I've heard so many techie pitches for new, more enlightened ways of learning - and they all seem so detached from the realities of primary education that I don'

I've heard so many techie pitches for new, more enlightened ways of learning - and they all seem so detached from the realities of primary education that I don't even know how to process it. I know of engineers who credit their success to being sent to a Montessori school or a Waldorf school, but I imagine the real reason is simply that their parents paid enough attention and had enough money to send them to a small, elite school of any kind. I went to a big, ailing public school in a low-income neighborhood. The challenges faced by the teachers had nothing to do with fixing "authoritarianism" in education (something that this article gets hung up on). They were struggling to make sure the kids show up sober and that by the end of the day, at least some of them know how to read and write. If you want to fix education and improve the society, the ROI on the low end is much better than on the high end. It's less about enlightenment and more about basic functioning in a society.