Educational technology and the war on public education

Educational technology and the war on public education

Doing and Undoing Academic Labour, University of Lincoln, 7 June 2012

Dr Richard Hall [@hallymk1, [email protected]]

Act I: technology, alienation and neoliberal enclosure

The locus of alienation is no longer the isolated object, nor the distribution of products and tools, but “the personified conditions of production” as a whole. In these conditions, as we shall see, the worker is alienated(1)from the objects produced,(2)from the means of production (i.e. the tools and instruments through which production is carried out), and(3)from the process of objectification itself, because he or she finds that his or her practical life activity stunts, abuses, and undermines itself.

Wendling, A. E. 2009. Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation.London: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 17.

Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today… it is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision making.

Trades Unionist Jimmy Reid, elected Rector of the University of Glasgow, in his Rectoral Address of 1972.

The work-ins of the 1970s: techniques and tools

1.Labour discipline: wages; attacks on unionisation; productivity agreements; mergers.2.A move from strikes to occupations, especially in highly organised industries/centres.3.UCS in occupation for months: labour controls shipyards; sets an example; spatial co-ordination of various groups.4.Issues: consensus vs co-option; labour’s control of spaces; gender/ethnicity; reproduction of control; workers’ co-operatives set up.

Work-ins reflect/refract the edufactory collective’s techniques and tools for reinventing higher education as higher learning:

• general assemblies as democratic process;

• militant research strategies;

• research/teaching/labour in public.

The crisis is our university!

A Manifesto of the Transnational Struggles Against the Financial (i.e.

State-Private) University

Thesis #5: The opposite of university cuts is not money to the existing

academic power, but claiming funds for autonomous education and the

self-organization of knowledge production.

Thesis #9: The opposite of the corporate university is not the

state/public university, but the common university.

The Knowledge Liberation Front (2011). http://bit.ly/sUSaUe

[Technology] is a high level system that affects the way humans interact with the world. This means that one technology in most cases can comprise numerous artefacts and be applied in many different situations. It needs to be associated with a vision that embodies specific views of humans and their role in the world.

Ikonen et al., 2010, pp. 3-4 [http://bit.ly/GM05en]

1. The University is enclosed inside a systemic, historical crisis of capitalism.

2. Capital is enclosing historically-developed, public/social value through commodification and coercion [TINA].

3. Within the University, educational technology is a critical site of struggle.

Under the Global Agreement on Trade in Services, all aspects of education and education services are subject to global trade. The result is the global marketing of schooling from primary school through higher education.

Schools, education management organizations, tutoring services, teacher training, tests, curricula online classes, and franchises of branded universities are now part of a global education market.

(Lipman, P. 2009: http://bit.ly/qDl6sV)

Education markets are one facet of the neoliberal strategy to manage the structural crisis of capitalism by opening the public sector to capital accumulation. The roughly $2.5 trillion global market in education is a rich new arena for capital investment.

(Lipman, P. 2009: http://bit.ly/qDl6sV)

Technology is used to alienate and enclose academic labour inside hegemonic, fiscal “realities”.

1. Public-private partnerships: services; re-engineering; applications; outsourcing; consultancy.

2. Discourses of efficiency/productivity to be rooted: analytics; big data; reduced circulation time; changes in production; workload monitoring.

3. Legitimation of R&D: value-for-money; commercial efficiency; business process re-engineering (c.f. European Vision 2020; HEFCE 2012).

4. Moral depreciation and constant innovation/value-creation: Postone’s treadmill logic.

Act II: polyarchy and technology as kettle

Polyarchy• An elitist form of democracy manageable in a modern

society.

• Normalising what can be fought for in terms of organisation and governance.

• Universal, transhistorical norms make it unacceptable to argue for other forms of value or organisation.

• It is no longer possible to address the structural dominance of elites within capitalism, or the limited procedural definitions of democracy/participation/power.

Alienation and political enclosure reinforced technologically.

The Shock Doctrine: ‘control by imposing economic shock therapy’.

• structural re-adjustment: competition and coercion (internationalisation/distance learning)

• a tightening/quickening of the dominant economically-driven, anti-humanist ideology (student-as-consumer; HE-as-commodity)

• the transfer of state/public assets to the private sector (efficiency; consultancy; outsourced services)

• the privatisation of state enterprises/elements in the name of consumer choice, economic efficiency or sustainability (state-subsidised privatisation)

Klein, N. (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books: New York

1. Networks of power and affinity, that enable the re-production of ‘geographies of social relationships’.

2. Networks form shifting assemblages of activity and relationships that reinforce hegemonic power.

3. Transnational activist networks consisting of:i. academics and think tanks;ii. policy-makers and administrators;iii. finance capital and private equity funds;iv. media corporations and publishers;v. philanthropists/hedge-funds interested in corporate

social responsibility etc..aim to regulate the state for enterprise and the market.

Ball, S. 2011. Global Education Inc.BUT c.f. Neary, 2012 and Davies, 2011, critique network governance.

HEFCE: http://bit.ly/JikvC

http://bit.ly/jom3Ht

JISC-Announce: what is legitimised?5 March 2012: The case studies are examples of how institutions working in an open way can enjoy cost savings, a better student experience and make resources easier to find.

1 March 2012: A new tool launched by Cardiff University’s information services directorate and JISC allows people to assess the popularity and use of e-resources so they continue to deliver value for money.

