Back in 1978, Bob Seger sang “I Feel Like a Number.” Today, the zeroes and ones that pervade the data-driven culture of the tech sector are spilling over to the public education sphere…again. Not that it ever went away, and not that a technocratic society is a new phenomenon. Rather, the methods of scientific management Fredrick Taylor pioneered at the end of the 19th Century are at the foundation of the current technocratic culture. In the 1960s, Mario Savio at UC Berkeley spoke passionately against that culture by highlighting to his fellow students that they were the raw materials of the university machine; a machine so “odious” that he urged them to put their bodies “upon the gears and upon the wheels…to make it stop.” In 1999, the Wachowskis released the science fiction action film, “The Matrix.” The movie warns of the illusions created by technology to mask the slavish conditions of humans a la Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In these examples, the tug of war between the rigidity of technology-induced conformity and the yearning to feel fully free as a human expresses itself in more ways than one.
Today, we’re seeing version 4.0 of the rise of the technocrats. Leading the charge is Bill Gates – a billionaire education reformer who believes that a more rigid, “free-market,” and technocratic curriculum should replace what’s currently being taught in public schools. Certainly, the public school system has many technocratic processes in place like the testing, tracking, and segregation of students. However, it’s not that the quantitative metrics generated by something like standardized testing is inherently bad, the issue is that the preeminence of such – easily manipulated – metrics marginalizes critical and creative thought in the school system. And it’s the decentering of critical engagement that’s the focus of Adam Bessie and Dan Carino’s critique of the education reforms sought by Bill Gates and his ilk. Don’t be fooled into thinking Bessie and Carino’s project is an anti-technology screed. Rather than being the proverbial servants of technology, they use current technology and the genre of comic books to critically and creatively interrogate Gates’ educational reform movement to spur an informed counter-movement that can push back against those “free”-market ideas that engender what Henry Giroux calls the “dead zones of imagination.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
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There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
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