government), and professors should be encouraging unique solutions, not punishing out of the box thinking. Whatever, its an empire, carved up for the industrialists and investors. Nothing to see here, move along.

merely-unlikely 6y ago
I agree and I’d go further that when possible having the student code their own solution would be far more educational than using a package/software someone else built

young_unixer 6y ago

> The most successful colonizer has been Google. A recent report indicates that Google’s G-Suite for Education is being used by half the teachers and students in the U.S. Are you fucking kidding me? The most successful "colonizer" has always been Microsoft! In most schools around the world the PCs are running Windows exclusively and you are taught how to use Microsoft Office tools. The influence and vendor lock-in Microsoft have had in the education sphere during the last 2-3 decades is much bigger than whatever Google is doing now.

ravi-delia 6y ago
That absolutely was true, but today Google reigns supreme, at least in New Jersey. Almost all class laptops are chromebooks, and the low end models are so cheap that it actually isn't crazy at all to hand them out to every student. G-Suite, especially Google Docs has completely supplanted Microsoft products. Few middle- or high-schoolers ever touch them.
- rvense 6y ago
  I've already read people complaining that kids leave school without knowing how to use a "real computer", meaning Windows.
  - sircastor 6y ago
    This was the same complaint people had when Macs were in schools.
    - rvense 6y ago
      Egh, well, I'm a Linux user and software developer, and I've had one job that forced me use a Mac but none that forced me to use Windows.
      - b5 6y ago
        You're not most people: most people will work in environments that use Windows PCs. I've worked a bunch of office jobs, and every one has used Windows.

dchess 6y ago

As someone that works in K-12 technology (and has for 15 years), the real monopolies aren't the tech giants, they're the Pearsons and Houghton Mifflins of the world that buy out competitors and lock school districts into platforms they can't escape without substantial migration costs. And don't even get me started on the way they have kept education hostage to high stakes tests.

ngold 6y ago
Education already does not have enough money, then these vampires come in with lock in anti competitive agreements. Ugg. I wish that money went to teachers.
- SllX 6y ago
  Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money, but too much of it is leeched out by low value vendors charging high premiums for easily replaced commodities, low value administrative staff performing easily automated tasks, and public-sector unions filling their coffers and the coffers of friendly politicians, long before teachers receive a penny, many of which then have to shell out for materials out of their own pockets, materials which ought to be provided for by their employers. I went to public schools which were thick with staff, and for the life of me I could never figure out why there was any more staff than the faculty, the principal, the vice principal, a secretary and maybe a janitor and lunch lady. Even the libraries, IT tasks and sports equipment were maintained by faculty. Janitorial tasks and catering could be good exercises for the kids if you wanted to cut some staff because frankly a good number of kids, myself included, could have used the extra discipline growing up. Meanwhile there were too many unused classrooms, too many kids per class, too few seats and tables and too few lockers. Teachers were paying for printouts and unreturned textbooks (that the students didn’t return to the teacher) but the administration sure had a thick wad of newsletters, handbooks, forms, reports (not all to do with the students, mostly administrative crap) and all manner of garbage for us to take home every single week.
  - bsder 6y ago
    > Alternatively: Education actually has plenty of money It doesn't--even if you get rid of the "administrative staff". The Gates Foundation went through and analyzed this for younger students (early middle school and younger). It takes roughly $15K per student do what you need: two fully qualified adults in a classroom of 15 with sufficient resources. This allows you to bring your poor performers up to average in 3 years. Not good--just average. Every single one of those initiatives were cancelled because of money. People claim they want better education systems--until they have to actually pay for it.

jejones3141 6y ago

It's ironic that the Institute for Public Education should be concerned about monopoly technology platforms. The educational monopoly to be concerned about is government schools.

quacked 6y ago
Gatto? Is that you?

vulcan01 6y ago

For the other high school (maybe even college?) kids out there that want a free alternative (especially if your teacher doesn't specify a textbook), OpenStax by Rice University is pretty good. I've used their textbooks for the past few years. https://openstax.org https://openstax.org

ngmc 6y ago
OpenStax books are a great resource! I reference them in the high school math classes I teach.

throwawaysea 6y ago

> The way these monopolies have been colonizing public education has, however, gone almost unnoticed. This is rampant privatization sneaking in as essential to “21st Century learning.” There is a great deal of irony to the premise of this article, and the careless use of the term 'colonizing' is downright offensive. Actual colonization of education has happened on the backs of public education as a means of centralized indoctrination and cultural control. Private education does not have the same consistent history of colonization. For example, in India the British introduced the English education system as part of a push known as Macaulayism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaulayism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaulayism). Macaulay literally believed that the British empire had a moral right to colonization. In India, he helped realize this through the English Education Act of 1835 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Education_Act_1835 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Education_Act_1835), which put a end to traditional education systems. Those traditional systems (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurukula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurukula) were much more decentralized and distributed, and relied on spoken language to forward the inherited language of the Indian peoples. The change to a one size fits all public education system cut off inherited learning and broke cultural continuity in a way that is hard to recover from to this day. This played out again more recently in Tibet (https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-education-policy-tibet/tibetan-medium-schooling-under-threat https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/03/04/chinas-bilingual-educa...). The introduction of centralized public schools in Tiber, with an emphasis on bilingual education (slowly displacing Tibetan with Chinese languages), and shared education standards (a way to indoctrinate children with one set of political/cultural views) are all really pathways to completing the colonization of Tibet by China. The true education monopoly tends to be in centralized government-driven education systems where parents are forced to pay into the system and children are forced to attend. Public education is exactly that. In America for example, we largely have a single system, with shared standards like Common Core (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_In...) and with a monolithic workforce. After all, the National Education Association is the largest labor union in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association). This makes education a common route for implementing political goals, which we see in things like the NEA pushing its educators to deploy the factually-incorrect "1619 Project" into classrooms because it aligns with their body's political culture. When the same patterns played out in the Soviet Union, through institutions like their Ministry of Culture, Americans were happy to label it as propaganda and indoctrination. And yet they can't see the same problems in their own system. What we need is decentralization of education, which does require introducing private education as a competitive alternative against public education. Parents should be able to choose which schools their children attend. They need more choice in terms of what they are taught and what they spend their time on. Local jurisdictions need locality of choice, rather than being chained down by unions or top-down standards imposed by state or federal governments. Competition in education, both through private and public channels, is critical. The lack of it amounts to a monopoly held by the public education institution. And as for this article - it's focus on technology choices is a red herring at best, manufacturing a problem and summoning outrage when the real problems with the "colonization" of education lie elsewhere.

3gg 6y ago

https://my.fsf.org/give-students-userfreedom https://my.fsf.org/give-students-userfreedom This is an old problem that the FSF has been warning about for years, if not decades.