Veteran school leader slams AI innovation obsessed EdTech space as 'fundamentalist religion'

The EdTech space is guilty of a fundamentalist thinking that ultimately does more harm than good. So says John Robinson, a US-based veteran educator and school leader.

In a LinkedIn post, he asked: "What if, in their efforts, to push technology into the classrooms educational technology overpromised about what problems technology could solve? The entire field of EdTech just might be guilty of engaging in a form of 21st century technological alchemy."

Technology solutions promised to transform, revolutionise, disrupt education, but this has not come to pass, he argues.

He commented: "Just maybe, at the heart of educational technology is a ”categorical thinking” that does not allow for the notion that answers may lie outside the technological. EdTech’s problem with all tech including its new found love, AI technologies, is that it will admit not compromise, and will not allow any questioning of tech’s status in light of its lacklustre contributions to educational improvement."

"It’s almost as if, Ed Tech is a fundamentalist religion, especially about new technologies that arise. It automatically takes as its mission to push into every school and every classroom any new technology, even if it has not proven itself. It operates entirely on a faith that because it does this miraculous thing, it will do that revolutionary thing."

He added: "We have an EdTech fundamentalist problem, when a college teacher acts as a fundamentalist zealot and will not allow for any sort of education that does not include AI technologies, we have a serious problem in higher education. She wields AI as a hammer to beat students into her image of what she thinks their future is. (How’s that different from a strict, fundamentalist cult?)"

"When a high school principal takes on the mission to force all teachers and students to use generative AI with their students, he is acting as a fundamentalist zealot who does not allow for any compromise. Anyone questioning or otherwise acting is subjected to negative evaluations and more scrutiny."

As for the big screen time debate, EdTech is facing important questions about the addictive nature of technologies and whether its overpromises about technology in the 2000s onward were warranted. Promises of educational transformation and educational revolution are beginning to look like alchemical attempts to alter education through forced tech adoption, Robinson believes.

He concluded: “Screen limits and screen bans are simply a reaction to the overpromises of the field of educational technology as a field that has only served, not as a critical weigh-station that evaluated the usefulness and suitability of new technologies, but as a technology cheerleader. In this role, Ed Tech has only served to make sure new technologies, Chromebooks, and now AI are forced into every school or classroom.”

“If anything, the “screenlash,” as the screen bans have been called, is because educational technology always sees new technologies as educationally transformative and then moves to forced implementation. It never steps back and examines new tech carefully. It should be the most sceptical field of all when new technologies arise and the most cautious. It’s not either.”

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