"It was an Achilles heel only to this degree. Joel mastered how to listen, talk, think and work on a BlackBerry all at the same time. But you still got 100 percent of his attention but it doesn't seem that way," said Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone.
How do you have 100 percent of somebody's attention when they're talking with you, reading something on a Blackberry, thinking about how to respond about that something they just read on a Blackberry and thinking about how to respond to what you just said?
Sorry, that's more like 25% of somebody's attention.
And that's the problem with so many of these ed deformers - from Gates to Rhee to Klein.
They're social misfits with the socio-emotional skills of maladjusted adolescents.
Do we really need distracted humans with an inability to single task on something or actually be present 100% in a conversation with somebody running anything in society, let alone education policy and school systems?
Gates wants to add MORE technology to classrooms (remember, this is a guy who demanded all important interactions and communications at Microsoft be done by email rather than face-to-face.)
We don't need MORE technology in classrooms, we need LESS technology in classrooms.
We need to help develop human beings who are socially and emotionally well-adjusted, who can single task, who can be present in conversations and relationships with others, who don't need to be constantly distracted by gadgets so that they can check out emotionally from any painful or awkward feelings, who can empathize with others.
Adding Blackberries, Smart Boards, Microsoft-brand software, Twitter and other technologies to the classroom isn't going to develop those kinds of human beings.
It's going to develop more maladjusted, socio-emotional misfits like Klein, Rhee and Gates.
As for the rush to place technology in the classroom and have it replace teachers, the intent (accumulation by dispossession and the resulting hyper-profits) is clear enough.
ReplyDeleteBut when it comes to being buried in your hand-held device while others are speaking, then where does the fetish for technology end and the brazen contempt for mere human beings begin?
Technology HAS debased human labor to a great degree...humans are now viewed as "a dime a dozen" by the corporate overlords...Bill Gates loves the Chinese model...assembly line slave labor where everything and everyone can be tracked down to the last milimeter...the slaves live in the same complex as the factories...in bunks..Thousands of American workers don't even have that...we are on the precipice....The good jobs are not coming back...and "technology" has enabled the corporate pirates to become wealthy beyond all reason...
ReplyDelete"The good jobs aren't coming back" is neoliberal propaganda. They CAN come back, and MUST, if the United States is to avert a third world status. It's our corrupt politicians in both political parties who stand in the way.
ReplyDeleteNow how do you propose that we get them back?
ReplyDeleteSusan...I'm the anon above who said the "good jobs are not coming back." I voted GOP FOR YEARS...! Through GW...who dismantled and shipped out one third of the manufacturing jobs in this country. Since 911 however, the thin veneer of BS has been stripped away from my brainwashed cerebellum, and I see the truth...Yes, the pols are to blame, but they are just the whores for BIG BIZ which want slave labor in developing countries. I'm not only talking about past assembly line jobs...I'm talking about white collar jobs which can be done over the Internet for "pennies on the dollar." Engineering, software, medical records...you name it. The Internet has damned many of the "good jobs" from ever returning. That, and pure GREEZD beyong imagination. Yes, the good jobs are not returing here...and I have hard data and charts to prove it. They are coming for the last "good jobs"...Due to Depression like circumstances, teaching, which 15 years ago was viewed as a job for "losers", the corporate masters now want to devour public education, with hundreds of millions of possible "customers"...paying new teachers peanuts like Walmart does, and gobbling up all of the profits in operating and selling resources to a captive audience...IT'S ALL ABOUT PROFITS !!! SHARE PRICE !!!
ReplyDeleteHere's one for you Susan:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.outsidethebeltway.com/jobs_never_coming_back/
"A front page piece in today’s NYT by
Catherine Rampell makes a related point: The global meltdown is speeding up the permanent abolition of jobs that were eventually going to go away, anyway.
Many of the jobs lost during the recession are not coming back.
Period.
For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances and international trade. The phasing out of these positions might have been accomplished through less painful means like attrition, buyouts or more incremental layoffs. But because of the recession, winter came early.
[...]
[Prototypical anecdotal character to humanize the story, much to my annoyance] is one of 1.7 million Americans who were employed in clerical and administrative positions when the recession began, but were no longer working in that occupation by the end of last year. There have also been outsize job losses in other occupation categories that seem unlikely to be revived during the economic recovery. The number of printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell by 40 percent.
This “creative destruction” in the job market can benefit the economy. Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient. Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter, pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow.
But a huge group of people are being left out of the party."
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