Comment No, tech alone will not save education (Score 5, Insightful) 234
I am always amazed how everyone seem to think that throwing money at the educational issues will somehow solve them. The biggest problem is not with the lack of funding in general especially in western countries (although there are exceptions).
The biggest problem lies much deeper than that in the fabric of society itself. Parents just want the state to take the problem of properly raising their children away from them. They send their children to public schools and expect that the children will be educated so they don't have to do it themselves.
Look at the standardized testing system. It is utter BS. The notion that all children across a country or even across borders have to be tested against (more or less) the same set of standards is just nonsense. It's a tool of the establishment to dumb them down and make everyone conforming and easier to control.
Add to this this kind of corporate agenda pushing like give children iPads. Sure Apple gets to make a good money on it and expand their market share and vendor lock-in while the taxpayers will subsidize the cost for little or no benefit for the children. Even if we agree that tablets are useful in education, why does it have to be iPads? A single brand of tablets? And arguably the priciest.
And what sorts of things can you use a tablet to enhance education? Provide cheap/free textbooks which won't wear out? Doesn't happen, because of copyright issues. You will have to sell a copy to all children. And every couple of years the textbooks get rewritten so that somebody makes more money on it. In the days when I was a kid, the school issued paperback textbooks which were re-used year after year until they were completely worn out.
You would think that with the digital textbooks all this is solved: no wear and tear, you can make many copies of it for absolutely no cost, can be upgraded whenever necessary for free. Guess what: it does not happen! Even worse, it probably costs more nowadays then back in the days. Just because of stupid copyright issues and the push for constant consumption for the benefit of a few large corporate entities.
--/rant--
Anyway, Happy New Year to all of you, fellow Slashdotters!