Big Brother

The things about the 2020 articles that keep haunting me are situations in which personal accountibility are given over to "smart" machines. In many of the vignettes, errors or bad decisions on the part of the human, were reported by the technology. Both students and employees of institutions got consequences for "everyday" actions. That is contrary to the idea of "safe learning" and "formative" evaluation. While I realize that the goal of instruction is to improve skills, and the goal of teaching is to "do no harm", and the more diagnostic data a teacher has, the better able to remediate...the infallibility of being human is a constant. I mean, we are not ALWAYS at our best. I'm not ready for my faults to be instantly and automatically broadcast. I don't know that the learning process isn't partially private. I need time to mull and review my errors and come to a fuller understanding just with the materials at hand...not constantly being barraged with more specific materials.

Here is another personal revelation...while in my classroom I know my intent for what I am trying to teach...how will machines "read" intent into what I am doing? Sometimes I try something new, and it doesn't work, and I have to revise and redo. Its like an e-mail that you send in all sincerity to be nice and the person reads it as containing sarcasm and malice. It is hard to believe that they did until you reread what you wrote and realize that it could indeed be read both ways. It just scares the wits out of me to think being "subject to constant surveyllience" would mean a loss of "to err is human". We'd all like to think we never "hurt" a learner's feelings, self esteem, or self image...but it does happen even if we don't mean it to happen. The lessons a teacher teaches, are often about "responsibility" or "potential". When kids don't have an assignment done, I don't want them to feel "good" but the tone I DO want to give isn't meant to eviscerate them. I do want to give them enough of a feeling of dissonance so they don't come unprepared again. Will a machine do a better job? Would a machine be able to alert the kid before they came in unprepared? And if so, what is the "growth" of humanity in that? We'll just be run and reminded by machines?

I generally don't mind parents observing me and actually, I like it because I feel that they are usually very positively surprised by the job I do....but I also know that there have been times when things weren't going as I had planned...and I'm always glad that I wasn't on parade when I messed up. The idea of my principal being able to "listen in" on my classroom without me knowing it seems "unfair" and like "spying". It is getting to be so much like the sordid and silly reality TV that is everywhere these days. I don't like watching it, so I don't think I'd like being a part of it.

The other question I had was the vignette where the student who paid more, got a better education. What is up with that? Being from privledge I still don't like the idea of "buying" more because you "have" more. I mean, I'm not ready to give back the advantages I've had being from privledge, but neither do I want to admit that it already happens. Seeing it in print was very startling.