24 Feb 2012: JISC online webinars help your organisation become more efficient and effective.

3 Feb 2012: "This report provides further evidence about the value and impact of the resources and discovery systems which UK academic libraries make available."

JISC-Announce: what is legitimised?

4 April 2012: how smart use of technology can help universities minimise the expense of outreach and reach a range of prospective students at very low cost.

19 April 2012: Case studies on The Troubles: We are able to share our respective knowledge, skills and resources for the ‘common good’ of British creativity, ingenuity and economic growth.

1 May 2012: increasing open access to research articles will have direct financial and practical benefits for the UK as a whole, benefits that are especially valuable in a time of austerity.

HEA, Strategic Plan 2012-16: http://bit.ly/GDkuVd

The Treasury position, on shared services:

2.186 VAT: providers of education – The Government will review the VAT exemption for providers of education, in particular at university degree level, to ensure that commercial universities are treated fairly. (Finance Bill 2013)

HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

http://bit.ly/GI2nP4

The Treasury position, on technology and research

a new £100 million fund to support investment in major new university research facilities, including through additional provisions. The fund will allocate its first bids in 2012–13 and will attract additional co-investment from the private sector

HM Treasury (2012) http://bit.ly/GCRYCy

“Almost every field of employment now depends on technology. From radio, to television, computers and the internet, each new technological advance has changed our world and changed us too.

“But there is one notable exception. Education has barely changed. Our school system has not prepared children for this new world. Millions have left school over the past decade without even the basics they need for a decent job.

“And the current curriculum cannot prepare British students to work at the very forefront of technological change.”

Michael Gove at British Educational and Training Technology showcase: http://bit.ly/z1SZ9l

Act III, Scene 1: militarisation

“at the very forefront of technological change”

http://bit.ly/nLQJFG

http://bit.ly/GJjTPu

http://bit.ly/HoMFaU

http://pearsoncpl.com/about/

http://bit.ly/JA50p7

http://bit.ly/KctK7T

See also:

1. hacking competitions, education departments and national security: http://bit.ly/J5NSqt;

2. the use by Universities of drones, with connections between U.S. military, academic research, defence contractors: http://bit.ly/JLld6T;

3. public/private partnerships in the UK that focus upon wireless video surveillance: http://bit.ly/LTn6Ba;

4. the deep connections between the military and research inside UK universities: http://bit.ly/LFOzDL; and

5. the disconnect between our activist promotion of technologies that are apparently transformative in the global North at the expense of their implication in war in the global South, like the Raspberry Pi: http://bit.ly/HUGTBC.

Act III, Scene 2: control

“at the very forefront of technological change”

A re-focusing of technology-in-universities around services that define student-as-consumer:

1.selling student services, based on commodifying the student lifecycle;2.business/learning analytics;3.cloud/software-as-a-service/outsourcing; and4.increased marketing beyond North America/Western Europe.

Do we critique, question, take issue with the broader politics of our educational investment?

Gartner, 2011, on Blackboard acquisition: http://bit.ly/KwvZ4u

See also the uncritical implementation of the following.

1. Mobile learning [in spite of human/labour rights abuses] http://bit.ly/yTNDM9;

2. Direct university/industry partnerships: http://bit.ly/GHSWRG

3. Implementing communications solutions like MS Lync that enable surveillance/enclosure: http://bit.ly/tYHbgj

4. The coming fetishisation of learning analytics and data-mining: http://bit.ly/xmbqrq

http://bit.ly/MNPOpn

Advertizing and online profiling practices are the opiate of the masses in the age of digitally-networked corporate-militarism (the present stage of capitalism)... a mass mediated Opium War (and often literal war) distracts the masses from awareness that we have already long since arrived at the techno-scientific level to provide security and equity and hence universal emancipation for all, distracting us endlessly instead into internecine struggles over pseudo-needs and pseudo-strivings that leave the obsolete bloodsoaked hierarchies enjoyed by elite incumbents in place, and so seduces us into ongoing collaboration with the terms of our own exploitation.

Carrico, D. 2012. The Unbearable Stasis of "Accelerating Change“. http://bit.ly/LRheIQ

Act IV: against coercion

How might knowledge about academic labour be connected to efforts to humanise knowledge production and learning within and beyond the university?

On technologies for occupation or work-ins

Occupation/work-ins are painted as extremism

Yet there is a raft of them

Many with educational or outreach agendas

That give voice through communiques

And there are radical educational alternatives as works in progress

And worker/student movements in social centres and beyond

And in knowledge liberation and hacking the social factory

It took both time and experience before the workpeople learned to distinguish between machinery and its employment by capital and to direct their attacks, not against the material instruments of production, but against the mode in which they are used.

Marx, K. 2004. Capital Volume 1, p. 554.

Technology discloses man’s mode of dealing with Nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.

Marx, K. 2004. Capital Volume 1, p. 493.

“only in association with others has each individual the means of cultivating his talents in all directions. Only in a community therefore is personal freedom possible... In a genuine community individuals gain their freedom in and through their association”

Bottomore, T.B., and M. Rubel, M. 1974. Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. London: Penguin.

for a critique of the consumption and production of technology;

for processes of dissent, occupation, protest and refusal, and pushing back;

for the courage we share in re-imagining and re-producing something different;

for the abolition of alienated labour.

“At the heart of it all is a new sociological type: the graduate with no future”.

Mason, P. 2011. 20 reasons why it is kicking off everywhere: http://bbc.in/hSZ3Ak

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