“your very existence is an act of rebellion”
We’ve been clanging the warning bells in higher education for years, maybe this story about computer scoring of essays as a way to improve students’ writing will get the attention of our colleagues in the academy. Like all of the data driven, computer based instruction that is being sold to us/imposed on us, this is dangerous in so many ways. We know that this eliminates jobs while increasing profits for corporations. But we need to speak, as well, to how these technologies change what it means to know, changes how we make meaning and the possibilities we can imagine and create. There is a petition on line to refuse these computer scoring systems for essays, and I support that. But we shouldn’t refuse them until they are ‘valid.’ We should refuse them flat out. We should refuse them because we hold to our relationships as the context for our meaning making. The system we are up against-corporate-technocratic-dehumanizing-is so powerful. We fight with our humanity. We win when we talk to each each other, share our stories with each other, refuse their narrative.
Here is Washington, DC–Occupying the DOE–sharing our stories, our outrage, our songs and our love.
Here is Washington, DC–Occupying the DOE–sharing our stories, our outrage, our songs and our love.