Here is an education professor in Kentucky who thinks that I reacted “hysterically” to the Gates-funded galvanic response skin bracelet.
He describes me as a defender of the “status quo” because I have a distrust of people from on high telling teachers how to teach and punishing them when they can’t produce higher test scores every year. Also I do have an attachment to public schools as opposed to handing public dollars over to the private sector. I have this deep-seated preference for helping people when they need help instead of punishing them.
But I ask readers: Do you think that it is “hysterical” to worry about the use of devices to monitor the physiological reactions of students? I happen to think that it is a step towards “brave new world” thinking, this idea that school officials or teachers or government or anyone else has the power to watch us whether we like it or not, even to the point of checking on our bodily responses over which we may not have any control. I just figure that it’s nobody’s business but my own whether I am excited by what I read. Ask me to interpret it, ask me to summarize it, but ask me about how it affected my emotional life or whether it made me perspire. That’s not your business.
But then I’m old fashioned that way. I like the idea of personal privacy. I don’t like the idea of being surveilled by other people, especially without my permission.
Diane
P.S. I do not like to refer to gender and I seldom do. But I can’t help but mention that there is a long history of men asserting their superiority by calling women “hysterical.” Why is it that men never are “hysterical,” only women?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Cause it means from the uterus! So clearly men can’t be! They have to be um, testicular?
Can’t help myself, and please forgive, but we are adults here so I will say what immediately came to mind, namely that men are often dick heads! 🙂
I was going to say that it’s because we men can just be bat shit crazy at times.
Jesse, it was originally (and incorrectly) thought to be from the uterus due to higher rates of women with the affliction (fuzzy statistics). They were wrong then, and I think Diane’s question was rhetorical. But, your quick testicular comparison is hysterical. Cheers . . .
Ha! so men CAN be hysterical!
“Hysterical” is gender specific, as far as etymology goes:.L. hystericus “of the womb,” according to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hysterical which technically cuts us men out. By definition, having no wombs, we cannot be hysterical. Today, though, it is applied across gender lines.
Setting that aside, especially since this is not a discussion of the Michigan legislature, the argument that Big Brother is encroaching is similar to the “slippery slope”, “domino effect” kinds of arguments which have a bad taste for many.
Of course, it gives me huge pain that today’s education discussions seem to start at: “Publlic education in America is broken.” Talk about hysterical!
As a teacher since the early 90s, I have been witness to a number of educational missteps (starting, for the most part, with NCLB and punitively continuing with Race to the Top). I hardly think you are “hysterical” to presuppose a new technological device for measuring physiological responses in the classroom would be used down the road for evaluating teachers in yet another fashion. After all, it is MORE DATA – just what we need, right? As an aside, when talking about the state of education today, more specifically as it relates to those in charge making all the “important decisions,” I often refer to the last two lines of the first stanza of Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” in which the speakers says, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” But now, considering the main topic of this blog, I think I can extend greater educational comparison/understanding to the last two lines of the poem: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” We all know what is slouching towards us, Diane. Why are we so slow to take up our pitchforks?
I agree with you. A rough beast indeed. I, for one, will stand with you.
Diane
Thank you. You are one of the few rational voices in education today. I have just become one of the vice presidents of our teachers’ association in upstate NY and I am in the process of creating a website for the membership. If you don’t mind (I’m sure you don’t), when it is up and running, I would like to create a link to your blog. Your words and efforts are greatly appreciated.
You can link, you can reprint, you can do as you wish.
Diane
I’ve been following the comments on this story and wonder if anyone who has commented has actually seen the study design. I’ve looked on the Gates website and also on the Clemson and the National Center for Time and Learning websites and none of them provide any details about the methods or the analysis planned. I’ve left a few comments elsewhere on your blog about this and think now would be a good time to get some specifics. Would appreciate advice on how to go about that.
I suspect the professor called you hysterical because he lacks a cogent defense of the asinine idea of using GSR bracelets on students.
