The Vergecast · Thursday, September 10, 2026
Natasha Singer's book 'Coding Kids' highlights a long-standing trend of tech innovators advocating for their products to revolutionize education, a pattern observed from Thomas Edison in the early 1910s to Steve Jobs in the 1980s and current AI pushes from Google and Microsoft. Despite these efforts, studies, including one from Peru and findings cited by UNESCO, suggest little rigorous evidence that digital technology demonstrably improves educational outcomes.
“And Thomas Edison had invented this thing, um, that showed moving pictures, right? And, um, it was a projector. And, uh, he just thought this should be in every school.”
“And, um, it's remarkable that we have these cycles of tech in schools. Uh, and we have these brilliant innovators. You know, more than a century, these prominent tech innovators have been making similar arguments.”
“And so countries like Peru and Uruguay tried this. And in the Peru study, it involved more than 500 rural schools, looking at if you give every kid a laptop, what happens over a decade? And they found that it did not improve learning outcomes.”
“But I was talking to UNESCO. And they pointed to a report they put out a few years ago, in which UNESCO, which is, you know, the United Nations Education Agency, said that there was little rigorous evidence that digital technology improves educational outcomes.”