Day Twenty Seven - a rather dystopian view

Day Twenty Seven

Today I am going to continue on the theme of educational technology that I started yesterday.  This is partly out of frustration that at times borders on despair.   You see there are a lot of start-ups and entrepreneurs who want to partner with universities to give their products either content, credibly or both.  Sometimes these are really good ideas, but more often, they are not.  In Finland they are encouraged in this by the government who thinks that small startups and coding apps are going to be the saviors of the Finnish economy.  I hope they are, but I doubt it. 

Why do I think that you may wonder?  Well to use a single example – at its peak Kodak employed around 145,000 people and many more in the supply chain and through retailers.  The owners, the Eastman family, did become wealthy but a large number of middle class employed by them over many years also saw an improvements in their standard of living.  Now let us think about another photo company, Instagram – started by just 15 people in 2010 and sold two years later for than $1 billion to Facebook.  Facebook itself has only around 5000 or so employees and a few of these are very wealthy.  My belief is that these starts ups by and large will not provide large scale employment or growth for the middle class.  At best a small number of people will get very rich when they sell the company after a couple of years, but most of them will fail.

I think in Finland many are guided or attracted towards education as that is still being seen as the great product that Finland has to export to the world after the demise of Nokia.  This is not without reason and it is true that Finnish education is still a strong brand and the education system does have much to commend it, it is really very good.   Let me clearly state that I am in favour of new technologies that really do enhance learning or help either a teacher or a student in the education process.   What we do not need is another platform, for storing PowerPoint and video files and other content.

But the trouble with so many of these startups, the thing that really does make me ‘facepalm’, is that what they toute themselves as educational solutions.  But a solution to what?    What exactly are they a solution for?  If you ask that question it will often lead to the now boring and familiar ‘education is broken’  or 'education is in crisis' narrative.   Really?  Is is not perfect, it needs improvement and always will - but....?

Well of course they see education as broken, after all the only way that they can sell a solution is if we all buy the narrative that it is broken.  Look, there are many writers much better than me that have written about this including, but not limited to, Martin Weller and Audrey Watters at Hack Education.

As to STEM and Coding, well again I am afraid I am something of a cynic.   Sure if a child has an interest in coding, let them code, teach some coding to everyone if you must.  Same with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) - but please let us not pretend that these offer a solution to the economic stagnation faced globally, for they do not.    If we all code, it will still only be the best coders that get employed and anyway, very soon AI will be probably be able to write code better than most humans.  As for government initiatives to code, they are a joke, with thanks to Donald Clark.

I will encourage my own daughters to learn STEM subjects and to code, but no more than I will encourage them to learn to dance, sing and play music and learn languages, write, draw and paint and play – just play.  I do not believe that everyone learning these skills is going to save the global economy or the world.   It is a false narrative that we are being sold by those with a vested interest in us buying it.  Think about it – do you really see giant coding factories with people sitting at PCs writing computer code?  For what?

As we see more and more jobs lost to technology, eventually we have to ask the question "Where will demand come from for all the products being produced?"  Few will have the disposable income to be both willing and able to buy anything.  So we are currently in a crazy situation that in our race to reduce costs on the supply side (by reducing those pesky expensive, unionised humans, who want holidays and need to sleep), we must eventually reach a point where those same humans can no longer purchase the products produced.

I have written about narrative previously and STEM is another narrative that we are being fed that on the face of it makes sense.  Who would argue at first glance on the need for more science, technology and engineers?  It is 2016, it is the information age after all.  People need these skills to go and work at Apple and Google and Microsoft, right?  Wrong actually.  Much of the real employment for those companies that actually still need human resources are in countries with significanly lower labour costs and few employment protection and environmental laws.  Having more STEM graduates will not change that unless these graduates are also willing to work 12 hour days and 6 day weeks for sums below minimum wage and pour toxins into the countryside.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/52581560

Look, I am not a Luddite, I like technology and I use it all the time.  I am not suggesting we uninvent even if we could.  What I am saying is be more critical of the narratives we are told and think things through beyond the surface.  Technologists and Engineers are great, but the idea that all our kids need to be educated as engineers and technologists or the world is doomed, is just false.

Sadly I see a future where you have more chance making a (basic) living as a personal trainer, masseur, running a nail spa, providing personalized online shopping advice, or online identity management – the new servant class who work for the small minority of the very rich, than I see a future full of middle class technologists and engineers.  One of the biggest challneges we face is the polarisation of wealth, the growth of inequality and the disappearence of (an aspiring) middle class.

On that rather dystopian note I bid you good night.