Here’s the argument, Jason:
http://schoolleader.typepad.com/school-leader/2012/06/biometric-hysteria.html
Why is it ok for “people up on high” who are non educators to tell us anything? Why do people think test scores are a way to evaluate teachers? Why don’t people realize that education has become a HUGE moneymaking business and that is why there is a big anti-teacher and/or anti teachers union push. Test companies make millions from these tests and these companies donate money to various campaigns. You do the math!
Who said men can’t be hysterical………you must have never met Paul Vallas
Yes, watch him flip out when HIS reputation is attacked…please get to the very end where he is told to sit down and shut up basically.
Talk about HYSTERICAL! Try not to laugh at him.
One more…wait for the parent to put him in his place…Got New Orleans Mama!
Diane, I share your deep-seated suspicion about politicians, bureaucrats, and others from “on high” dictating for the masses how they live their lives. And I am deeply suspicious of the educational establishment telling parents how (and where) their children must be educated. And this is where you and I differ on the “status quo.”
Let me tell you something else that’s non-gender-specific hysterical: accusing an interlocutor of sexism when you have absolutely no basis for doing so.
Cheap, intellectually lazy shot.
Diane wrote, “I do not like to refer to gender and I seldom do. But I can’t help but mention that there is a long history of men asserting their superiority by calling women “hysterical.”
And here’s the very measured quote you characterized as “typical of the hysteria”:
“They should devote more time to improving the substance of what is being taught … and give up all this measurement mania,” said Diane Ravitch…
Gary, if you meant no gender-specific offense in this article, the easy and academically correct response to Diane’s very mildly voiced concern would be something like,
“I certainly meant no gender specific denigration of Dr. Ravitch by my reference, and I apologize if my choice of words might have accidentally left her with that concern.”
You spiced up your depiction of Dr. Ravitch’s hysteria by sliding into jokes by other commentators, so you might add a little note of apology for that oversight, also.
Instead, you’re dishing up more insults like, “Cheap, intellectually lazy.”
Indeed, much of your generalized denigration and cheap, intellectually lazy name calling isn’t gender specific. Look how you start out in your headline, with “anti-research mentality” and “educational status quo.”
Let me assure you, very serious and reputable people of both genders are deeply concerned by this news of Gates’ sponsorship. If you want to discuss the question, you should start by respecting the standards of academic dispute in your own discourse.
I chose not to apologize for using the word hysterical because it clearly was used in a non-gender-specific way and squabbling over this word is a way to avoid the substance of my actual argument. Such distractions are intellectually lazy.
My blog post acknowledged legitimate sources of resistance to ideas like the use of biometric data. My argument is that the reaction (read the news stories I cite in the post; it was not just Diane and the quote is inlt part if her reaction) was disproportionate to the concerns.
It’s easy to use a word in a way with no particular intent and discover, to one’s chagrin, that it has connotation or background that you hadn’t considered or known about when using the word.
It doesn’t make you a bad person or make your argument bad, and given that you blog to communicate, it’s good to know how other people interpret your words. It’s also okay to say, “you know, I never thought about it that way. Interesting.”
“Hysteria” is a perfectly good word and I use it in gender-neutral ways myself all the time. But my English comp teacher would have subjected me with a red pen for using it three times in such a short essay. 🙂
Alright, el. You’ve convinced me. “Hysteria” was a bad choice of words and I wished is used another.
I will post an acknowledgement of this, and some more thoughts, on my blog in coming days.
So if this were a study say to compare some specific ideas in pedagogy with a particular sample of kids complete with informed consent by parents, I wouldn’t fret about it all that much. It would just be one kind of data, possibly interesting, ranking some different educational approaches.
But this is expressly stated:
————————————-
Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out.
—————————————
It’s not about an isolated research study. It *is* about teachers using them all the time, every day, in every classroom on every child.
And I’m not OK with that. I’m not okay with it for my child or for any of the kids in my community. I will fight it any way I can.
