Reactions to WhiteHatJr, BYJUs and the like tell us a lot about beliefs around edtech in India.

What customer & public perceptions are these orgs facing?

Unearthing common tropes about edu & public perceptions from comments to this parent's LinkedIn post doing the rounds:

People are trying to apply rules & norms of semi-regulated private schools onto edtech services. Notice the calls for:

- govt licensing
- "banning such online coachings"
- "changing the school if the teacher & friends are not helping"

Dissatisfied and vocal customers are always going to be louder than happy ones. I expect this growing noise to invite govt regulation and more intense scrutiny into the grey area of online education.

The power tussle between consumers and reputation-guarding firms is going to be a big theme, going by these comments. A lot of people seem to be aware of how LinkedIn & YouTube have been taking down posts critical of these companies on flimsy copyright-protection grounds

( @OBanerji covered this in-depth and with some prolific reporting at @TheKenWeb. Highly recommend reading it.) https://twitter.com/r0h1n/status/1313343628115234817?s=20

To be fair, many issues with the way teaching is done through online services are issues that exist in private schools too.

Now that school is at home, parents get to see inside the opaque box:

What's the teacher's role in it all? Varying levels of teacher quality and pressure inside these orgs.

(I don't even know if "teacher" is the right word for these online classes. Facilitator? Virtual baby-sitter?)

A lot of comments on the dissatisfied parent's post said "Why don't you just change the teacher if these didn't work for you?"

A marketing intern for Byju's agreed with this, and said they'll DM a good teacher's contact to the parent

Second-order effects of this teacher-on-demand model: incentives for the best teacher to "win". Vanishing job security for the others. Impatience to see outcomes on skills that are difficult and take time to build.

A lot of comments blamed the parent itself. And this blaming comes in lots of flavours.

- How could you fall for ads that said your child will become Zuckerberg?
- How dare you think that your child can learn something difficult like coding?
- How could you put such pressure?

- Your child needs your time and you are bad for not giving them that.

(For context: the post was written by a mother. I would love to see reactions to a similar post written by a father.)

A lot of people are concerned that children are losing their precious childhood to WhiteHatJr and online classes.

I interpret a lot of these comments as:

'I didn't grow up with something, and I obviously turned out fine, so this must be unnecessary and harmful to today's kids'

'Instead of sitting in front of gadgets, why aren't children growing up "in nature", doing "physical activities" and learning "moral values" with their friends?'

Wondering how many middle-class families living in a cramped Tier-2 city apartment have access to "nature"...

I think a lot of these stated desires come from nostalgia for a romanticized past. It's evident in the way so many parents I know talk about their childhood. Not uncommon to see sweeping statements like:

"Earlier generation would never undergo any trauma"

Even if you guys are laughing at this line, these beliefs are relevant to education. We want to educate students in 2020 for 2030, but decisions for them are made by parents from the 1980s. 50-year gap!

@Meetasengupta: "Children are the consumers but parents are the customers"

Another gap: the difference between what parents say they want for their kids and what they actually put them through. They say choice & happiness for their kid but end up forcing them to win the "rat race". This systemic problem will have far-ranging impacts.

On learning coding itself: many people (mostly IT background) seem offended that kids can learn to do something that took them many years of struggle to do.

Amusing, sad, and revealing:

Also saw some fair arguments about how logical thinking and self-directed learning is what really helps people succeed - skills & mindsets that these programs are unlikely to be able to teach very well