Silicon Valley Courts Brand-Name Teachers, Raising Ethics Issues (nytimes.com) 147
An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the tech-savviest teachers in the United States teaches third grade here at Mapleton Elementary, a public school with about 100 students in the sparsely populated plains west of Fargo. Her name is Kayla Delzer. Her third graders adore her. She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up. She remodeled her classroom based on Starbucks. And she uses apps like Seesaw, a student portfolio platform where teachers and parents may view and comment on a child's schoolwork. Ms. Delzer also has a second calling. She is a schoolteacher with her own brand, Top Dog Teaching. Education start-ups like Seesaw give her their premium classroom technology as well as swag like T-shirts or freebies for the teachers who attend her workshops. She agrees to use their products in her classroom and give the companies feedback. And she recommends their wares to thousands of teachers who follow her on social media. "I will embed it in my brand every day," Ms. Delzer said of Seesaw. "I get to make it better." Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach American schoolchildren.
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Or maybe AC law?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law [wikipedia.org]
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Horse shit! (Score:2)
This is a PUBLIC SCHOOL teacher, according to TFA. The whole point of Federalizing "Public" education was to provide uniform access to a uniform education for all. This came with a legal mandate that all children must attend schools, in addition to massive amounts of tax dollars.
Trump-U, like most Universities, was a Private school. Nobody was forced to go, and tax payers were not forced to fund it. If those kinds of schools fail, people don't pay to attend and they end up out of business. Hence, what
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Realistically, even if some private company has it all figured out, there isn't a lot of room for improvement. I think the only a
Other alternatives -- especially homeschooling (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.home-school.com/Art... [home-school.com]
"Let me begin by characterizing where I'm coming from. I taught for thirty years in the Manhattan Public School. It was never my intention to teach. It happened by accident. I expected only to teach for a year or two. I got caught up in what seemed to me inexplicable problems that were so interesting that I would ask, "Would you mind if I stay an extra year?" When I woke up, thirty years had passed. After I got out, I still didn't have the answer to these puzzles. That was almost exactly nine years ago, and I set out to answer my questions. Had I known that it would take nine years to do that, I might very well have gotten a new set of questions. But as it was, one thing led to another, and I began to see that schools were functioning exactly as they had been designed to function, and that just puzzled the heck out of me. I said, "How could this happen? What purpose would explain schools being the way they are?" So I've been on a detective hunt for nine years. And what I'd like to say first of all to homeschoolers in particular - because they're right on the front lines, and they have to depend largely on themselves for courage and for inspiration - is that you made the right choice. You've made a choice to free your children to be the best people they can be, the best citizens they can be, and to be their personal best. But had you allowed those kids to remain in the grip of institutional schooling, the kids would have become instruments of a different purpose. People should understand that the local insanity that they think they're reacting against, if that's in fact their motive for homeschooling, is institution-wide, it's quite intentional, and it leads to an end that's useful to somebody [just not the school kids]."
Homeschooling costs one parent not being in the workforce though -- which means six figures a year in a place like Silicon Valley if both parents could work at professional jobs.
Wrote this about NYS around 2009, but is would apply to CA too: :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point for building a positive vision of the future for all children in all our communities. Like straightforward ideas such as Medicare-for-all, this is an easy solution to state, likely with broad popular support, but it may be a hard thing to get done politically for all sorts of reasons. It might take an enormous struggle to make such a change, and most homeschoolers rightfully may say they are better off focusing on teaching their own and ignoring the school system as much as possible, and letting schooled families make their own choices. Still,homeschoolers might find it interesting to think about this idea and how the straightforward nature of it calls into question many assumptions related to how compulsory public schooling is justified. Also, ultimately, the more people who homeschool, the easier it b
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa... [pdfernhout.net]
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
Re: Other alternatives -- especially homeschooling (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering compulsory schooling is a relatively recent invention since Prussian times (intended to subordinate almost all citizens into a military hierarchy), how did children learn to interact with other people of all ages before the 1800s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Hint -- it takes a village to raise child -- and village life is not what kids experience in a typical school (public or private).
