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Francis Fukuyama wrote in 1997 “The End of History and The Last Man”, a book that became soon extremely popular and so influential that some say that international policies were shaped at that time by the strange vision promoted by the author. … It became clear that taking this as a vision for the future was a colossal mistake. … The current discourse and most visible debates in education currently take the same dangerous path of shallow analysis, tendentiousness, twist of facts to fit an agenda and stay relaxed with the suppression of alternative perspectives.
Via Peter B. Sloep
Fukuyama's book was very influential - he claimed that history had come to an end with the arrival of democratic societies routed in neo-liberal economic views - but in retrospect also very wrong. Stefan Popenici claims that the MOOC debate suffers from the same short-comings as did Fukuyama. In the MOOC debate, facts only seem to matter "if they serve a well funded and professionally promoted agenda." Stefan mentions Pearson as an example (see my earlier scooped quote of Matthew Poyiadgi, a Pearson executive, who in a sweeping statement called all universities in Europe and Asia mediocre (http://sco.lt/62bkm1 ). Tunnel vision and group think leads many organisations to the mistaken believe that debates online higher education essentially are debates about the pros and cons of MOOCs, Stefan claims.
Analogising MOOC debates with the debates that surrounded Fukuyama's book, results in an unorthodox view of MOOCs. But it is a view well worth taking the time to ingest, precisely because it challenges the orthodoxy about MOOCs, precisely because it questions what already seems to have become received wisdom about MOOCs. It is troubling to see how some academics, who as professionals in their respective fields practice scrutiny and carefully discriminate between fact and opinion, when it comes to MOOCs and online learning so often act as if they don't have these skills. (@pbsloep)