Skip to content Skip to footer

Children of the Code: Big Data, Little Kids

Children of the CodeIn the era of Big Data, children are tracked, analyzed and evaluated from birth – not only by corporations, but now, by the school system, as one father and educator illustrates in this graphic essay.

For a more immersive experience, readers will find documentation and links to further reading embedded within in the images.

See Adam and Dan on Truthout Interviews discussing their last comic, “The Gates Foundation Education Reform Hype Machine.” For previous graphic essays on education at Truthout by Adam Bessie, “This School Is Not a Pipe” (with Josh Neufeld); “The Disaster Capitalism Curriculum: The High Price of Education Reform” (with Dan Archer: “Part I: Washington D.C.“; “Part II: New Orleans“; “Part III: Finland“) and “Automated Teaching Machine: A Graphic Introduction to the End of Human Teachers” (with Arthur King).

Our most important fundraising appeal of the year

December is the most critical time of year for Truthout, because our nonprofit news is funded almost entirely by individual donations from readers like you. So before you navigate away, we ask that you take just a second to support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation.

This year is a little different. We are up against a far-reaching, wide-scale attack on press freedom coming from the Trump administration. 2025 was a year of frightening censorship, news industry corporate consolidation, and worsening financial conditions for progressive nonprofits across the board.

We can only resist Trump’s agenda by cultivating a strong base of support. The right-wing mediasphere is funded comfortably by billionaire owners and venture capitalist philanthropists. At Truthout, we have you.

We’ve set an ambitious target for our year-end campaign — a goal of $125,000 to keep up our fight against authoritarianism in 2026. Please take a meaningful action in this fight: make a one-time or monthly donation to Truthout before December 31. If you have the means, please dig deep.