Davidson Reading

Evidently, Cathy Davidson in “Project Classroom Makeover” wants to reform America’s current education system. She thinks “the formal education most of us experienced” that “prepared us for success in the twentieth century” won’t work anymore in the twenty-first century (Davidson 55), yet her examples don’t offer a clear, cohesive solution. Her iPod experiment suggests that we need to modernize education in order to meet the demands of the current world, yet her anecdote with Miss Schmidt hints that only minor changes are needed on the antiquated teaching style and the note on Mrs. Davidson shows another radical way of teaching, but doesn’t take advantage of modern technologies. Although the three anecdotes share some similarities with one another on improving education, they are all examples of very different solutions and it’s unclear what kind of action is Davidson calling for.

Taking into context that Davidson is a scholar who is “one of the most impassioned advocates of the electronic media” (47), it becomes very clear that the agenda she cares about most is her iPod experiment. However, this begs to wonder how the other two anecdotes support the iPod experiment instead of acting as alternatives. Yet the very fact that the other two anecdotes are alternatives actually supports a fundamental finding in Davidson’s research: crowdfunding. She writes:

“In the world of technology, crowdsourcing means inviting a group to collaborate on a solution to a problem…. First, the fundamental principle of all crowdsourcing is that difference and diversity - not expertise and uniformity - solves problems. Second, if you predict the result in any way, if you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likelihood of success. And third, the community most served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it” (51).

The way Davidson structures her argument in the article follows the very principles of crowdsourcing. First, her article allows her to reach out to a broad audience of “difference and diversity” to raise awareness to solve the problem with modern education. Second, Davidson doesn’t directly ask the reader for help and “force a solution”; instead, she provokes thinking through the ambiguity of her call to action and intentionally admits shortcomings in her findings. And third, Davidson’s article reaches out to students and educators alike, involving them in the process of creating the solution. In a sense, the way Davidson chooses and words her examples allows her to play the game in the long run to ultimately crowdsource the solution to education.