For our intrepid blogger who considers this all hysteria: why not try an experiment? How about *you* wear one and have the data collected and emailed to your supervisor/department head every day in an attractive graphical form. (Don’t forget to assign yourself detention if you forget to put it on.) See how you feel about it after a month of that, and get back to us.
And just to be clear – my objection is not specifically to their use to evaluate teachers. My objection is to the children being evaluated with them. And if they’re wearing them, they will be evaluated with that information.
(For the record, as a very high achieving student, I infuriated many an insecure teacher by reading a novel during class…. and then acing all the assignments and tests. Not sure what the heck the bracelets would have to say about that.)
I have taken the time to look up Dr. Gary Houchens at Western Kentucky University, because my roots run deep in Kentucky, and I don’t like how he attacked Diane and others who disagree with the “scientific experimentation” on children. Forget gender negative statements; look at the research!
When one resorts to calling such a noted educator and historian as Diane Ravich, and others as reacting “hysterically”, then my flags go up! Let us do some web research!
Dr. Houchens is involved in something called the Enneagram. This device is supposed to measure the nine personalitues now identied and apparently supported by Time magazine…best I could determine from the site web of Contemplative Learning Solutions, and the Enneagram Institute.
I found a book titled “The Wisdom of the Ennegram” on line and apparently this book helps one to “map out the soul”. The Ennegram is a “personality typing system that attempts to identify the nine basic personality types known. Dr. Houchens teaches classes on the system and from his web uses it in his class to help students and schools administrators. Go in and check this out for yourselves, because I certainly don’t wish to be misquoted or have my personality “mistyped”.
I found something else that stated the Ennegram “intergrates precise knowledge of the nine types with teachings from a variety of spiritual sources around the world, including Buddism, Christianity, Judiasm, Serfiesn, (?) and Fourth Wave Teachings (?).
Someone needs to ask Dr. Gary Houchens if his university is one of several who received 1.4 million dollars from the Gates Foundation to further deal in this questionable science.
All I can say is watch out Warren County, Kentucky because the Ennegram method is being promoted there. I have some concerns because I have relatives with school age children in the area. Amazing what one can find on the web! Take care and keep up your good work Diane and others.
Wow. Thanks, Ann. So, this product crosses our “faith-based” hoax tradition with “data-driven” education.
Folks, I wouldn’t classify the Enneagram as “science” and I certainly don’t command multi-million dollar research grants to study it. I do recommend you read up on it, though, because it’s an extremely useful tool for getting to know yourself better and improve your communication with others.
What if I already know myself pretty well and am not worried about how I communicatemwith others? I am skeptical about its purpose and why isn’t it free?
Sorry for typos…
Who knows at this point? Just try and ascertain truth from fiction is my only suggestion. When you see some being attacked for their point of view as Diane and others were about this strange scientific technology, then become aware of propoganda and possible vested interest. Frainkly chemtchr, I have no idea what ‘our ‘faith based’ hoax’ tradition with ‘data-driven’ education is that you are referring to. Please enlighten me!
Well, Ann, in the Church of Scientology engrams are bad things, but they’re detectable and treatable with electronic devices which can get you Clear of them, at a cost of about $128,000, by a Wikipedia estimate.
On the other hand, Enneagrams are good, New Age syncretist things with 9 points on a circle, which can be used by any denomination to improve spiritual…(not sure yet). I can’t make out what their biosensor connection might be, but an all-day training is only about $1200 – $1700, and that includes lunch and materials. I can’t find an endpoint for the trainings, but you could probably buy a couple of weeks (with lunch) for the same cost as getting Clear.
Houchens says he was introduced by his pastor 17 years ago, and now he has his own Enneagram consulting business. That sounds more like church-based propagation of Tupperware parties than classic snake-handling revivals, but I’m still not sure we want it in our schools.
On his blog, he calims,
“Recent local clients have included the Green River Regional Education Cooperative (GRREC) and the Warren County Public Schools Leadership Academy for aspiring administrators. In August we’ll do a back-to-school workshop for the faculty of Warren Central High School.”
