The quickest way to express what is at stake here is to say that the point of education is never that children or students learn, but that they learn something, that they learn this for particular purposes, and that they learn this from someone. The problem with the language of learning and with the wider 'learnification' of educational discourse is that it makes it far more difficult, if not impossible, to ask the crucial educational questions about content, purpose and relationships" (Gert Biesta, 2016[5]).
This may seem an odd issue to raise. But we believe it is very substantial. By reducing learning to components or learning objects and using technology to provide these learning objects to students, students can learn content, knowledge and develop skills independently of both context and a teacher. The social and interactive nature of education is replaced by an ambiguous construct called "personalized learning" - meaning a learning system that responds to tests taken by the learner and re-arranges the sequence of learning activities until the learner scores a specific score on a test of competence.
Some organizations are dedicated to achieving just this. In China, a company like Squirrel uses AI and chatbot tutors to teach across the school curriculum and is amongst the fastest growing companies in China. It currently has 2,000 learning centres in 200 cities and registered over a million students - about the same size as the school system in New York City. It plans to expand to 2,000 more centres domestically within a year and then to operate globally. The company has a current valuation of $1 billion. A variety of similar systems are emerging in North America. A course in mathematics is broken down into up to 1,000 "components". Students master each component, are assessed and then move on to the next component. Meaning, purpose, context and relationships are non-existing in this student:machine:test interface.
The other part of this is language. "Personalizing learning" is evocative and compelling - who would not want learning to be focused on the needs, talents and abilities of each person?
But that is not what this term means. It has become about creating and using mechanisms by which learners can achieve the same outcomes as measured by standardized tests through a variety of different routes, not all of which involve a teacher.
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