neatly into a broader set of narratives, in a way that other forms of open education haven’t. There are two aspects to this broader narrative: the first is the framing of the problem as ‘education is broken’, and the second is the overriding Silicon Valley narrative that shapes the form of solutions.
'Education is broken' has become such an accepted standpoint that it is often stated as an irrefutable fact. Andrew D’Souza, the chief operating officer of an educational technology start-up states baldly, 'The education space is massive, very broken' (Tauber 2013); Sebastian Thrun inevitably declared, 'Education is broken. Face it. It is so broken at so many ends, it requires a little bit of Silicon Valley magic' (Wolfson 2013); an influential report from the Institute for Public Policy Research entitled ‘An Avalanche is Coming’ claimed, 'The models of higher education that marched triumphantly across the globe in the second half of the 20th century are broken' (Barber, Donnelly, & Rizv 2013); even insightful analysts such as Clay Shirky are prone to it, with a piece entitled 'Your Massively Open Offline College Is Broken' (Shirky 2013).
Before considering a response to the broken education claim, there are two questions to ask. The first is, what is meant by a broken system? The second is, why is it stated with such conviction, so often?
To address the first question, we see that what or how education is broken is rarely expanded upon. It is simply stated as a starting position, from which all else follows, a sine qua non of educational revolution. Let us assume that this is a genuinely held belief of those who propose it. It is sensible to ask then in what ways might education be broken? At different times it can relate to lack of creativity in K–12 education, or truancy rates, or more often, the financial model of higher education, usually all from a US perspective.
