The Corrosive Effect of Hype.

Larry Cuban has a great post about teacher run schools that contains this valuable insight for anyone involved in school reform or improvement. If one lesson has been clear about the history of school reform it is that hype kills promising ideas by elevating expectations of success to such unrealistic heights that any version of the program, however implemented, is a crushing disappointment that breeds corrosive cynicism.

Elsewhere today, I found this REDU video on Vimeo which seems to me to hold another important lesson for school reformers. It is a highly professional, polished production and you can find out for yourselves who is behind it, but the most significant thing for me is that it exemplifies the relationship between hype and modern media. How many people who watch it will really be able to deconstruct its marketing techniques and question some of the underlying messages it proffers?

The relationship between education and technology continues to be a troubled and difficult one. Something that came across loud and clear at the IODL ICEM learning conference I was at last week where delegates from all over the world told similar tales of disappointment and lack of delivery.

Comments

[Suzanne]

The best we can do is to keep talking back at the rhetoric, and exposing it for what it is.

[Joe]

Suzanne,
Delighted to find someone in the business who can see through it too! I like your list of 9 techno-wisdoms too.