I really enjoyed the documentary and recommend it. I found it to be full of these kind of buzzwords like "grit" and "growth mindset" that I think definitely need to be closely examined, especially if they are to be seen as important to the understanding of child psychology an incorporated into the tech. I think it could/should play an important role in education- these "gamified" lessons open up the opportunity for kids to essentially receive something analogous to one-on-one lessons which make learning more enjoyable through positive reinforcement. However, the promise of tech draws attention away from the underlying, structural inequality that will continue to plague kids until child poverty is addressed on a policy level. Khan's idea that this tech will create an even playing field for kids, regardless of background, is ludicrous.
The ideas of "grit" and "growth mindset"0 which Khan's games teach, put the onus on the individual, which isn't totally wrong. Within the framework of inequality, you do the best you can with the resources available to you. These ideas seem to create an avenue out of poverty if someone is willing to repeatedly grind their way through challenges. However, they are only part of the equation. For one, even from an educational standpoint, grit doesn't apply to something that is simply uninteresting to you. The idea shouldn't be to power through obstacles, but to incentivize facing challenges. Though it seemed crass to me at first, the more time I spend around kids and learn about psychology, the more I understand the value of bribes to encourage behavior that isn't inherently rewarding for people.
The other part of the tech-cognitive science marriage that doesn't receive enough attention is that without feeling well-nurtured, kids from some backgrounds aren't going to be able to focus enough to learn, anyway. The value of psychoeducation for parent's seems like a really important piece of the puzzle, but I wonder of if the "school of the future" can provide enough one-on-one attention that kid's might feel safe enough to learn in the first place, offering some sense of nurturance. In my experience, this is something that school's of today are short on.
Last, as we lean into technology as the dominant mode of schooling, we need to consider who it benefits and what is lost. The fact that it's much cheaper to scale obviously plays an important role. What is lost by putting to much schooling on the computer is the socialization component of school, which to me, seems vastly more important than teaching skills, or even the ability to learn skills.