There is a widely held belief that development of machines that think (software and algorithms) can be transferred to the development of thinking in children (education and learning). The Slate School located in North Haven, CT is an experiment that draws from this belief.
Founded on ideas from digital culture, the Slate School operates with an assumption that success in tech can be transferred to success in early childhood learning. It assumes that such a model of tech success can disrupt a “broken” public education system.
As mentioned by the school itself the “Slate School is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit elementary school” focused on creativity, encouraging “lifelong learning and discovery.” In its promotional materials the impression is one of serenity and nurture in a nature-based environment. It is designed to be a retreat from urban density and rural disarray, far away from the realities of struggling family retail stores disrupted by Amazon and far away from public services.
Find out what's happening in North Havenfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
A founder and major funder of Slate School Alexander Clark CEO of Technolutions has been described as the “wizard of Oz for geeks.” Clark also produces software by the same name, Slate. Comparing software programming with early educational programming may appear odd, however there is a striking resemblance. As Clark has stated software “does exactly what it’s told to do …. Human beings require greater thought, greater energy, because they have a lot of ambiguity and unpredictability.” So a particular school environment is needed to re-engineer such ambiguous human features. From Slate School perspective ambiguity gets worked out in an incubator of utopian retreat “We…want it to be an incubator for the best practices for teaching in other schools.”[1] Jennifer Staples-Clark, Alexander’s wife recently suggested that setting up such best practices would incubate-away the “public” (as in current public education or “other” schools).
Digital Utopians like Tim Berners-Lee who developed the Internet to AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio who developed artificial neural networks incubated their innovations not far away from public engagement but in step with it. Digital tech has been too frequently perceived to thrive in Utopian retreat in remote research centers, Silicon Valley start-ups and online developer forums free of lumbering governmental regulation. However, such tech innovation has not been cordoned off as is typically perceived, but rather has been supported by public-industry collaboration and inclusion. The Slate School projects a similar Utopian retreat, but a very different and pure Utopia. Public (and offline) scrutiny is kept at armlength. Public participation is perceived as intrusive and messy. The founders of Slate School call the shots on what and who gets privately disrupted, who gets in and how young children’s intelligence gets privately measured and encouraged.
Find out what's happening in North Havenfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
A new crop of schools
Slate School is part of a new crop of schools. Everyone becomes part of an experiment, parents are asked to believe that public schools are broken and in need of fixing but no public fix is in sight therefore a private educational start-up will provide the way forward.
Sherry Turkle a renowned MIT professor, psychologist and social scientist has observed that a new crop of schools has emerged focused on course correction. Tech billionaires know the dangers of the products they have built. They wish to place their own children (as Alexander and Jennifer have done into Slate School) into elite school environments focused on building emotional wellbeing with pen, crayon and paper in nature. They wish to safeguard their children from the alienating device-and-click world they have built and profited from.[2] Slate School’s safeguards do not stop at the classroom but also reach into the child’s wider life cautioning parents that “screens are not common in your child's life.”[3] As Turkle describes, this cautionary language and type of school is attempting to correct what “social media inhibit,” to correct massive disengagement from face-to-face conversation that some digital tech leaders have built empires on.[4]
Slate School proposes to disrupt education like Elon Musk’s “secret laboratory” school for gifted children Ad Astra, that sits on the campus of SpaceX in Hawthorn, CA bathed in the incubator of scientists, engineers, expert software tinkerers. Musk’s Ad Astra school gains its surrounding oxygen from SpaceX ambitions in the bubble of industrial tech, Slate School gains its oxygen from its founder’s experience in the bubble of software development and predictive analytics.
Not unlike Musk, Clark (the technical brain behind Technolution’s management software that predictively models college admission processes) you are not only invited to use Slate you are invited to “join the Slate experience.” You become “one” with Technolution’s products. You follow Clark who “roams the convention-center stage, a giant high-definition screen behind him display[ing] the logos of the “Slate family.”[5] You follow a cultish vision of a better college admissions process for All. Slate (the software program) is like being part of a polished cult, Slate (the school) is like being part of a polished educational experiment in purist Utopian fields and eco-friendly buildings with adjustable lighting.
In both, the software version of Slate and the school version of Slate you find similar visions. Both are focused on the emotional needs of those who use their services. From the software perspective, you build a cult of fans willing to “follow” you on Twitter and “like” you on Facebook. You create user need and what’s called in software development as “lock-in” to ensure “sticky” users who can have an exclusive or walled-in experience but cannot easily go to another software system or service.[6] From the Slate School perspective you create a feeling of exclusivity, a club of nature-based learning that compels you to follow a special path of life-long learning the Slate-way. Such a special path is one that’s cordoned off, separate and drained of engagement with a wider and complex public life.
What it’s like to apply to Slate School
To apply to Slate is telling. There is no direct administrative contact and no email with a name. Each step is an automated click. No phone number or human person to connect to. As a parent you can attend generic educational open houses/tours but then follow up is empty. Slate’s Head of School is a former professional actress with experience in regional and Broadway musicals who attempts to stay neutral to any deeper engagement with the audience as if parents and children are “users” as in people who use software.[7] Slate School promotes the experience of onsite meetings as “family-focused and highly personalized.” [8]
Once you have filled out the online application you then email it to an unknown software program and it disappears from view. Your application disappears. You have no record of what you sent, you have no way to retrieve what you’ve written. You are left with no evidence of your child’s early education application to a new school with new teachers. No way to download your application and no person to ask for a copy.
