What We Are Reading Today: The Teacher in the Machine

Photo/Supplied
Short Url
Updated 26 April 2025
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: The Teacher in the Machine

  • Scholars at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s were encouraged by the US government to experiment with computers and AI in education

Author: Anne Trumbore

From AI tutors who ensure individualized instruction but cannot do math to free online courses from elite universities that were supposed to democratize higher education, claims that technological innovations will transform education often fall short.

Yet, as Anne Trumbore shows in “The Teacher in the Machine,” the promises of today’s cutting-edge technologies aren’t new. Scholars at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s were encouraged by the US government to experiment with computers and AI in education.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Nationalism: A World History by Eric Storm

Updated 23 February 2026
Follow

What We Are Reading Today: Nationalism: A World History by Eric Storm

The current rise of nationalism across the globe is a reminder that we are not, after all, living in a borderless world of virtual connectivity.

In “Nationalism,” historian Eric Storm sheds light on contemporary nationalist movements by exploring the global evolution of nationalism, beginning with the rise of the nation-state in the 18th century through the revival of nationalist ideas in the present day.