What’s lurking beneath the surface: Education or Enterprise?From transforming classrooms to misleading marketing—unveiling the dual nature of the $2.8 billion Indian Ed-Tech boom post-2020 lockdown.
Educational Technology, commonly referred to as Ed-Tech, is a rapidly evolving domain that integrates technology into the educational landscape to enhance teaching and learning processes.
With its boom in 2020, the Ed-Tech market in India was valued at $2.8 billion.
Undoubtedly, Ed-Tech offers a wide range of benefits. It has strived to transform the world of education by making education more accessible, cheaper, and adequate.
The differences we see in our society, in India, and globally, are essentially the marginalization of people. And the fact that Ed-Tech cuts through these like a hot knife through butter, is a potent tool to bring equity to education. However, this shift has also revealed a multitude of challenges and adverse effects that must be critically analysed.
Some widely recognized issues associated with the reliance on digital tools in education include increased screen time, reduced social interactions, concerns about data privacy, and a possible decline in critical thinking skills are significant drawbacks of educational technology.
But the dark reality of Ed-Tech goes beyond that. Let us explore the potential challenges and concerns within the realm of educational technology:
Sales trap :
Indian culture prioritizes grades from a relatively young age. The Ed-Tech industry has leveraged this obsession with grades, promising all the tuition concessions in the comfort of your home, sometimes at a fraction of the price.
Activist Pradeep Poonia worked in the Ed-Tech sector between 2017 and 2018, before becoming disillusioned.
He feared that Ed-Tech companies were making commitments to parents from underprivileged backgrounds, nudging them to spend beyond their means in the belief that education would open doors for their children.
Ed-Tech is trying to solve problems that do not exist — they are creating problems that do not exist,” said Poonia, adding, "The process of learning is education. However, Ed-Tech companies are more concerned with selling their products and flashy tablets."
Misleading marketing and mis-selling products :
Last year, in 2023, a Global Education Report found that not only is there little evidence to support the benefits of digital technology use in classrooms, but the “studies” that claim it is beneficial are funded by the very companies trying to sell it.
Let me restate that because it is baffling: The very companies that assert that all these Ed-Tech platforms are beneficial to students and learning are the same companies that profit from the sales of these items. *This is not required as it is clearly mentioned in the previous statement.
Of course, their “research” finds it beneficial!
Or as Warren Buffet has jested, “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Surely, he will tell you that you do.
The questionable quality of ''education'' :
As one has noticed, the Ed-Tech platforms lack a code of conduct; verbal abuse, language obscenity, harassment, slurs, and cusses are common.
Usually, most Ed-Tech companies start as a YouTube channel, and on YouTube, the teachers are more involved in being content creators than teachers, asking students to comment for views and likes.
Teachers, who were compared to God in ancient scriptures, have now been converted into sales agents by such companies.Several Ed-Tech startups are engaging in public spats, with accusations of teacher poaching and blaming each other for their shortcomings. The competitive landscape of the Ed-Tech industry is intensifying as companies try to establish dominance and capture market share.
Devolution into a mere enterprise focussed on generating revenues and establishing a monopoly at the stake of the youth's future :
The well-known ''coaching mafia'' has surely been suppressed by the rise of Ed-Tech. A platform that once started to provide accessible education, has now been recast into a money laundering business, with each company trying to achieve superiority.
In the world of education, the rise of Ed-Tech startups has led to a revolution in the way students learn and teachers teach. However, there is a dark side to this transformation. As more and more Ed-Tech companies enter the market, competition has become fierce, and some startups resort to unethical practices to gain an edge over their rivals.
Some Ed-Tech startups resort to negative advertising to gain a competitive edge. They launch campaigns that discredit their competitors or make false claims about their products.
Moreover, they attempt to stifle criticism of this dubious business by blocking social media accounts, removing low ratings and reviews, and even filing defamation lawsuits against those in question.
Conclusion :
Although the innovation of Ed-Tech serves as a useful tool, it is equally important to be aware of its two-faced approach which might result in disaster for the very purpose it was created.
Written by Pranati Soni
