Schools are catching on to Big Tech’s playbook

学校正在识破科技巨头的“剧本”

It’s the hot new thing in tech, and it’s where all the jobs are. Students who don’t learn to use it fall behind. And to help them catch up in time, its creators are graciously providing the resources and curriculum for learning it, often pro bono. 这是科技界最热门的新事物，也是所有就业机会的所在。不学习使用它的学生就会落后。为了帮助他们及时赶上，其创造者们正在慷慨地提供学习资源和课程，而且往往是免费的。

That’s the narrative AI companies are pitching schools on right now, but according to New York Times education technology reporter Natasha Singer, it’s also how the tech industry has built its influence in classrooms for the past 15 years. 这就是人工智能公司目前向学校兜售的说辞，但据《纽约时报》教育科技记者娜塔莎·辛格（Natasha Singer）称，这也是过去 15 年来科技行业在课堂中建立影响力的方式。

In a new book, Coding Kids, Singer details how tech companies took a central role in promoting computers and coding skills in education, promising computer science skills were the ticket to high-paying jobs. But by the time many of those students entered the workforce, new technologies had thrown that promise into question. Meanwhile, the companies got schools to help them create a new class of would-be workers, and trained students on using their products and software, making them likely future customers. 在她的新书《编程孩子》（Coding Kids）中，辛格详细描述了科技公司如何在教育中扮演核心角色，推广计算机和编程技能，并承诺计算机科学技能是获得高薪工作的入场券。然而，当许多学生进入职场时，新技术已经让这一承诺变得充满疑问。与此同时，这些公司让学校帮助他们培养了一批潜在的劳动力，并通过培训学生使用其产品和软件，使他们成为了未来的潜在客户。

“I worry we have collective amnesia” “我担心我们患上了集体失忆症”

Now, the AI industry is pitching itself to schools with similar force. “I worry we have collective amnesia,” Singer told me on a recent episode of The Vergecast. “Have we learned any lessons from these past tech cycles in schools that are going to inform the rollout of AI, make sure that it benefits education, and put in the safeguards now — not a decade from now?” Fortunately, in some ways, she believes the answer is yes. 现在，人工智能行业正以同样的力量向学校推销自己。“我担心我们患上了集体失忆症，”辛格在最近一期的《The Vergecast》节目中告诉我。“我们是否从过去学校经历的这些技术周期中吸取了任何教训，来指导人工智能的推广，确保它造福教育，并从现在——而不是十年后——就开始建立保障措施？”幸运的是，在某些方面，她认为答案是肯定的。

Singer’s book recounts how more than a decade ago, the country’s largest tech companies embedded themselves directly into school curricula through courses for Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles classes. Apple and Microsoft each created their own curricula, featuring their own tools like Apple’s Swift or Microsoft’s Minecraft. “What’s striking about this is you can imagine that parents would not want, say, Pfizer AP Biology, or Northrop Grumman AP Physics, or ExxonMobil Environmental Science AP,” Singer says. She found that those in the medical field would likely understand why — medical students who are trained by a company on how to implant their proprietary device, one expert told her as an example, rarely choose to try another. 辛格的书回顾了十多年前，美国最大的科技公司是如何通过“大学先修课程（AP）计算机科学原理”直接嵌入学校课程的。苹果和微软各自创建了自己的课程，主打自家的工具，如苹果的 Swift 或微软的《我的世界》（Minecraft）。“令人震惊的是，你可以想象家长们不会想要辉瑞（Pfizer）AP 生物学、诺斯罗普·格鲁曼（Northrop Grumman）AP 物理学或埃克森美孚（ExxonMobil）AP 环境科学，”辛格说。她发现医疗领域的人很可能明白其中的原因——一位专家告诉她，医学生如果接受某家公司的培训来植入其专有设备，他们很少会选择尝试其他公司的产品。

Google has also made itself a dominant force in education through its distribution of low-cost laptops called Chromebooks. Singer tracked their ubiquitous adoption across schools through the 2010s, which she says was accelerated even further during the school shutdowns of the covid-19 pandemic. Google also introduced its Classroom app to help teachers communicate things like assignments and grades. By the time generative AI took off, Singer writes, Google was already a key platform provider for many schools, and well-positioned to promote it. 谷歌也通过分发名为 Chromebook 的低成本笔记本电脑，使自己成为教育领域的主导力量。辛格追踪了它们在 2010 年代学校中的普及情况，并指出这一过程在新冠疫情期间学校停课时得到了进一步加速。谷歌还推出了 Classroom 应用程序，帮助教师传达作业和成绩等信息。辛格写道，当生成式人工智能兴起时，谷歌已经成为许多学校的关键平台提供商，并处于推广人工智能的有利地位。

