A reader writes:
What grabbed me was this part:
“electrodermal activity that grows higher during states such as excitement, attention or anxiety and lower during states such as boredom or relaxation.”
So, this means that they can’t tell the difference between excitement, attention and anxiety? So all you have to do is keep a class in constant fear and you ace the evaluation? It also can’t tell the difference between boredom and relaxation. So if you’re doing “sustained silent reading,” which is it? Are students supposed to be “on” all the time?
I’m not a teacher, and even I can see that this is a huge steaming pile. But it got them a $500K grant! Nice work if you can get it – and stomach it.
Let’s see now. The teacher who keeps the class in a state of high anxiety gets points on the “effectiveness” scale. The teacher whose students are feeling at ease in the classroom will get a low rating.
If this reader saw through this flaw, why did no one at the Gates Foundation?
Last night, I googled “galvanic response skin” and got thousands of hits. It is happening, it has many uses apparently.
But surely you can see how it can be used to mine classroom data, to find out whose students sit on the edge of their seats in a state of alertness, attention and anxiety, and whose are slacking off.
Data mining is now a customary part of the business of online corporations who record our every move, which web pages we open, which products we buy online, which books we are interested in. All of this information is assembled, filtered, and compressed into a personalized profile, so that advertisers can target us with their messages wherever we go on the ‘Net. No point advertising automobile products to me, but they will be just right for someone else. Once gathered, this information can be sold and resold.
Once you understand the template, you can understand the logic of the Galvanic Response Skin bracelets. They will be one more piece of “objective” data to add to test scores, student surveys, and observations when evaluating a teacher. He or she may contest the observations, but how can they protest the objective readings of students’ skin responses to instructions?
And think of the professional development opportunities! Soon there will be workshops on how to increase your students’ GRS ratings. And there will be trained GSR facilitators and GSR measurement experts and GSR coaches.
It all fits so nicely with the U.S. Department of Education’s huge investment in data warehouses for every state. Before long, there will be a statistical profile for every student, compiled from their vital statistics at birth to their pre-kindergarten readiness assessments to everything that happens thereafter.
And to what end?
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Where are the times teachers looked at their pupils and noticed if they were bored or interested? Are we supposed to watch our bracelets now instead of our class?
Why do politicians think teachers are not able to do their job the right way? Our education wasn’t that bad!
Let us try to be human again!
Even though I am an European teacher, I’m scared of these developements. They tend to cross the ocean fast…..
Anniefree: You are correct, in that developments in the States tend to end up across the Atlantic. We’re like a dystopian lab over here. It’s interesting how international teachers must recognize, and resist. Recognize the slippery slope.
I imagine Gates also has plans for this app down the road when he’s gotten rid of teachers altogether. Think of the upside! A rightsized workforce, a program that can monitor student response to an online curriculum that has been created and field tested for autonomic response, add in testing which can also evaluated by response, a cultural narrative conceived and delivered to all with responses guaranteed and monitored for correct reaction. We can understand the whole learner without the messy intervention of actual humans in a classroom… … a brave new world that has no people in it.
But think of the cost savings!
!!!! KAH CHING !!!!
I imagine Gates has plans for this app down the road when he’s gotten rid of teachers altogether. Look at the upside: we can rightsize the education industry, monitor correct response to online curriculum which has been field tested for correct response, evaluate student understanding and response to evaluation which has been field tested for correct response, monitor emotional states for inappropriate response and apply appropriate response to intervention, deliver a consistent cultural narrative and common curriculum to every student, automatically filter and translate data to provide a complete student profile that is not subject to subjectivity… all without the messy interference of human beings. A brave new world that has no people in it.
oops.. thought the first one had deleted and I had to recreate it. 🙂
Two words. Orwell. Huxley.
Three words. You forget Bilderberg; the global elite.
I found this quote by Huxley
“Our business is to first of all be aware of what is happening, then to use our imagination to see what might happen, how this might be abused, and then if possible to see that the enormous powers which we now possess thanks to these scientific and technological advances shall be used for the benefit of human beings and not for their ultimate degradation.” ~ Aldous Huxley, U.C. Berkely, 1962
why don’t they just use mood rings. probably a lot cheaper
Ah, but mood rings don’t generate quantitative data. Nice idea, though!
