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“How robust is a cognitive tutor across cultures?” - Good question (though odd to see Arab cultures as not about reading and writing, considering they pretty much invented it). The more difficult issue is that cultures that see knowledge as given through the master will not take easily to the idea of knowledge as something for the learner to make their own. William Perry’s work at Harvard showed this is hard enough in our own culture.

“Nothing magical about online or free access or open source. It can be good or bad here too”. - Certainly can be bad, but there is something magical about it - that’s why we’re all here, and we still keep trying - it is adaptive, and shareable, therefore changes productivity of learner time, and productivity of teacher time. The productivity issue is crucial, as he later pointed out.

And it’s true that we have to invest a lot in what will be a radical change to a new business model, but it’s not as if we already have a productive and effective business model for education. Suppose the history of technology were different, and we were trying to persuade the economists that we should move from global online personalised education with local tutor/facilitators to institutions which require people to go to a particular place at a particular time for whole class teaching in small groups? That would present a pretty challenging business model!