Your Kid’s School Is Missing the Tech Revolution, and It’s All Your Fault

For the last couple of decades, entrepreneurs and academics have struggled to find ways bring some of the Internet’s disruptive force to the education system -- only to be stymied by predictably sclerotic bureaucracies and overcautious government agencies. But in recent years, entrepreneurs have started making an end run around administrators and taking their products directly to teachers and parents.

By targeting individual users, the thinking goes, they can get their products into the hands of the people who use it, instead of slogging through arcane procurement processes. It’s reminiscent of the way Apple invaded the workplace by selling so many iPhones to individual employees that IT departments had no choice but to incorporate them. Or to the way that Uber has quickly signed up so many customers that it has forced legislators to rewrite their laws to accommodate them or risk alienating their citizens. Internet companies are used to forcing through changes in attitudes and behavior -- think of how Facebook overturned our sense of personal privacy through sheer force of will. But our emotions around school won’t be so easy to adjust. Go ahead and disrupt my taxi, my hotel -- even my job. But you’d better think really hard before you disrupt my kid.