The Longtime Plan for Screens to Replace Teachers: School Choice the Prenda Way
No matter your viewpoint on the coronavirus, for those who care about democratic public schools, our fears merge when it comes to worrying that technology will replace teachers and end those schools. Covid-19 is the perfect storm, and Prenda micro-schools are the prototype. These are schools that focus on commercial tech programs without real teachers. Students learn by screens. Getting rid of teachers is a massive goal of the privatization movement. It’s not a new goal, either.
In 1992, The Nation published a report, “A small circle of friends: Bush’s new American schools.” President H. W. Bush, then Education Secretary Lamar Alexander, and Fortune 500 C.E.O.s launched the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC).
The report says, It was the centerpiece of Bush’s education plan and was supposed to mark the emergence of corporate America as the savior of the nation’s schoolchildren.
The NASDC didn’t become the revolution they planned, but it’s easy to see their fingerprints on the corporate push for school privatization today, including the influence of technology.
Here are some excerpts of The Nation’s report.
Perhaps most chilling, many of the plans approved by NASDC use CONTINUE READING: The Longtime Plan for Screens to Replace Teachers: School Choice the Prenda Way
