Thanks to Pen-Ler Joanna Bejus for her tremendous insights for this piece. BMcK
Counterpunch June 03, 2013 “New Techno-peasants of the Latifundia” The Predatory Pedagogy of On-Line Education by BRIAN MCKENNA “A lot of education institutions . . . has [sic] bad monkeys in ‘em” Josh Coates, CEO of Instructure, (maker of the popular educational program Canvas) at the 2012 Investor Conference More students are logging in. More teachers are checking out. It’s distance education. Or on-line learning. Or whatever they’re calling it these days. Whatever it is, it amounts to the erosion of the traditional face-to-face classroom. What would Joseph Weizenbaum Say? Weizenbaum, an early inventor of artificial intelligence, wrote the seminal Computer Power and Human Reason in 1976, a powerful treatise against the dangers of computers. A humanist who’d lived through the Nazi era,Weizenbaum soon grew alarmed at the computers growing cultural domination. He advised outlawing “all projects that substitute a computer system for a human function that involves interpersonal respect, understanding, and love.” In a brilliant riposte that has resonance today he called computers, ”a solution looking for a problem.” The craft of teaching face-to-face is increasingly cornered, forced to justify its relevance in the face of its high tech replacement. Joanna Bejus, a former English Professor and computer critic argues that “with the move to online learning, another massive expropriation of social space will have succeeded. And let’s not kid ourselves; this will not happen because online learning is better. It will happen because it is yet another way to guarantee profits and to fragment and isolate the working class.” She adds that, “Online learning makes the structure of domination absolute, the prospect of appeal, unrealistic, and the likelihood of universal surveillance, a sure bet” (Bejus 2013a). Where does the instrumental logic of on-line curricula take us? Why bother being with other humans at all? According to some proponents, the Occupy Movement was a glorious waste of time. Avirtual sit-in – in Cyberspace – would have fit the bill. Massive Invasion of Universities As the BIG 3 automakers cravenly eye China, the e-learning behemoth is licking its chops at the classroom. On May 14, major industry officials announced their study showing the “enormous potential for the future of the e-learning market.” . . . . . Later in the piece: "We are witnessing the collapse of the public sphere and the colonization of the commons by predatory corporations. We gasp at the loss of jobs and the deskilling of most jobs that remain. Are we also glimpsing the end of education as we know it to the e-learning-industrial-academic complex? Anthropologist Carl Maida thinks so. “The new model corporate university will constitute a ‘knowledge plantation’ economy, somewhat like California Central Valley agricultural enterprises with their part-time seasonal farmworkers — as long as it moves toward hiring predominantly part-time adjunct employees and scores of lab techies to keep that farm running.” full: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/03/the-predatory-pedagogy-of-on-line-education/
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