What are your thoughts on all the edu-tech giants (Byju's, Vedantu, Unacademy, WhiteCodeJr etc)? What do you think of them as parents? I feel that education/knowledge is increasingly becoming privatised and falling victim to Capitalization. (Just watching their marketing campaigns on TV makes me uncomfortable in some way!) Education must be free and easily accessible to all. Why should someone have to pay to learn the basic concepts of Science and Maths? Despite presence of something like KhanAcademy, why haven't we able to make online education free for students? By pumping millions of money in advertising, are the edu-tech companies making less privileged students incompetent?

don't know about vedantu and unacademy, but byjus and whitec0d3jr definitely prey on parents high expectations of their children. It is well known by now that whitec0d3 is a scam. Also the Indian mentality of free = not too much value. Similar to how their brains work while assesing quality of something. Heavier object = better quality. Lighter object = lower quality.

I feel we are spoon-feeding the next generation a little too much. It is definitely great to know more - but it should be also if the kids is interested. I am not saying parents should not pushing a kid to do better - but also see if there is an inclination from the kid. My take - The competitive mentality of the parents is the one the most important contributors in the success of such expensive premium edu-tech giants.

I have tried a bunch of these - BYJU'S, Vedantu and can’t recommend either. But having said that, would like to add that good tools which teach children well cost money. While Khan is great and free, in practice, you would need to be quite a focused child to really stay engaged for long. At Flourish, which is our learner driven school (no teachers, young people teach themselves), we pay quite a bit for the tools that we use and can’t be happier. They are great, engaging and the outcomes we have seen justify the cost. While some of our students do use Khan, most of them use stuff like Dreambox ($100 / year), Beast Academy ($12/mo), Lexia ($220/year), Spelling City (Rs 14k/class of 30), Primerry ($20/mo) and DIY.org ($50/year). I am sure I am forgetting a couple. Check these out. You will see what I mean. They are excellent and they add up. (These prices are per student BTW). They have teams of excellent educators, game designers and engineers working on this. I can’t expect these to be free. While Khan is a noble initiative and makes great education accessible to the masses for free, that altruistic path is not an option for many companies.

I too stay away from the giants, because there's so many things they're doing that are not right. But there are many questions a parent must address before embarking on any of these or the alternatives. How many online courses does the child need ? How many is too many ? Do we need to teach them coding at this age (below ten) ? Are we doing it to invest in their careers ? Is it too early for that ? Or is it because we need something to engage them during lockdowns ? Its really hard to find a balance in today's times. I personally like slow parenting - where the pace is deliberately low, competition is discouraged, learning and fun are the focus. Pre-corona, we preferred in person classes (Vayusastra is great here), and I taught a bit of coding myself. Now, school itself is online, so the space for more online courses has shrunk (screen time is a problem). But more is needed because there's no play time. For now, we're settled at Cuemath, Mon.school, and Duolingo. On whether online education should be free - I wish so too. Though I don't think our country has reached a point where quality education can be free (or even affordable). Its important to ask for it though. I also agree good education comes at a price, I just want society to bear that price collectively. Thanks for asking that question @sticky-sandwich-47614 . Made me think through a lot of these things.

China has started clamping down on their edtech companies for different reasons. But the underlying theme is the same - parental insecurity that is being pushed onto the poor kids.