To begin with, when do kids in a typical school (public or private) actually get to interact with other kids in a playful loosely-structured way with only occasional adult supervision or intervention like in the past? As opposed to interacting with other people as if they were in a tightly-guarded prison? For many schools, outdoor play and unstructured recess is a thing of the past and kids are punished if they talk to each other in the classroom outside of narrowly prescribed situations. The kid of social interaction kids get in most schools is completely abnormal by historical standards.
Contrast what goes on in a typical school with, say, a "Sudbury Free school" (one of the better private school models, but still not very common):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"A Sudbury school is a type of school, usually for the K-12 age range, where students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by direct democracy in which students and staff are equals.[1] Students individually decide what to do with their time, and tend to learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education. Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the original Sudbury Model school, writes that the two things that distinguish a Sudbury Model school are that everyone - adults and children - are treated equally and that there is no authority other than that granted by the consent of the governed.[2]"
Although even within that free school model, there are issues related to forcing a kid to be somewhere other than their local community every day. A free school may also not be a great match for more introverted children.
As I write in that essay on post-scarcity unschooling, quoting a job advertisement for truant officers suggesting truancy can lead to violent crime or a least an unsuccessful unproductive life: "See, that is the false choice -- suggesting you either confine a child to prison or they will commit their first violent crime and have to be imprisoned. That is a very dim view of human nature, neighborhoods and families. Yet, it is a self justifying view, in part destroying the very neighborhood fabric it claims to be defending. So, we are left with streets that are safe because there are no people on them. We have successfully destroyed the village in order to save it, using compulsory schooling instead of napalm."
Or in this case, you suggest unless kids are put in prison for their formative years they will become "freaks".
Given thousands of years of human history raising kids at home and in villages and towns (and yes, cities), doesn't the historical evidence suggest that it would more likely be the other way around? Especially when compulsory schooling was designed precisely to produce cannon fodder for Prussian wars? Which then coincided with two world wars originating out of the Prussian area?
See also Alfie Kohn on bad effects of extrinsic rewards for learning, competition with other kids, and also of grading:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/punis... [alfiekohn.org]
http://www.alfiekohn.org/conte... [alfiekohn.org]
http://www.alfiekohn.org/artic... [alfiekohn.org]
As John Taylor Gatto points out, between school kids and teachers a
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Ah, the classic Ad Hominem fallacy -- nothing constructive to say so one resorts to childish insults.
Gee, even a Mathematician is saying that rote learning is a HORRIBLE way to "learn".
* A Mathematician's Lament [uottawa.ca] aka Lockhart's Lament.
But go ahead and keep sticking your head in sand over how shitty the education system is.
* The Underground History Of American Education Book [archive.org]
--
Atheism, noun, a blind mad trying to tell the rest of the world that color doesn't exist.
does she get good results for her kids (Score:2)
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Need to check how well they are being "cultivated". It's not cheap renovating a classroom into a starbucks and sticking screens in front of their faces. Need to make sure the "cultivation" is going well.
It's right there in the summary. Cult.
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starbucks and macbook = ok
fighting in the schoolyard = not ok
as long as they get the message straight, we'll never run out of apple store clerks and social media community managers. Also the flourishing market of dildos and strap-on will keep growing.
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I'm sure that if the teacher were doing things to indoctrinate the kids into the Church of Intersectionality, everything would be hunky dory, right? Oh, but an advertisement in school? HOLY FUCKING SHIT IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!
You dumb shits sit through how many hours of corporate sponsored garbage each day, who the fuck cares if the kids get a little more in the classroom? Are you so wedded to your idyllic delusions about school that you can't see the forest for the trees? Time to pull your heads o
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I read your comment three times and still can't figure out what your position is. First you say it's okay to have corporations in school, then you go on a rant about neoliberalism, Googlestan, etc.