Can this galvanic contraption distinguish between different types of excitement? Sometimes a beautiful new female student joins my class and the young men are visibly excited–about the girl, but not about my thrilling explication of adverbs. If I want to keep my job, do I have to hire supermodels to audit my classes to raise the galvanic excitement levels?
Joseph: You made my morning. As Brian Eno said, systems don’t end up working exactly as planned. (rough paraphrase) They have unintended consequences. Imagine: today, we’re covering another boring informational text. Can I borrow one your attractive students, to affect the kids’ Galvanic excitement levels?
Don’t forget the female student’s excitement may go to the top when that good looking young man walks into the room! 🙂 You made me laugh with your comments. I needed that! If we don’t laugh at some of these ridiculous ideas, we will indeed need bracelets to measure the degree of our insanity to determine which environment is best for
us.
What’s sad is that this already happens to a great extent. Ever looked at an industrial trade magazine? Check out the ads – and the models they use. (What a scantily-clad woman has to do with the virtues of paper-making felt, I’ll never know.)
Then there’s the annual ritual in my parts of the Detroit Auto Show. Even in a car-obsessed world, the models introducing the cars get as much attention. So I guess this is just another thing education needs to borrow from the private sector.
Let’s hope these disgusting ventures (and he surely has other quests planned) are a reliable indication to us that The Gates Foundation does indeed realize the errant ineptness of the use standardized state test scores as valid measures of teacher effectiveness.
Let’s hope it also is provides indisputable proof of the danger which undisciplined megalomaniacs like Gates pose to the evolution of mankind and highly principled civilized society.
Thirty-four years ago when I opposed a government approved program titled The Exemplary Center For Reading Instruction, funded with almost 700 thousand dollars from the federal government, I was called a kook. This program used material in its promotional on “how to train rats, cats, and dog” i. e. the Skinner way. I opposed “A Nation at Risk”, America 2000, Goals 2000, School to Work Act, Charter Schools, i. e. privatizing and turning the citizens schools over to corporations. “I have opposed these government sponsored acts because they have/had nothing to do with education. I did enough research to see the devious plot behind the hoax.
The ultimate goal is to privatize and remove representative government from the people. The Center for Privatization head man, Garvey, sent a letter to President Reagain stating that “the time for privatization is now here” and privatization would make representative government obselete. Private management companies are now running our public schools, not locally elected school boards. Who is next to go?
The objective now, is to get rid of any teacher, educator, or citizen who will stand in the way, or speak out against what is happening to our children and our country.
First, the controllers will try to label the objector(we saw this with Diane) ,and those of us who dare to raise our objection in public are called “kooks”. I just say, “thank you because coming from you, I consider that a compliment”. So, what I’m trying to do is give you the courage to keep speaking up and out against this travesty to our children and our country. Do your own research! Most is now on the web, or at least enough to convince you that you are not a kook.
The School to Work Act, passed by Congress, actually put in our schools the old Soviet Union’s polytec program…training young children for the global planned workforce. The curricula was based on Pavlov “strict and fixed in its conception, one might say narrow from the eductional system used in the USA”. (source: USA government studies). This is the Core Standards and test being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with the blessing of our President and the current contender.
Just take a look at what the Microsoft company is doing to the youth of China. This was on Frank Little’s comment post, and has been in the media. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have no accountability to the citizens of any country because they are a tax-free foundation. They stand to gain mega dollars with computerized education and their other experimentations on citizens around the world especially uneducated Africans.
The other corporations and lesser cottage industry individuals are interested in making money, and they apparently have no shame or are too ignorant or lazy to check the research behind this travesty to our greatest and most important resource, our children! As our childen are education, so goes our nation. How many times does history have to repeat itself before we learn?
Did we learn nothing from Nazi German, USSR, North Korea, China, Cuba, and etc.?
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How about this? http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/06/04/gone-too-far-texas-school-will-microchip-students