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What Happens in the Dark: A Journey Through Education’s Digital Zoo
As screens reshape our classrooms, one question haunts schools: What are we losing in the name of optimization?
This is the second essay in the “What is Education For?” series examining education’s purpose in a fragmenting democracy. Part 1 explored how empty classrooms signal democracy’s crisis.
Modern zoos have perfected the illusion of freedom: naturalistic enclosures with hidden barriers and engineered environments that mimic wild spaces while ensuring every movement can be monitored, measured, and monetized. I recognized that same carefully curated performance in a multi-million Silicon Valley school, where venture capitalists had reimagined education as a premium subscription service.
The darkness struck me first. Not the familiar dimming of a movie day or the natural shadow of a clouded afternoon, but a permanent twilight engineered for screens. In the Spanish classroom, teenagers sat in isolated bubbles of screen light and headphone silence, each one’s “personalized learning journey” as carefully bounded as a polar bear’s swimming pool. The teacher haunted her corner like a keeper whose exhibit had been automated, watching an algorithm distribute knowledge like content recommendations: “If you liked…