When recommending a child to Slate School teachers cannot put their best foot forward. They too have a separate online form they fill out. They too have no phone number, no email address with a human contact and no way to ask questions about Slate’s recommendation process. Teachers giving recommendations to the Slate School are asked to click and not ask questions, click and not expect feedback or follow-up.
In discussing this process further with educators who’ve submitted recommendations to Slate School they were disturbed by questions Slate asks about 4- and 5-year-old candidates. Questions were focused on quantifying achievement at this earliest age at the upper most percentiles. How do you rate a 5-year old in upper most percentiles of talent and ability? Teachers are being asked to quantify a child’s ability and intelligence in Slate terms. The screening process is geared towards identifying a specific type of potential convert to Slate School methods but is not screening for the exceptional child that slips past such percentiles. This lack of understanding on how intelligence gets developed over time and not measurable early is astounding.
Yet, there’s another way to think about quantifying 5-year-old potential. By quantifying cognitive and emotional ability at a very early age, Slate may not be promoting the exceptional but instead weeding out the exceptional, preventing inquisitive children and critically-thinking parents from being part of the Slate School community. Screening out here could mean preventing certain people from entrance who may challenge Slate’s methods. It is difficult to know where Slate’s quantification questions are headed but it does point to a highly biased and cultish early learning environment that may in fact, be detrimental to a young child’s development. Similarly, under the pretense of a “very personal interview method” the Head of School and Founder’s wife screen out parents who may possibly question or attempt to disrupt their proposed educational model. Their “very personal interview method” acts as a filter to weed out challenges to Slate School’s educational method.
Parting considerations
When we consider success in the tech industry we should be skeptical of its application to the early education of our children. We are largely still recovering from late the 19th century industrial era education that in a similar way leaked into nearly every form of primary and secondary education and turned students into industrial output. When we consider the vast influence of AI driven software and social media driven relationships leaking into nearly every human choice and human contact we should pay special attention to what this means for our children’s learning and our shared futures as parents and families. When such tech entrepreneurs boast that they are “starting an elementary school” but with this bold announcement we don’t get at least the next few twitter characters of “for…” we sense a disconnect between tech egos and vulnerability of our children. When a wave of private schools separates us from our own admissions processes and lapse instead into discussions on sustainable architecture and idyllic pasture we should take pause. When a crop of private schools are formed with the purpose of saving us from manic dependency to the very software tools their founders have built, we should at least investigate what’s under the hood of their claims of salvation. And finally, when critical thinking and emotional connection are weeded out of a parent-student-teacher relationship there are no guarantees that the Slate School model will not fall into a narrow and biased path that they claim to avoid.
Cultivating children’s minds guided by tech leadership is already rolling out, but as I see it few parents are standing up to hold such leaders accountable and their assumptions called out, no matter how good they sound.
We want our children to grow up emotionally developed to care for others and creatively share in the joys of others. We rely on them to be the future caretakers of our human community, our planet and sometimes ourselves as we grow old. We push against a “like” of a friend instead of a touch across a friend’s kind hand. We encourage our children towards human creativity and grit. Examples of authentic teachers and administrators who reach out and do not hide behind exclusive non-descript processes are more important now than ever.
Looking at recent developments, we now know that such go-your-own-way attitudes leave us vulnerable in a digital economy, we now know that our very notion of electoral politics can be weaponized outside of public scrutiny by puritanical Utopian beliefs of tech exclusivity and know-how. “Digital technologists are setting down the new grooves of how people live, how we do business, how we do everything - and they’re doing it according to the expectations of foolish utopian scenarios” states Jaron Lanier early pioneer of virtual reality.[9]
Your sons and daughters will inherit this online AI world of disruptions, clicks, puritanical utopias, nature programs and educational tours. I’m asking myself and you as mothers and fathers to think beyond the groomed landscape of Slate School and to dig deeper into these trade-offs that are already underway and will soon be outside our parental control.
[1] https://www.nhregister.com/metro/article/Where-to-build-Slate-School-stirring-controversy-12200593.php
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/sherry-turkle-why-tech-moguls-send-their-kids-to-anti-tech-schools-2017-11
[3] https://slateschool.org/the-right-fit
[4] Turkle, Sherry 2016. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age. Penguin Books a division of Random House. New York, NY.
[5] https://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Tech-Whiz-Is-Conquering/244305
[6] Facebook is the text-book example of lock-in. Users’ friends and personal relationships and business relationships are all on the platform and no other equivalent platforms exists. To leave Facebook is to experience a kind of social exile or death.
[7] https://slateschool.org/faculty. She holds a Teaching Certificate from Fairleigh Dickinson University.
[8] https://slateschool.org/the-right-fit
[9] Lanier, Jaron 2013. Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster. New York, NY.