Could you please just pick one extreme point of view and stick with it?
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What do you define as "doing well" in third grade?
Is there some kind of analytics and telemetry you would like to gather from these children, perhaps to see what their conversion rate is?
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I assume that it's already available to most, if not all, ad agencies a price.
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Has a brand image like the kardashians? #donotwantasteacher
Seriously there is no place for this in public schools except as part of the segue from authoritarian acceptance to corporate authority acceptance. How this hasn't been frowned on by her school administration/district board is beyond me.
"From TFA: "At a time when teachers shell out an average of $600 of their own money every year just to buy student supplies like pencils — and make pleas for student laptops on DonorsChoose.org, a fund-raising site — it’s understandable that teachers would embrace free classroom technology.".
This may be a part of the problem. If the authorities can't fund schools enough to provide even the basics, then people will go outside the system.
Of course it's also possible that she's just doing it
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Why would the teacher need to buy these things? They can be had for pennies at back-to-school sales, so I find the typic
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You can thank the neo-liberals for this. They'll go on about how Trump is evil for this or that reason while simultaneously working to strengthen corporate power to the point that it will soon eclipse governments.
The "globalists" aren't generally aiming for some "benevolent global government that maximizes freedom for all", but rather "corporate control over everything". I can't imagine how you could think that corporatism is somehow opposed to being authoritarian. We're seeing levels of delusion that sh
why permitting corporate intrusion in classrooms? (Score:1)
giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft,
The whole computing education system now seems like teaching kids "The Fun and Excitement of McDonalds Happy Meals", rather than good nutrition and how to cook healthy meals themselves.
Why are we permitting corporate financially motivated intrusion into classrooms? We shouldn't be teaching kids $BIGCORP $TOOL $VERSIONOFTHEWEEK, we should be teaching them computing concepts, critical thinking, and deep understanding. It can start early, and need not to be too advanced for the age, but the goal should be th
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how about we teach them to make their own blog in HTML?
most kids won't give two shits about code. If this discussion was taking place on a site for accountants, your alter ego there would be asking: "why don't we teach kids how to properly amortize intangible assets" and he would be as wrong as you and your html.
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Why not? We already permit ideological intrusion of the far left..
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1) Because without their contributions the schools can't keep the lights on, because funding education through taxation is communism which will lead to compulsory gay marriage, death panels, and Venezuela type shit.
2) Because preventing any corporation in any way from doing anything it goshdigglydarn wants is communism which will lead to compulsory gay marriage, death panels, and Venezuela type shit.
tl;dr It's the queers' and th
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Protip: Read a linked article before citing it.
The key word is "after".
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Why are we permitting [government] intrusion? Why are we permitting [idealogical] intrusion?
Corporations, governments, and ideas are real. Are classrooms supposed to teach about reality or hide children from reality?
If you want to censor one set of ideas from classrooms, that's a good argument for getting rid of government schools and letting people like you and other people unlike you have separate schools dedicated to whichever one-sided ideology each of you favor.
As long as education doesn't take a back seat.... (Score:3)
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Education has been taking back seat to commercial enterprise for many years. If you haven't heard the term, Educational Industrial Complex [wordpress.com] and learned about Pearson, Common Core, Charter Schools etc... check it out.
The big difference is that new players are trying to wriggle in and get a piece of the pie vs. the current monopoly players.
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It's interesting to note the organization you mention chose to turn 'Military Industrial Complex' into the phrase 'Educational Industrial Complex' when in the same farewell speech where Eisenhower coined the phrase 'Military Industrial Complex' he also warned of the risks of the rise of a scientific-technological elite [aaas.org]. Which has always been soft-pedaled or ignored by the pundits who carry on incessantly about the M.I.C.
No, this is not a teacher, this is flesh-Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
TFS calls this a teacher. She is not. She's Facebook. Her kids aren't the customers, they are the product. She's selling brand indoctrination to young children and charging the companies for it.
