Here is a very strange paradox. On the one hand, everyone agrees that a key ingredient for success in life is having great teachers. On the other, there’s a relentless narrative that education is somehow broken and that fixing it entails replacing teachers or transforming some or all of what they do.

Teaching Machines deals with the development of technologies to effect the latter, and while its sole focus is the United States, it provides invaluable insight into the mindsets of the sort of people behind them. People who believe that education needs rescuing, and have the messianic zeal to believe they are the ones to rescue it.

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