So, I think your concern for the schoolchildren in Kentucky might not be disproportionate.
Better, Dr. Houchens. Let’s move on as though you had written “disproportionate”, then, and not distract ourselves by squabbling over any of your unnecessary insults.
In an earlier comment, I posted a link to Affectiva’s marketing site for their Q-Sensor bracelets. The post got held up pending moderation, so I’m not including the link here to save time. My point was that the GSR bracelet is a marketing research tool, not an educational research tool. There isn’t any link established between the arousal detected by the Q-Sensor and actual learning, but Gates is underwriting implementation research. He gets to decide what constitutes successful engagement. What we don’t need is research on triggers to increase kids shallow attention to “educational” software, which was my first concern about this project.
Don’t forget that Gates has already demonstrated the power of his “advocacy”, by leveraging his Foundation’s funds to impose legislation on the public schools, requiring them to implement policies without a research basis of any kind. He still maintains his grants to ALEC for that very purpose.
Value Added Metrics, mandated online delivery platforms, data-warehouses, and private seizure of public education assets by for-profit providers under the accountability laws are among the market control strategies already legally mandated at local taxpayer expense, without our consent.
For reassurance, you cite the very quote where Gates officials actually went into their own website and hacked their own description of the grant’s purpose. That isn’t good news at all. Since Gates’ apparatus of control is already in place, alarms need to go off before the trap snaps shut.
Posted on Gary H’s blog:
As an experienced teacher who admires her students, I don’t need a bracelet to tell me when they are: bored, confused, excited, tired, interested, etc. I know them as individuals with strengths, weaknesses, aspirations and dreams. I find this insulting and another way to turn the art of teaching into an exact science that can be manned by Stepford test prep drones or teach for a while recruits. Gates continues to demean and insult the teaching profession, one he knows nothing about. Just because he is a billionaire, it is assumed he is a expert on all topics and all professions. Bill and Melinda and the rest of the faux reformers should give up three years of their lives and work on the front line teaching public school children……plan the lessons, monitor their progress, grade papers, chart the data, enrich for the talented and gifted while individualizing and differentiating for those who struggle, attend 504 meetings, PPT’s, parent conferences, district workshops. Â It is time for them to walk the walk and then let’s plan to talk some more about the teaching profession.
I agree Linda! Why don’t they all take your advice? Work in a classroom, and I mean actually work! Not photo ops, in and out. Have any of them actually spent an entire day in a public school classroom? A real public school classroom that is not prepared for their visit? Tweet, email, and write Bill, and all the other faux reformers, to spend at least a week in our classrooms when school begins again!
I have seen reactions like this before to what Diane has to say, by people who’ve disagreed and resorted to code words from their affiliation’s script, such as the educational “status quo”, as well as ad hominem, like “hysterical” and “anti-science” –which typically come off looking like low blows and often reveal the weaknesses in one’s position. (Articles that begin with titular attacks require strong arguments to back them up..
The Gates grant to study use of the galvanic skin response device to measure student engagement was brought to Diane’s attention by a parent, and many educators and parents here were alarmed and responded with concern. Considering that the announcement indicated it would be part of the Measures of Effective Teaching project and their website http://metproject.org refers to teacher evaluations, among other things, it is not a huge leap to envision the GSR being used as a component of teacher evaluation in the future. However, that is not the only issue, as Diane mentioned.
Many people today are skeptical of electronic devices that are tracking our personal lives, from cookies on our computers to global positioning systems in our phones to closed circuit TVs (goodness knows where) to health and DNA databases. Privacy concerns should not be taken lightly, since once privacy has been violated, that information is out there and cannot be rescinded. In an era when we may not know the details about all of the technological capabilities that Big Brother has to track us without our consent, and we have no assurances that information about us is secure and will only be used in our own best interests, I think it wise to question possible intrusions at the starting gate.
