Disrupting Class

Why it’s on the list: Christensen turning the disruption lens on schooling — the prior art for every AI-in-education argument since.

Where I heard about it

• Photographed in August 2016 (Books photo album)

• My own Kindle library — started and highlighted but not finished; it resurfaced in my Kindle notebook export in August 2026.

Connections

• Clayton Christensen — co-author.
• The Innovator’s Dilemma — the parent framework, already in the library.
• Disruptive Innovation — the concept applied here to public education.
• Brave New Words — Khan’s 2024 version of the same bet, sixteen years on.

Highlights

2 highlights captured while reading. Kyle has not finished the book — this is an anti-library entry, not a read-library one.

• We have high hopes for our schools. Although each of us might articulate these hopes differently, four seem common to many of us. We summarize these aspirations as:   Maximize human potential. Facilitate a vibrant, participative democracy in which we have an informed electorate that is capable of not being “spun” by self-interested leaders. Hone the skills, capabilities, and attitudes that will help our economy remain prosperous and economically competitive. Nurture the understanding that people can see things differently—and that those differences merit respect rather than persecution.
• So if too little money, too few computers, uninterested or unprepared students (and parents), a broken teaching paradigm, and strong unions individually are not the root cause of the U.S. public schools’ struggles, might it be that they all are conspiring collectively to constrain the United States? Of course. But all these issues are at work in other nations’ schools as well—and yet the evidence is that many of them obtain better results than we do in the United States.