What the hell does a child learn by using Twitter? To be a worse person? To avoid having a self-developed opinion? To jump on the harassment campaign because it's fun when it's not coming your way? The joys of death threats? To always share everything all the time and never read a book or introspect?
Instagram? That service that causes the most depression in its users? Yeah, that's a great tool for kids. Nothing says well-developed like hiding all the pictures of your life that aren't perfect. Nothing teaches you self-respect like living for "likes". Should we really teach kids to be emotionally dependent prostitutes?
This isn't a teacher, this is the incarnation of greed above humanity and technology replacing instead of supporting mental growth.
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they are teaching your children to disregard any privacy or the value of their personal information and to be a happy consumer of course!
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(Obviously, I haven't RTFA.)
Well, it depends a lot what they are using these technologies to do. One of the problem we have in classes today are relating to engagement. Being able to do something you want to show your mom or your roommate is valuable in term of education.
If these platforms are used to engage the student with more people and get more feedback, more power to them.
If these platforms are here to sell-out the students for the benefit of the instructor, then that's not right.
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state governments continue to defund public education. the public continues to deny local district referendums to make up the difference. THIS is what you get when that happens.
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In one form or another, social media is here to stay, there is no escaping it. It is the natural result of connecting people.
So we might as well integrate it into education rather then turn a blind eye to it.
All the things you blame twitter already exist on school grounds. Bullying is a thing. Self-developed opinion? Just try not having the same tastes as your classmates and you will end up being the bullied. This behavior now spills on Twitter and Instagram, but unlike with school, there is no adult superv
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Is this even legal? None of these kids are old enough to agree to the terms of service on these services. I'm fine with classroom chat on a closed site and similar appropriately limited things, but commercial social networking sites like twitter are no place for children. There are ways to do this right which don't violate the children's rights. I don't think this is what it looks like. You can even self-host social networking and microblogging without selling the student's souls to the marketers.
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Then again we do live in a society where we're told that everyone is special, no matter how stupid, untalented, lazy or ugly they are. Thus it's probably only to be expected that the logical end result of this is that just about everyone becomes a narcissist and narcissism starts to be seen as a desirable trait rather than the serious personality flaw that it actually is.
If this type of teaching bec
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I would not ever want my kid posting to Twitter or anything like it until he/she was old enough to know what the hell was going on. So like 40 years old. I sure as hell don't need a schoolgrade teacher telling them they have to use those social media sites. At the least, they better have a bunch of fake names and all that established so it's not an outright violation of privacy.
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That's a cynical view of it. She's offering a blindly optimistic view. The truth is probably somewhere in between. The first to try something like this might not run afoul of all that cynicism, but you can bet your ass that if this sort of thing becomes popular it will go to corporate dystopian hell in a cyberpunk handbasket faster than Keanu Reeves in bullet time.
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Teacher is not teaching - Just craming Ads (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a teacher, I DO NOT WANT my kids to be evne near. She is not teaching. Texting and Blogging is not teaching. She is creating zombies.
Give aa teacher that shows how real world works. How to REALLY sivle puzzles (problems). Get pumped about biology or physics or math.
Who can write 140 character note... is crap.
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Warning: Her kids might grow up to be president with skills like that.
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Warning: Her kids might grow up to be president with skills like that.
Correlation does not imply covfefe.
Corrupt "je pense donc je suis" already (Score:2)
Translation: I have an account on Twitter so I am.
Try to explain Levinas "alterity" (otherness) to those kids and first thing that will cross their mind is if he ever got a "like" on Facebook.
Or confirmation of scientific theories by the amount of followers on the account of the researcher...
Claude Littner off of The Apprentice (Score:2)
As Claude Littner one said "You're not a brand. You're not even a fish!".
