Peter Greene demonstrates here (yet again) that there is nothing that money cannot buy (and corrupt). Now it is Sesame Street (although as he points out, HBO already bought Sesame Street). Is there anything not for sale?
Open the link and read the whole sorry story.
If you haven’t been paying particularly close attention, you may have missed the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative slowly inserting its hyper-wealthy proboscis into a hundred different corners of modern life, using its not-quite-philanthropy LLC model to follow in the Gatesian footprints of wealthy technocrats who want to appoint themselves the unelected heads of oh-so-many sectors.
One of those sectors is, of course, education. Their latest bold new initiative is being trumpeted in People, where it is getting exactly the fluffy uncritical reception one might expect, which is too bad, because there’s plenty to be critical of.
The tech mogul, 35, and pediatrician’s philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is working in conjunction with The Primary School and Sesame Workshop to help fund a “new curriculum” that aims to “integrate social emotional learning into early childhood literacy lessons,” according to a press release.
The Primary School is out in Palo Alto, “expanding the boundaries of traditional education.” It is the elementary school that Chan co-founded in 2016 to bring together issues in education and pediatrics. They have all sorts of business style leadershippositions like “director of talent” and “director of strategic initiatives” and the teaching staff seems to be made of a few “lead teachers” and a whole lot of “associate teachers.” Their CEO comes from the NewSchool Venture Fund and Aspire. Their “director of innovation and learning” spent two whole years in Teach for America. The school’s principal once founded a charter school and stayed with it for five years. Of the lead teachers a little more than half have actual teaching backgrounds, while the rest are TFA or other “non-traditional” approaches to the field. I admittedly didn’t check every single one, but a spot check of the associate teachers turned up zero with actual teaching backgrounds.
In short, it’s very new, very reform, very Palo Alto-y, and yet, wonder of wonders, the folks at the Sesame Workshop, “the global nonprofit behind Sesame Street and so much more” and who have been at this for fifty years (longer, I’m betting, than virtually every staff person at The Primary School has been alive)– those folks feel an urge to team up with The Primary School.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Back in 2002, i wrote/spoke about for-profit education. One of the factoids from back then: “The non-profit Children’s Television Workshop, producers of Sesame Street and much more, is sustained by fees received from licensing over 5000 products, including many unrelated to education.”
This is to say that the commercialization of Sesame Street is not new and the purchase by billionaires who think they are innovators in education is perfectly logical. Both seem to think a school for the wee folk is just a matter of getting the corporate management and branding in place.
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Chan-Zukerberg partner with Sesame Street to give their endeavor a positive association that most parents know. What parents should understand that tech for toddlers is devopmentally inappropriate, and it may cause long term harm to developing eyes and brains. This LLC is seed money for an investment that will collect and sell children’s data. This plan is a sneaky way to monetize children to make more money for Chan-Zukerberg.
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those six essential words explaining so much about tech and school reform: A Sneaky Way To Monetize Children
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I feel sick to my stomach. The contempt for the teaching profession could not be more pronounced. Just what we need–another bunch of pretend educators pretending to teach. I love Peter Green’s analogies using his house and car.
I seem to remember something about Chan never even practicing pediatrics beyond her residency that would have given her a smidgen of credibility although I fail to see how her medical training translates into educational expertise.
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This is an ed reform contest they held to develop new educational product:
“Steve Shapiro, FineTune: An artificial intelligence application that guides students through the essay writing process with as much accuracy and personalization as a one on one interaction with their teacher.”
I think it’s great they’re just coming out and saying they’re replacing the teacher with a application now. I’m all for truth in advertising.
“Anna Utgoff, Bibliomatic: Computerized games with speech-recognition technology to identify mistakes students make while reading out loud and provide personalized feedback to improve reading skills.”
This will save a LOT of money in low and middle income schools, which are the only schools where it will ever be used. Get rid of the teachers, and your costs go way down.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/10-finalists-announced-moonshot-kids-competition
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Horrors! Save the children from Chan and Zuckie. And do tell everyone you know about this SHAM.
Most Americans, unfortunately are really not very intelligent consumers.
Everyone should vote with their money and time in addition to at the polls on Election Day.
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I’ve always considered Sesame Street to be a sort of mind control.
It’s actually creepy letting people you don’t know into your living room to talk to your kids.
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Especially if they are dressed up in weird animal suits.
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Of puppets.
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Zucky Day
Sweepin’ the schools away
On Zuck’s way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get?
How to get to Puppetry Street
Come and play
Everything’s A-OK
Friendly neighbors far
From land in Hawai’i
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Puppetry Street
How to get to Zucky-B Street
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And even creepier letting Mark Zuckerborg and his wife into your school to teach your kids.
About ethics?
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This man has a way with words! “a turducken of bad education policy”
The little vid promo: gag me. “We have a great way to calm down—it’s called a belly breath!” A PC update of “Catch a bubble!”
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Yes, the video promo is wretched. It reminds me that it’s so easy to impose on little children, and thus so easy to mistake horrid curriculum for good –because the kids don’t rebel. Everything seems fine. They do whatever the teacher tells them. But curriculum failure lurks under the pretty surface. In middle school it’s a bit different. By that point they’ve had it with the garbage and start acting up.
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“it’s so easy to impose on little children…” Exactly, you put your finger on it. In the video, a teacher w/all her alluring domination “invites” little children to try something, which elicits one thing: overwhelming desire to please the adult. How different from the old Sesame Street clips where the silly Count Von Count invites them to count, which elicits play. The video is demonstrating the opposite of how to engage tots in a lesson—the silly character here is cast in the role of obedient child, rather than protagonist. [But of course that reveals to whom CZ is advertising, neither teachers nor young children.]
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“Alluring domination” captures the sinister tinge well.
I’m all for obedience, but the “monarch” needs to deliver the goods in exchange. What are kids getting out of this? Pseudo-scientific New Agey emotional “self-regulation” (such BS!) and the illusion of becoming engineers without actually learning anything that would put on them on the road to becoming an engineer. As is typical these days, it’s a slick simulacrum of learning without the actual learning.
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Here’s an important/related post about financial backers pulling muppet strings and the deep tech roots poised to link children’s data to impact investments and profits for bankers https://wrenchinthegears.com/2018/01/14/who-is-pulling-the-muppet-strings/
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