A Critique of Educational Technologies in the Classroom

Too many educational innovations are, ironically, taking teachers out of their own classrooms. The age-old dynamic of a teacher instructing students in a dedicated setting (or often peripatetically, as did Jesus and Socrates) is subtly giving way to diverse “delivery systems,” such as entirely on-line courses, hybrid courses, and the glamorous and world of the MOOC (massive open-source online classes). The justifications for such innovations are many, but criticisms are needed as well.

Educational technologies need to be critiqued and used wisely, given their ubiquity and much-vaunted status. But before that, we need to think about the goal of teaching and the nature of knowledge. Students need knowledge and knowledge needs students, according to Roger Scruton. The purpose of teaching is to inculcate knowledge that needs to be known. The inherited wisdom the ages should not be lost through neglect or poor pedagogy—or by students who not inclined or not inspired to learn it. The classic idea of the university is to shape students to have a unified perspective on life, to make them well-rounded and independent thinkers.

Recommended Reading

Douglas Groothuis, The Soul in Cyberspace

Neil Postman, The End of Education

Quentin Schultz, Habits of the High Tech Heart

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