Even when companies weren’t directly involved in education, they backed nonprofit groups like Code.org. Code.org kicked off its viral education campaign with a splashy celebrity-laden video that included tech moguls like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and then-Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, urging kids to learn to code. Code.org founder Hadi Partovi took a startup-style approach to promoting computer science education, and had little planned for how to capitalize on the attention of the video once it took off, Singer writes. He ultimately funneled that attention into a similarly splashy “Hour of Code” campaign across the country, urging schools to engage in entertaining hour-long courses introducing kids to coding building blocks. 即使在公司没有直接参与教育的情况下，它们也会支持像 Code.org 这样的非营利组织。Code.org 通过一段众星云集的轰动视频开启了其病毒式的教育运动，视频中包括微软创始人比尔·盖茨和时任 Facebook 创始人马克·扎克伯格等科技大亨，呼吁孩子们学习编程。辛格写道，Code.org 的创始人哈迪·帕托维（Hadi Partovi）采取了初创公司式的策略来推广计算机科学教育，但对于视频走红后如何利用这些关注度，他几乎没有计划。最终，他将这些关注度引导到了全国范围内同样轰动的“编程一小时”（Hour of Code）活动中，敦促学校开展有趣的、为期一小时的课程，向孩子们介绍编程的基础模块。

At the time, there wasn’t much pushback, Singer found — though there were some attempts at alternatives. One group of academics engaged in a more traditional, methodological approach to testing and rolling out their own computer science curriculum. It had the express goal of diversifying the kinds of students enrolled in such courses, and taught students to think about big questions around the internet and technology, and scrutinize builders’ motivations. 辛格发现，当时并没有太多的抵制——尽管也有一些尝试替代方案的努力。一组学者采取了一种更传统、更具方法论的方式来测试和推出他们自己的计算机科学课程。其明确目标是使选修此类课程的学生群体多样化，并教导学生思考围绕互联网和技术的重大问题，审视构建者的动机。

Eventually, backlash arrived. Some recent graduates say they feel let down that they were told to code their whole lives, just to find such entry-level jobs to be diminishing, Singer told me. Some schools are getting rid of ubiquitous Google Chromebooks, and research around the world is finding that adding technology to the classroom often doesn’t have a significant impact on actual learning. 最终，反弹出现了。辛格告诉我，一些应届毕业生表示，他们感到很失望，因为他们被告知要终身编程，结果却发现这类入门级工作正在减少。一些学校正在淘汰随处可见的谷歌 Chromebook，世界各地的研究也发现，在课堂中增加技术往往对实际学习效果没有显著影响。

“Most parents want more than just getting kids to learn to use tech” “大多数家长想要的不仅仅是让孩子学会使用技术”

“I’m not arguing against tech education or tech in schools,” Singer says. “But what I am saying is most parents want more than just getting kids to learn to use tech. They want kids to learn how to be informed citizens in a democracy, and they want kids to figure out what their passions are and who they are and what their beliefs are… And so if we let the tech industry dictate or even heavily influence what happens in schools, then the question we’re asking is, how can we get AI into schools faster? Which is a product question, and not, ‘What are the most important things we want kids to learn?’” “我并不是反对技术教育或学校里的技术，”辛格说。“但我想说的是，大多数家长想要的不仅仅是让孩子学会使用技术。他们希望孩子学会如何在民主社会中成为知情的公民，他们希望孩子弄清楚自己的热情所在、自己是谁以及自己的信仰是什么……所以，如果我们让科技行业主导甚至严重影响学校的事务，那么我们提出的问题就变成了：我们如何能更快地将人工智能引入学校？这是一个产品问题，而不是‘我们希望孩子学习的最重要的事情是什么？’”

While the AI industry of the 2020s may be pulling from the 2010s playbook, there already appears to be one distinct difference: Parents and school districts are pushing back. Just last week, the nation’s largest school system, New York City, banned elementary and middle schools from letting students use AI in the classroom for the coming school year. A day later, Los Angeles announced an even broader restriction that included hi 虽然 2020 年代的人工智能行业可能正在沿用 2010 年代的剧本，但似乎已经出现了一个明显的区别：家长和学区正在进行抵制。就在上周，全美最大的学校系统——纽约市，禁止小学和初中在即将到来的学年中让学生在课堂上使用人工智能。一天后，洛杉矶宣布了一项更广泛的限制措施，其中包括……