For nearly a decade, Audrey Watters has cast herself as a snarky and skeptical writer about education technology. From theories of personalized learning to new education-technology companies, Watters attempts to cut down the hype and to dash hopes.
In her writings, she frequently covers the history of education, and argues that many of the ideas behind education technology and innovation are neither new nor good.
Audrey Watters
Audrey Watters
Her new book, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, rests on these two pillars. The book presents two compelling microhistories of teaching machines sandwiched between a preface and a conclusion that attempt unsuccessfully to use those histories to contextualize—and cast doubt upon—personalized learning and today’s efforts to deploy new technology in that effort. Her big objection to personalized learning and education technology is that the two inevitably entail a crude behaviorist approach to instruction that deprives students and teachers of freedom.
Although the teaching machine is most associated with Harvard psychology professor B. F. Skinner, Watters takes the reader back to the era of President Calvin Coolidge and Ohio State Professor Sidney Pressey’s efforts to build and commercialize an “Automatic Teacher”—a machine that would allow students to answer questions, receive feedback, and, at the switch of a lever, progress only after they correctly answered the question.
Pressey’s background was in the field of standardized intelligence testing, which had become popular at the time. Although he knew much about standardized tests and textbooks, “the manufacturing of a piece of scientific equipment was something quite different,” Watters writes.
Watters presents a lengthy description of Pressey’s foibles and frustrations in commercializing his invention. It’s a history that foreshadows Skinner’s experience, and Watters makes sure the reader doesn’t miss the echoes by pointing out that would-be innovators such as Skinner ignored the past and seemed to believe that, in Watters’s words, “Surely this time, things would be different.”