From Math to Marksmanship: Military Ties to Gamified Assessments

This past February, economist James Heckman convened a working group of social scientists to discuss new types of assessments that are being designed to capture data about children’s social-emotional traits and predict future behaviors. The researchers spent two days in an oak-paneled room at the University of Chicago where they collaborated on the new assessments and measurements. Impact investors, like Heckman’s patron JB Pritzker, need the metrics these tests will deliver to fuel their predatory, speculative pay for success schemes. Videos of the recorded presentations can be viewed here.

I will be excerpting segments of these talks on my blog, since I know most of you won’t have the time to sit through hours of viewing. This first segment highlights the intersection of educational technology and military training. For more information read one of my early pieces “How exactly did the Department of Defense end up in my child’s classroom?”

It is important to note that ReadyNation, sponsor of the Global Business Summit on Early Childhood, is a program of the Council for A Strong America. ReadyNation is their workforce development program. Another of the group’s five program areas is “Mission Readiness.” The website states this initiative is run by seven hundred “Retired admirals and generals strengthening national security by ensuring kids stay in school, stay fit, and stay out of trouble.”

There is a difference between education and training. There is a difference between knowing just enough to carry out orders without questioning the chain of command and knowing enough to participate civic life as a critical thinker. If educational-technology is an extension of military training/human engineering, which it is, we should give careful consideration as to what our society needs at this time, and if we should be allowing the military-industrial complex to data-mine and track our children’s innermost thoughts.

Watch the clip here. Full talk here.

Timestamp 6 minutes 40 seconds

Jeremy Roberts (PBS Kids): I’ll hand it over to Greg. I wanted to give you a chance to talk about UCLA CRESST.

Gregory Chung (UCLA, CRESST) So, just quickly, you know what we bring to the project is expertise in the use of technology for measurement purposes. Whether it’s simulation or games. How do we turn that information about what we think is going on in their heads to their interaction with the game? So going through that whole analysis process from construct definition to behavior formation. And then just a general, we do research in a military context and in an education context, training, pre-k to adults. I joke that my motto is from math to marksmanship. (audience laughter)

Unidentified Audience Member: Can you say what the relationship is between the military and education?

Chung: Ah, it’s like…it is like… at a certain level they’re the same. Military training is about effectiveness. You train just enough to get someone to do some job. But integrated technology, adaptive systems give feedback. So all the instructional issues that you commonly apply to education, you apply to the military. But also you go from the military, who kind of created the whole instructional design system, back to education. And it’s really interesting when we have an intersection in say marksmanship, how do we measure skills (pantomimes shooting a rifle) with sensors, but then we bring in the educational assessment framework, like what’s going on in here (points to his head/brain), how that transfers to wobble and shake (points to torso).

Roberts: If the armed forces were to find out that say the students were not scoring sufficiently on the ASVAB to make them confident that they’d be able to operate the next generation of tank, for example, the army might be really interested in early childhood education.

Chung: (chuckling in audience) So, really they’re the same.

Heckman: It has, right? Already. And quite a few aren’t able to pass the ASVAB.