Surviving Capitalism (Not) : How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, November 24, 2011

How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools

Click here to access article by Lee Fang from The Nation.

Following the current capitalist principle to never let a crisis go to waste such as in this period of severe austerity, people and organizations such as David Koch, Jeb Bush, ALEC, Rupert Murdoch, and numerous investors and corporations see a great opportunity to profit in online education while, at the same time, launching a war against public education and teachers.

...by combining the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations ...policies designed to boost the bottom lines of education-technology companies are cast as mere attempts to improve education through technological enhancements, prompting little public debate or opposition.

...It’s big business, and getting bigger....

And, so far there is very little research that justifies online education. In any case, any and all educational techniques must never be controlled by the ruling class. To be sure, they indirectly control education now, but this project would put education directly under their control and directly link education to private profits.