Is Personalization in Education About Students or Profit?
The end-run of the logic of the "free market model" of education—and its application to schools—is simple: the repudiation of schools as we have come to know them; the abandonment of democratic principles on which they are based; and the service of a technocratic vision of education as matrix of individual relationships with private providers. In recent years, this vision takes the form of crude assertions that online learning platforms might not only extend or enrich the learning that takes place in schools, but might obviate the need for the "school" as we know it.
This claim is supported by politicians, pundits, and policy wonks—the vast majority of whom would make vitally different decisions for their own children's education, than they might for yours or mine. It's obvious to educators that we should embrace the opportunities provided by digital tools, services, and platforms to supplement and to inform the learning that takes place in a school, but we should beware the growing and disturbing focus on the