Innovation of the Moral Kind

Recently, a speaker from Silicon Valley visited our school to talk about examples of innovation occurring in the field of high-tech. He spoke of trips to Mars, shape-changing robots, and, of course, driverless cars. Everyone—including me—nearly squealed with excitement at the unbelievable nature of what our guest was announcing. The future has arrived.

Yet, as the day went along, I felt something nagging at me. Thoughts of trips to Mars, shape-changing robots, and driverless cars are certainly awesome, but how do they make us better people?

It seems that, currently, society is likely to measure evolutionary progress only as such progress occurs in the realm of the material—the realm of material technology more precisely. Yet there must be room for moral progress and innovation in our lives as well. That we exhibit an almost fetish-like thrill for all things material points to a potential source in the arrest of our human development.

Schools are not immune from the seduction of material technology, as many reformers constantly find themselves bowing at the triptych altar of Smart Boards, I-Pads, and Kindles. According to a 2015 report in Fortune Magazine, venture funding for education technology reached $1.87 billion dollars in 2014, a big jump from the $385 million of 2009.  In 2010-’11, overall spending for education technology in the U.S. reached $632 billion—a figure that is poised to grow larger yet.

Regardless, technology cannot replicate the intimacy and craft associated with classroom teaching any more than it can guarantee the character and moral learning of the children served. Still, there is always the risk of an overemphasis on the digital as the most critical lever of our reform efforts—evidence of the extent to which schools are tempted by technology and the bite of its material apple.

Ultimately, technology, by definition, is simply a tool that, for all practical measures, is meant to serve us; not the other way around. And for schools in particular, this means technology functioning in service of, not a replacement for the human mind—the human mind, itself, existing as a far more likely panacea for the challenges we face.