Most importantly, while parental permission must be obtained for minors to be involved in research, if the GSR is deemed to be a valid and reliable assessment, parents might not have much say about its future use in schools down the road, since not all locals permit students to opt out of testing. Caring people act as responsible citizens when they raise issues about such ramifications.
And by the way, for those of us who’ve been around a long time, for decades now, it’s been very apparent that it’s reform that has been the “educational status quo.” (I’ve been addressing it since A Nation at Risk, in 83. Can anyone recall when reform was called off? As Heraclitus said, “There is nothing permanent except change.”)
Let’s see. When I began to work at a new high school in 1966, the principal had insisted on installing an intercom system through which he could listen to any classroom at any time. In addition, you could not imagine the opportunies he had to interrupt classes. In addition, he had the kind of voice that could have been stolen from a 1984 movie. Very often, a teacher would hear a “click” in the speaker. We started responding to these clicks with various clever insults. Eventually, through the action of our union, we grieved the listening issue under the guise that such invasions violated the contract on evaluations. Eventually, the system was turned off exept for announcements.
The origins of the word “hysterical” aside (and yes, same origin as “hysterectomy”), nothing about your posts, Dr. Ravitch, can by called anything but reasonable. True, it might be hard for most people to imagine a future where students are hooked up to monitoring bracelets. But twenty years ago, could we have imagined living in a world where our names would be compared to a secret database every time we traveled in an airplane?
The fact that the funds for this research come from a foundation started by the founder of one of the world’s largest technology companies does bring it closer to the plausible.
But the biggest issue is what this research path says about our understanding of education. Of course, students who are tuned in will learn more than those who are not. But the articles made it clear that these devices were incapable of differentiating between helpful and destructive states of mind. What does “tuned in” mean in different children?
Most importantly, this research direction continues the trend of deifying “data” and making teachers responsible for factors they may be able to influence but cannot control. What about the children who have not eaten? What about those who live in apartment complexes where there are police sirens every night? What about those who are living in a shelter because of domestic violence? What about those who are living in their parent’s car? (My children’s elementary school, a prosperous one in Michigan, nevertheless had a good number of students fitting these descriptions, who I have tried to help as a classroom volunteer.)
Just like parents, teachers generally know who is paying attention and who is distracted – and the signals are different for every child. The question is how to provide teachers with better tools to reach more kids more consistently. The current trend, however, is to assume that “effective” teaching is an easily defined and implemented practice which is equally effective with every child, so simplistic metrics can be used to see if a teacher is working “hard enough.” High-stakes testing, merit pay, and similar proposals all rest on that basic foundation. The concept behind the GSR bracelets is in that same vein.
“The question is how to provide teachers with better tools to reach more kids more consistently.”
Agreed. Sadly, the tool of choice these days is a standardized test – the holy grail of data. This one-size-fits-all mentality to teaching and assessment has eroded an honorable profession. Schools are not perfect, but when have schools ever been perfect? And when have quick fixes ever made schools better? Common Core has been foisted upon districts faster than the time needed to actually digest it. APPR, SLOs, TIPs…all being rolled out at once with a haste never before seen in the field of education. Accountability is king, yet we see legislation in Louisiana and Florida that wants to siphon off money earmarked for public education for charters, vouchers and private religious schools (what happened to the establishment clause?) – many of these recipients having no history of accountability, let alone verified success in educating children. I’m a teacher, I’m mad as hell, and I can’t take this anymore!
Many thanks to thoughtful commenters who have expanded my thinking on this topic. See my latest post, wherein I acknowledge and apologize for rhetorical over-reach in what I wrote, while sticking to the core of my main argument:
http://schoolleader.typepad.com/school-leader/2012/06/my-row-with-ravitch.html
Given school choice, I’ll choose one that doesn’t use Galvanic Skin Response bracelets. 🙂
I encourage educators to be reflective practitoners, so I know that, to be authentic, it involves regular, honest, deep-seated self-inventories, and I appreciate those efforts. However, it’s an ongoing process and sometimes we don’t go far enough.
