“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com
Public Education for Sale
A perspective from Yadira Paz-Martinez
Are corporations investing in the future of students or themselves?
Growing up in the rural areas of North Carolina, I experienced the benefits of physically attending a school where teachers lectured. I watched how schools transformed from a traditional system with teachers and whiteboards to students using Google Classroom and Pearson. Before I attended Duke University, I never questioned why schools throughout the world, in particular developing countries, quickly introduced technology into their curriculum. I always thought, “thank you to these wealthy corporations for helping people in need,” lamentably, I was wrong. Fast-forward to 2021 in my ‘Globalization and Corporate Citizenship’ course, I questioned how technology rapidly advances into schools or what the purpose is for doing so? Opening my eyes, I learned through “The New Corporation” by Joel Bakan that the underlying goal of corporations is to create profit, implementing humans into a capitalist economic model. Corporations such as Microsoft, the World Bank, Google, and Pearson, invest in schools to monitor and obtain the data of students’ academic progress, further discovering new methods to use education as a form of profit. Corporations invest technology and funds into school systems, further eliminating teachers from schools, allowing corporations to control students’ curriculum, and limiting students from developing life skills.
During times of crisis, corporations take the opportunity to invest their money in schools to ‘help’ them recover while still expecting compensation. In Africa, CEOs such as Bill Gates are privatizing schools. By investing millions of dollars in for-profit companies such as Bridge International Academies, they hire adults regardless of certification to simply read off “android-based tables” that instructs the adults what to teach. In addition, corporations can monitor the progress of students through the data from the tablets and assignments they complete. During COVID-19, corporations took the time to implement new forms of academic technology into schools, such as Google Classroom, IXL, Pearson, and Edsby. “Corporate-run virtual schools” are another example of how corporations are maximizing their intervalence in a student’s education. By creating their own virtual schools, they can use more technology increasing profits. Marginalized schools are more vulnerable to corporations and their mission to implement technology into schools. Companies such as Pearson also regulates state exams, stating their mission is to provide “better learning outcomes.”
Corporations want to cut costs by eliminating teachers from the equation and replacing them with technology. Corporations intend to create students who will work for these companies attributing more profit. By replacing teachers, corporations initiated corporate advising, helping students determine career and financial goals. Corporations are degrading the value of certified teachers trained to teach students. In the past, companies would obtain profit by offering tutors; now, virtual tech platforms such as Khan Academy and virtual schools are their new form of profit. By eliminating teachers, designing tech tools to help students, and creating more virtual classrooms, tech corporations can “[expand the] tech sector estimated to be worth more than $45 billion.”
Now, let’s imagine that corporations remove teachers, who will teach students about morals, life goals, values, and career opportunities? “Education is not apolitical. You teach a set of values when you’re teaching,” when schools allow for artificial teachers, students don’t have direct communication with someone to also teach them about morals and values. The mission of corporations is to influence the people to the extent of controlling their future, values, and more importantly, their identity. Students who live in a digital world with minimal access to an instructor-student education and become “poor citizens of this world.” School districts are focused on obtaining higher test grades and scores; however, the focus of these administrators should be preparing their students to become citizens that question their surroundings. By controlling the minds of the people, corporations can increase their profits. Most students will also not have the capabilities to develop basic taught skills, such as respect, socializing, and manners.
I am not arguing that we should stop implementing technology in schools but limit the involvement of corporations in students’ education. The purpose of schools is to be a place where students can collaborate and learn in the presence of an educated professor, but corporations don’t want this. In addition, students won’t have the opportunity to develop better life skills, limiting them to learning about self-identity and free-thinking. There will be no more schools, students will lack interactive skills with people, and they will become a part of a profitable economic model. We, the people, must not allow corporations to control us. We must become free thinkers, question our surroundings and the intentions of the elite. By bringing democracy back into society, we can regulate corporate profits and data. We cannot permit corporations to control the minds and imaginations of students. Our children cannot become part of a profit scheme.