Teachers caught in the middle (Score:5, Insightful)
i can see why this appeals to teachers. It's been a fact of life that many teachers - even in reasonably good schools - end up spending a fair bit of their own money purchasing supplies on a regular basis. The lure of someone providing what the school district can't (or won't) is compelling.
But, on the other hand, this is concerning. These companies ultimately aren't interested in making the best choices for students - they're motivated to sell as much of their product as possible. Plus, based on what I've seen of various popular online "influencers" in many fields... they're not necessarily good at their jobs, they're just really motivated to self-promote and are good at talking (like the old traveling salesmen who peddled snake oil). These guys are likely just parroting whatever their patrons want them to say.
"Teachers have really responded well to feeling like they are being listened to," said Carl Sjogreen, a co-founder of Seesaw.
I fear this is all there is to it - the feeling as if they're being listened to, but with no actual listening happening behind it.
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Good point... (Score:2)
The lure of someone providing what the school district can't (or won't) is compelling.
Bingo.
Examine this photo [nyt.com], and tell me what you see. I see a classroom that's about half the size of a modern elementary classroom. I see blackboards. I see a radiator. I see a wall-mounted A/C unit. And I see hanging florescent lighting that was not built into the ceiling. With that alone, I'd place the age of the building somewhere between 1920 and 1930. That alone tells me how much a struggle it must be for this t
What is the ethical concern? (Score:3)
The headline mentions an ethical concern, but the summary doesn't. What's the concern? Please state it clearly.
Please also consider that not everyone hates commerce. So if your ethical concern is "commerce may occur", you might want to explain how that's an ethical problem.
Teachers in government schools are rarely held to any standard at all. So if your ethical concern is that one teaching style might not meet some standard, please show how that standard would be otherwise enforced in classrooms.
Thanks in advance.
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WTF: "Teachers in government schools are rarely held to any standard."
I guess you don't live in Michigan.
Tenure is gone.
Pensions are gone.
Seniority is gone.
Teachers are evaluated yearly according to a state approved evaluation model and if they are not ranked proficient two years in a row, they can now longer teach their grade or subject.
Salaries are flat and losing ground against inflation.
Health care costs are skyrocketing. Try living on $20,0000/year with a $3,000 health care deductible and student loan
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Tenure is gone.
Pensions are gone.
Seniority is gone.
Teachers are evaluated yearly...
Salaries are flat and losing ground against inflation.
Health care costs are skyrocketing.
So just like every other job then, except with 3 months off every summer?
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Not exactly, as a teacher you take every student that runs, walks, limps, rolls, shrieks, or staggers through the door.
In industry, you get to pick and chose from a pool of candidates and can say, "You're fired."
Also, there are no raises or bonuses based on your performance, just stress and threats. [tes.com]
Companies/Industry tends to want to attract and retain talent to maximize profit.
Education is just going for burnout across the board since most of the managers (principals) are ex-football coaches.
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Poor analogy, Pupils are not employees.
A better analogy would be 'In (the resturant/retail/service) industry, you take whatever customer walks in the door.'
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What's the concern? Please state it clearly.
The whole situation is a grey area; if it doesn't involve conflicts of interest currently, it easily can, and also causes difficulties regarding equality of education.
Let's assume this teacher is absolutely the best possible scenario: she personally looks through products to see if they are a good fit for the classroom and selects the products that best fit the curriculum. She teaches in terms of principle rather than product ("this is an IDE" vs. "This is Visual Studio"), takes nothing for herself and sole
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Potential conflicts of interest. Got it. That's at least mostly clear. Thanks.
Conflicts of interest can be eliminated satisfactorily with carefully-followed rules.
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So if your ethical concern is "commerce may occur", you might want to explain how that's an ethical problem.
Sure thing. Happy to help out those with social or ethical disabilities.
The problem is that teachers are in a position of power and authority. It may not seem like much to you, but to the kids they teach, they're right up there with the voice of god and their parents. They spend 40 hours a week under the authority of these people. Parents only get 72 waking hours (with weekends) with their kids.
