Lauren Steiner is an activist who is actively engaged in fighting privatization in California. She has a regular program on Facebook, where she interviews people like me.
She interviewed me yesterday about charters, billionaires, neoliberalism, and other issues. The California Legislature is deciding right now about bills to regulate charters and make them accountable.
I reactivated my FB account for this interview. You don’t have to be on FB to watch as it is posted on YouTube and easily available.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ms. Ravitch, I wanted to share with you a PDF from a major testing/textbook company about their new 5 year corporate plan. It’s really shocking what their ambitions are. They pretty much want to make “Siri” and “Alexa” into teachers on children’s phones and do away with classroom/human education.
What is your email? I would love to send you the PDF and I’m sure it’ll make a great blog post.
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I would like to see that PDF. I might want to do a show on it. My email is laurensteiner57@gmail.com. Thanks.
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Florida Teacher might be referring to Pearson Realize that’s now integrated with Google Classroom.
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“Clarity” below has the link to the PDF. It’s very heavy. It also seems Ms. Ravitch is of course lightening fast on these things and posted it already over the weekend. Here’s the latest hits from the PDF:
“Pearson aims to lead the ‘next generation’ of teaching and learning through the development and provision of digital learning platforms, including the development of Artificial Intelligence in education (AIEd) (Luckin, Holmes, Griffiths & Forcier 2016). The company is also piloting deep learning AI technologies that it hopes will provide automated, real-time feedback to students in the form of a virtual tutor, much like Siri or Alexa. This technology will be integrated into a single platform— Pearson Realize™—that will deliver its digital services in an individually personalised [sic] way. The potential impacts of these developments on public education include:”
“Pearson’s new business strategy aims to accelerate the shift towards reduced need for teachers and schools in order to grow the market for data-driven personalised [sic] learning that is provided direct to consumers across their life course. Pearson’s vision for education is one in which the cost and contribution of teachers to public education is reduced, while the company plays a more central role in education provision globally through its new platforms and the data upon which they run.”
“There is clearly a place in the GEI for private providers of education services, and private companies are generally better placed to provide a range of technical services that will underpin the next generation of teaching and learning. Moreover, providing profitable services in the interests of its shareholders is a reasonable objective for any edubusiness. However, Pearson’s vision for the company that it wants to become in 2025 raises two major causes for concern in relation to the integrity and sustainability of public schooling:
1. the privatisation of data infrastructure and data, which encloses innovation and new knowledge about how we learn, turning public goods into private assets; and
2. the transformation and potential reduction of the teaching profession, diminishing the broader purposes and outcomes of public schooling in favour of personalised learning that focuses on individual knowledge and skills.”
“Both of these issues arise from a particular approach to profiting from education: what David Harvey (2004) has described as ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Pearson is following the example of other technology companies by seeking to disrupt public schooling in order to privatise educational data infrastructures and profit from the data that it accumulates through the provision of its services. These data will be the ‘lifeblood’ of new education platforms and will be crucial for gaining new insights into how we learn. Pearson’s corporate strategy exemplifies ‘[t]he corporatization and privatization of hitherto public assets (like universities)’ and is part of ‘a new wave of “enclosing the commons”’
“Pearson’s vision for education in 2025 laudably promotes the benefits of technological developments and their combination with new kinds of teacher professionalism and new insights produced by the learning sciences. However, Pearson’s efforts to contribute to the disruption of teaching and public schooling, including in the Global South, and its development of platforms that produce new volumes and varieties of education data, while raising new ethical concerns about openness, privacy, bias and transparency, will create significant risks for public education over the coming years.”
It’s a vast and ambitious plan that seeks to end “public” education in favor of a for-profit computerized education that does not involve public schools or teachers as part of the equation.
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Yikes! This Pearson plan is scary. They actually plan to eliminate education as a public good! Of course the wealthy will still send there children to private schools with human teachers and fellow students with whom they can interact in real time. Granted they have no experience with the role schools play in their communities since they have never attended such schools. Their plan should go viral. Does anyone really believe this is the way we want to educate our children? Are they going to play in virtual bands and on virtual sports teams? Will they debate avatars? Put on virtual reality plays? Is Alexa going to critique their art projects? Of course we know what public participation will play. Zilch!
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A brilliant, comprehensive interview that really covers the waterfront on Ed Deform! Well worth watching. I have one question: We all know that Diane Ravitch writes a great book and gives a great speech. Is it really fair that she is also so amazingly articulate in an interview? LMAO. Rarely have I seen such intelligence on display. Awesome work, Diane! If the nation were my classroom, I’d sit everyone down to watch this.
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Gosh, I wish I looked 50!
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Or 60. Or even 70.
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Rilke wrote that by the time you reach 70, you have the face you deserve. You, Dr. Ravitch, must have banked a lot of good karma over the years!
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When Leonard Cohen last played in Chicago, he mentioned that he had been to Chicago years before, when he was 60, “just a kid with a dream.”
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You look stunning in this. Absolutely stunning.
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Wonderful! Well done! We are slaying Goliath.
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Thanks for sharing the interview Diane. It was great to interview one of my sheroes. Keep fighting. It’s what keeps us looking young. I’m about 20 years behind you. You DO NOT look your age.
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Thank you, Ms. Steiner, for your profoundly informed questions and commentary. Awesome.
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