Father And Son 'And Project Classroom Makeover'

As the world evolves with time, the concepts society chooses to follow evolve along with it. Tim Wu’s essay “Father and Son” explores the idea of changing business practices. Wu writes about business practices being separated into closed off practices and open ones. In Cathy Davidson's essay, “Project Classroom Makeover,” Davidson talks about the need for the American school system’s old method and new method to be merged together in order to implement a new teaching method. In the essays the old way of thinking is challenged and a new way is introduced. In both situations one ideal model cannot completely replace the other and instead, the new and old models should be combined. This is the way to creating the most profitable model for the …show more content…
In “Father and Son” Wu old model is represented by Apple and their closed off business practices. While in “Project Classroom Makeover” Davidson’s old model is based on reading, writing, and arithmetic (Davidson 60). With Apple, the old model is its idea of choosing what the consumer will receive by limiting what the consumer can change in their product and what types of services will be offered by their product (Wu 5540, 546). This old model is not the greatest as it limits the consumer on content they receive and how they can in how they can customize their product. This gives Apple control over what becomes popular in society. Apple chooses how and what to sell on their device. Similarly, schools limit their students with a teaching method that strictly relies on teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. This method of teaching creates a system of standardization. This standardization forms institutes where teachers only teach content on a standardized text. Likewise, students only learn things for the test. This system bottlenecks the learning process where students are not learning things that interest them in an interesting way because teachers are not given the freedom to teach how and what they teach. It also creates a situation where the arts are not appreciated and people who may excel in the arts are cast off as failures. For these reasons, many believe these old models are more harmful than helpful. …show more content…
With technology companies, a fusion of openness and closedness can create the most profit. This fusion of the two can be seen in a later Google. “Google faces the paradoxical reality that some of the most effective ways of competing with Apple involve becoming more like Apple” (Wu 554). As Google grows, it becomes increasingly harder for the company to remain as open as it originally was. It is a “paradoxical reality” that Google would become like the company it is competing against. It was inevitable that as Google growed it could not keep up with its open policy. The company owns too much information that is not for the everyday user. The educational system could better fuse the old and new models by using the new model of rigor, relevance, and relationships to teach the old model of reading, writing, arithmetic. By using the new model to teach the old model, the old model becomes more relevant to students. The fusion of the old and new models in business and technology offers the respective institutions a greater profit. They are able to reach more subjects while protecting themselves. Google still offers an open service but information that may be important to certain personal cannot be accessed by the average user. Schools offer more specialized lessons, but still are able to produce results on a standardized test.
Whereas the old models of business and education restricted