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A recent article in The New Yorker
exposed some interesting aspects about why educational “reforms” often
fail. Highlighting the efforts of a Bay Area private school system
started by a former tech executive, the author, Rebecca Mead, gets into
great detail of how the “disruption” that upended the cab and hotel
industries across America, is a tougher road to tread with schools.
Mead’s article focused on a school system called AltSchool. The AltSchool was founded in 2013 by Max Ventilla, formerly of Google, who “had no experience as a teacher or an educational administrator.” According to Mead’s article, the idea of starting his own personal school grew out of his and his wife’s experience trying to find an acceptable preschool for their daughter, and the observation of “how little education has changed since he began school.” He set about reinvent it.
According to its website, this is “School, reimagined,” with “interdisciplinary, project-based learning” that educates the “whole-child.” (That’s a good idea—schools that only teach the left or right side of children make kids unbalanced.) One significant difference with traditional education is that AltSchools are festooned with cameras and audio recorders in a system called AltVideo, which records everything the children do and say (#notcreepyatall #TrumanShow).
AltSchool’s philosophy claims to upend the role of teachers in education, proposing:
Mead’s article focused on a school system called AltSchool. The AltSchool was founded in 2013 by Max Ventilla, formerly of Google, who “had no experience as a teacher or an educational administrator.” According to Mead’s article, the idea of starting his own personal school grew out of his and his wife’s experience trying to find an acceptable preschool for their daughter, and the observation of “how little education has changed since he began school.” He set about reinvent it.
According to its website, this is “School, reimagined,” with “interdisciplinary, project-based learning” that educates the “whole-child.” (That’s a good idea—schools that only teach the left or right side of children make kids unbalanced.) One significant difference with traditional education is that AltSchools are festooned with cameras and audio recorders in a system called AltVideo, which records everything the children do and say (#notcreepyatall #TrumanShow).
AltSchool’s philosophy claims to upend the role of teachers in education, proposing:
...a revised conception of what a teacher might be: ‘We are really shifting the role of an educator to someone who is more of a data-enabled detective.’ [Ventilla] defined a traditional teacher as an ‘artisanal lesson planner on one hand and a disciplinary babysitter on the other hand.’I don’t think many actual teachers will appreciate that comparison, and I have no idea what the opposite of a “data-enabled detective” would be…a detective who operates solely on random guesses rather than facts? AltSchool seeks to be “data-driven” about its students—Mead describes a “faith in
