The following poem was presented as my 3-minute testimony at the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s monthly meeting held September 14, 2017.
Our children, your profit centers.
Their data, digital toil,
your oil.
Not to sell…outright,
But to collect and package
for the gamblers of global finance.
Titles and social standing held out.
Such a terrible temptation to frack children for time behind the velvet rope.
Impact investors, “social” ones, cloak exploits in justice
starve schools
play a long game
nudge, nudge, nudge us in the direction they want us to go.
Towards the “Infinite Campus” and say
The city is your classroom!
Go out and learn anytime, anywhere.
It’s all good, Future-Ready, innovative, personalized!
No need for neighborhood schools.
Expensive
20th century
Human
And humans simply do not deliver data with fidelity.
So, tablets for the littles
Chrome books
Smart phones for “lifelong learning”
Algorithms, optimizing us for a dystopian economy.
Know what we do.
Where we go.
How we think.
How we feel.
How we RATE.
In a world of divide and conquer.
We are quantified, always.
A digital divide back-filled with surveillance.
“Smart” cities, Internet of Things, machineQ.
Community partners are standing by.
Mentors? By Americorps?
Deliver a solid ROI in the value chain
of securitized education data futures markets!
Readying kids for workforce pathways.
Laid out in refined rooms of tony clubs
behind velvet ropes.
For other people’s children.
Exhausted, many acquiesce to digital “solutions” engineered to harvest
proof of physical presence
knowledge
mindset
compliance
Measuring “growth,” proof of success.
Competencies generated and verified.
Payments issued, automated.
Life on the Blockchain ledger. Are we ready?
Social impact investing rests on a foundation of data.
Rockefeller, Third Sector, Federal Reserve
Know it’s coming, coming, coming
Though yet unseen, by most.
It rides the coat tails of the David Osbornes.
The Commission for Evidence-Based Policy Making
Mission Related Investments, strategically spent
To reinvent all things PUBLIC into private, profit.
Nothing personal, just the logic of the market.
State-finance nexus, what global capital demands.
Forests logged, air poisoned, oil pumped.
Digital data extraction IS the next logical frontier.
Can you afford to pay it no mind?
Choose your own reality?
Augmented, on-demand, iPhone enabled?
For a price, they DO make virtual an enticing option.
But not for me, which is why
I speak my truth, in chalk, on public walks
and wear jeans
to the Master’s House.
It kept me out of the room
but amplified my message, over a thousand times
despite the mantra of the bow tie crowd
that it would never be heard.
Alison, you have captured the whole noxious enterprise so eloquently and powerfully! Thank you!
Allison, I hope we have a chance to discuss how we can craft strategies to counter this dehumanization/privatization of education at the NPE Conference in Oakland (after all, I did come across the continent to Philadelphia for the UOO Conf.!).
Beautifully written, painful to read, but I had to finish it. Now, I have to think about it. Dammit, now that’s good writing.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware 2017.
A very much researched and good written poem . no words for this such a great work . keep it up .