HS computer revolt
Students rip Zuck Web curriculum
Brooklyn teens are protesting their high school’s adoption of an online program spawned by Facebook, saying it forces them to stare at computers for hours and “teach ourselves.”
Nearly 100 students walked out of classes at the Secondary School for Journalism in Park Slope for an hour on Monday in revolt against Summit Learning, a Web-based curriculum bankrolled by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Amy Chan.
“It’s annoying to just sit there staring at one screen for so long,” said freshman Mitchel Storman, 14, who spends close to five hours a day on Summit classes in algebra, biology, English, world history and physics. “You have to teach yourself.”
Summit stresses “personalized learning” and “self-direction.” Students work at their own pace and teachers “facilitate.” Each kid is supposed to get 10 to 15 minutes of teacher “mentoring” each week.
Mitchel said his teachers sometimes give brief lessons, but then students have to work on laptops connected to the Internet.
“The distractions are very tempting,” he said. “I have seen lots of students playing games instead of working.”
Kids can retake tests until they pass — and look up the answers, he added: “Students can easily cheat on quizzes since they can just copy and paste the question into Google.”
At least two other Department of Education schools have started using Summit Learning.
Last summer, Summit trained 9th- and 10th-grade teachers, paying for four nights in a Newark hotel plus meals.
But senior Kelly Hernandez, 17, who organized the walkout, said her Environmental Science teacher wasn’t trained, leaving kids adrift.
“It was bad enough that we were lost, the teachers were lost,” Kelly said. “We have done absolutely nothing in that class.”
A teacher who requested anonymity said Summit glitches include system crashes, poor wifi and a lack of laptops.
David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor, said the system “fits the Facebook business model,” but came into city schools
with little input or review.
“It’s educational experimentation on our kids,” he said.
Summit collects a wealth of information on each student, from age, ethnicity and extracurricular activities, to grades, test scores and disciplinary penalties. It insists the data are safe.
The DOE said Saturday the school will immediately drop the Summit program in 11th and 12th grades in response to student complaints. And the DOE confirmed that the Bronx Writing Academy, has already dumped the program.