We do not know what the consequences of such a machine-driven education in adulthood will be. But we suspect that they will include a narrower and more shallow range of intellectual insights, a stunting of both social and technical imagination, and a drag on the productivity that stems from imaginative leaps. School reform is a social challenge, not a technological problem. But all transformed themselves into high-achieving, cohesive communities. The strategies that worked in these schools, the study emphasizes, were persistence, creativity in devising new ways of collaborating, maximizing the attention focused on each child, and a shared commitment to meeting the full range of children's needs.
Educational technology plays only a relatively minor role in the report.
Instead, much credit goes to a new quality in human relationships. The improvements in student behavior were also influenced by the changes in the extent to which children came to understand that they were valued and respected. The personal relationships among students and school staff created a powerful context for good behavior. At all nine schools, parents too became active, engaged, creative partners. Perhaps what we're looking for is not a technology, not a product to be bought and sold at all.