What's the big idea? Toward a pedagogy of idea power

A key to understanding why School is what it is lies in recognizing a systematic tendency to deform ideas in specific ways in order to make them fit into a pedagogical framework. One of these deformations is described here as “disempowering ideas.” The insight leads to a new direction for innovation in education: re-empowering the disempowered ideas. Doing so is not easy: it needs a new epistemology with a focus on power as a property of ideas and a challenge to the School culture. On the positive side, the insight also leads to a new vision of what technology can offer education.