How Big Companies Like Microsoft, Pearson Are Gearing to Profit from Our Children’s Successes and Failures
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/James Marvin Phelps
March 10, 2014 |
“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” ― Ray Bradbury
When considering a rapidly privatizing market such as education, the terms “old school” and “new school” couldn’t be more relevant. Today we’re witnessing always panicked neoliberalism’s corporate state obliterate a supposed underperforming archaic public school system for something new — the exact terms of which have not been entirely decided yet. During this large-scale transition, which we refer to as “cognitive colonization,” critics tend to focus on egregious education corporations, their collaborating political allies and the latest illegal/immoral maneuvers used to dismantle a democratic flow between citizens, their tax dollars and decisions about schools. Here we also consider the cultural aspects of this imposed transition from old school unionized public services to new school, union-free, public/private hybridized educational enterprises.
As an endless source of profit, which the capitalist system needs to survive, the digitized, union-free classroom offers a speculative bubble driven by standardized curricular content and
