An investigation of the role of educational privatization and technology in the crises of truth and agency. Today, conspiracy theories run rampant, attacks on facts have become commonplace, and systemic inequities are on the rise as individual and collective agency unravels. The Alienation of Fact explains the educational, technological, and ideological preconditions for these contemporary crises of truth and agency and explores the contradictions and competing visions for the future of education that lie at the center of the problem. Schools are increasingly reimagined as businesses, and high-stakes standardized testing and curricula, for-profit charter schools, and the rise of educational AI put capital and technology at the center of education. Yet even as our society demands measure, data, and facts, politicians and news outlets regularly make unfounded assertions. How should we make sense of the contradictions between the demand for radical data-driven empiricism and the flight from evidence, argument, or theoretical justification? In this critical investigation of the new digital directions of educational privatization—AI education, adaptive learning technology, biometrics, the quantification of play and social emotional learning—and the politics of the body, Saltman shows how the false certainty of bodies and numbers replaces deliberative and thoughtful agency in a time of increasing precarity. A distinctive contribution to scholarship on public school privatization and educational technology, politics, policy, pedagogy, and theory, The Alienation of Fact is a spirited call for democratic education that values creating a society of “thinking people” over capitalistic gains.
Author(s): Kenneth J. Saltman
Edition: 1
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF | Full TOC
Pages: 225
Tags: Artificial Intelligence Educational Applications; Educational Policy & Reform
Cover
Half title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 | The Alienation of Fact: Antitheory, Positivism, and Critical Pedagogy
The Persistence Of Positivism In Education
What Antitheory Has To Do With Fake New, Bad Journalism, And Conspiracy
From The Alienation Of Fact to Critical Pedagogy
2 | Artificial Intelligence and Digital Educational Privatization
AI Education
Adaptive Learning Technology
Biometric Pedagogy Technology
Quantification of Impact Investing Schemes Through Machine Learning
Situating AI Privatization In The Context Of Neoliberal Privatization, De-Democratization, And The Legacies Of Positivism
3 | New Directions of Global Educational Privatization: Digital Technology, Social and Emotional Learning, and the Quantification of Affect
Social And Emocional Learning
Data Privatization, Impact Investing, And The Quantification Of SEL
Impact Investing
Militarizaed Accumulation, Repressive Education, And “Innovative Finance”
4 | The Lego Foundation and the Quantification of Play
Play-Based Learning: Redefining Context, Agency, Creativity, And Imagination
LEGO Education
5 | Conspiracy Against Theory: The Educational Conditions for Rampant Conspiracy Theories
The Alienation Of Fact, Educational Reform, And Conspiracy Theories
Three Phases Of The Capitalist Use Of Positivism
Conspiracy Theories
6 | Trust In Numbers, Distrust of Experts: Education, New Technology, and the Paranoid Politics of Disinterested Objectivity
The Pedagogy Of Paranoid Politics
The Paranoid Politics Of New Education Technology
Quantification of Social and Emotional Learning
Adaptive Learning Technology
Avatars for Literacy and Social and Emotional Learning
Biometric Pedagogy
Play-Based Learning
7 | “Privilege Checking,” “Virtue Signaling,” “Affinity Groups,” and “Safe Spaces”: What Happens When Cultural Politics is Privatized and the Body Replaces Argument
Conclusion
Notes
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
