I gave this talk yesterday to a couple of groups of Philadelphia teachers and activists who wanted to better understand the ways education reform will be changing post-ESSA.
The push for conditioning and compliance will continue as we finalize the transition to an education system where surveillance is branded as data-driven “personalization” and devices monitor our children’s classrooms continuously. It’s difficult to organize and fight such a nebulous foe. In this hour-long talk I hope to convey the reality of the reformers’ true end game- a future of automated teaching, virtual schooling, and community-based badging programs where workforce skills trump knowledge and critical thinking in the human capital game. A future where parents and students must cobble together dozens of credentialed online and offline educational opportunities for their e-portfolios, feebly attempting to pay for them from meager virtual wallets/Educational Savings accounts. Watch it with the accompanying slide-share open. Many slides have links to resources you can investigate. Please share this post after watching, so we start to understand exactly what we’re up against and begin to organize effective resistance at a national level.