In this case, I think that conceding to certain matters, such as around privacy, as well as use of the word “hysterical” to describe alarm over the implications of using GSR devices with children, and now calling cares about encroachments on physiological privacy “over-reacting” is just a euphamism that still over-reaches and suggests concern over children’s privacy rights is unwarranted.
Alarms should be going off for those concerned about privacy, children and how this matter could play out for them. I see no compelling reason to study a personally intrusive assessment device on children which, if determined to be valid and reliable, children may have no option but to wear in classrooms.
This is not about science; we have many empirical methods of gathering information that could be used instead. This is not even about student engagement; research could be conducted with adult learners, such as college students, if studies on GSR bracelets were just about measuring engagement. This is about what will be brought into children’s classrooms, as corporate America seeks to obtain personally compromising information and compile national databases on people. That should be carefully scrutinized, not encouraged, especially in regard to children, because this is a slippery slope and there are other options.
I don’t like personalizing this matter, Gary, but, unfortunately, that was your approach.
For someone who inserted yourself into an issue that had gone viral by effectively taking your own “cheap, intellectually lazy shot(s)” at Diane and others, I find it rather
disconcerting that you would stand by anything that appears to intentionally offend or
discount people. I would hope that you are not encouraging future school leaders to be
abrasive towards those with differing views, that you are teaching them to be selective in crafting their words, that you are promoting discourses more civil than what you modeled in this arena, and that you continue to reflect and contemplate.
I agree with Gary that reaction to this story has been overblown, especially when carried out by a public figure like Ravitch. When news of what is at this point a research study is distorted into a harbinger of a “brave new world,” particularly when nobody seems to have much info yet about the nature of the study, it seems to me to be Limbaugh-like, fomenting hysteria for political ends.
Sandra, I understand your point and agree that “hysteria” is easily manufactured in the absence of facts. I don’t know if you are in the field of education, but for those of us who are, the data attack that we have been experiencing within the last decade leaves has left many of us fearful of the next wave of data intrusion – even if we lack tangible evidence of what that next wave may be. That may sound paranoid and even ridiculous to some, but the macro reality is that we are living in a society in which our actions and reactions are transformed into immediate data. Our every move on the internet is monitored and documented in databases which are then sold to corporations. We take a stroll down Main St. and are videotaped by a dozen cameras. Data, data, data. You aren’t human anymore, Sandra; you are bar code somewhere. But yet you want to begrudge someone for standing up and shouting “I am not nor do I want to be a number!” You are right; we don’t know what this study will bring. But you are also wrong; it is okay to discuss what this study might bring.
I’m a professor in a school of education and have written multiple books for teachers, including a fairly critical one on testing and standards. Believe me, I know how bad it is out there. What bothers me is the jumping on and ridiculing of stuff in ways that aren’t well informed, especially by public figures. We can’t just say we’re opposed to educational research because it collects data. This study could find out that kids are far more engaged by projects than worksheets. Why assume the worst without knowing anything about it? I googled and found out that this particular gsr device is being used for some interesting research, including ptsd treatment assessment, affective responses to music, etc.
Thank you.
Gates is certainly free to fund whatever Gates wants.
I am free to say that I don’t like what Gates is funding.
Others discuss as they will.
What other issues are there?
Diane
I think it’s very short-sighted to see criticism of the GSR devise as just being about “educational research because it collects data”. It’s about how assessments considered valid and reliable end up in classrooms without dispute, and the possiblity that the assessment tool of the future is going to be a devise which brings very personal physiological data to data-minors without parental/student choice.
We already have a lot of data indicating that kids are more engaged in projects than workbooks. Do you really think that having more data on that would result in corporate education “reformers” scaling back on testing requirements (and VAM), so kids could spend less time on test-prep workbooks, teachers could reduce the time they teach to tests and more projects could be implemented?
Please excuse the typos – posted before proofreading. Mea culpa.