Now imagine how well commerce plays with other people of authority. Imagine the "commerce happened" when it came
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If you can't simply state the ethical concern without "now imagine", then perhaps the ethical concern is imaginary. Why can't you make a clear, simple statement?
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How obtuse can you be? The examples of why "commerce happening" is a bad thing for people of authority were pretty freaking clear.
But OK, fine. Sure. Let's go with that then:
Teachers are an authority figure over students who don't know any better. They are trained and told to trust the teacher. If the teacher is paid by a corporation to push a particular brand, the students won't know when to differentiate between a lesson they're supposed to learn and an advertisement they should view critically. That's c
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So the ethical concern is using a position of authority to push -- advocate the purchase of -- commercial products to children for personal gain.
Thanks. It's something that can easily be expressed in one or two sentences rather than 6 or 7 paragraphs. It's strange that that seems so difficult for you.
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Please state it clearly. Clearly. What's the ethical concern? No weird stories, no "perhaps", no "what if they did XYZ instead". Just state the ethical concern.
If you want to say she has a conflict of interest, putting her personal enrichment ahead of her responsibility to teach the children, then say that for fuck's sake.
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Kids could be taught the motivation behind ads. If kids are being deceived or misled, then that would indeed be an ethical concern. It's not clear whether that's the case.
Thanks for answering clearly. People deserve better than ethics cloud innuendo.
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I'm not sure how you can say those three things in the same breath.
I think maybe you need to be taught how advertising works. Their purpose is to deceive and mislead people. The burgers in the ad don't ACTUALLY look like that. The ones they take pictures of are made of glue and plastic and spray-on shine. The models they put in the ads aren't actually that happy. Those aren't terribly bad deceptions. We're used to it. Anyone with a lick of sense and experience knows to dismiss any and all advertisi
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This is a really good point, and not one I'd considered before (the authority figure delivering ads). It could lead to a number of consequences, such as more parents instructing their children to disregard the teacher. Positive would be that people should question authority. Negative would be that can also be carried too far.
I hope we someday we arrive at the point where our society questions our authorities in a respectful manner, while accepting that they are human and will make mistakes.
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You didn't explain why. Nice try though. Ethics are specific, not a free floating cloud of uncertainties and opinions and biases and fears.
It's better than begging on the streets (Score:2)
It's better than begging on the streets for school supplies because your school district "can't afford" them. Seriously. Teachers around here have gone to cardboard signs at intersections begging for funds to buy supplies.
Amusing Ourselves to Death (Score:2)
In "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman (1985), he describes and analyses exactly this kind of problem. Politics, religion, and education is transformed into entertainment, and thus loses its original context, value and meaning. Instead, entertainment serves its own purpose - to entertain and keep distracted. Often, or most of the time in today's media world, it also serves the purpose of showing advertisement, as is described in this summary. Your teacher is no longer there to give you an education
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In "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman (1985), he describes and analyses exactly this kind of problem. Politics, religion, and education is transformed into entertainment, and thus loses its original context, value and meaning. Instead, entertainment serves its own purpose - to entertain and keep distracted. Often, or most of the time in today's media world, it also serves the purpose of showing advertisement, as is described in this summary. Your teacher is no longer there to give you an education, but to sell her own brand and promote others.
Its a phenomenon that's at least 2000 years old. Perhaps you have heard the phrase Bread and Circuses [wikipedia.org]. Take heart, its not a permanent trend. Its yet another swing of the pendulum. Hopefully it will die down soon somehow...could take some time though.
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True, in politics that has always been the case. Postman talks about a different facet of the problem of entertainment, though. Where entertainment, and especially images and fast clips out of context is taking up all our attention. Furthermore, were entertainment and advertisement is intermingled with the institutions of politics, religion, and education.
There has never been an age where an endless stream of impressions has been so easy to come by. You see it everywhere: People are so preoccupied by their
The brainwashing of our children (Score:5, Insightful)
She teaches them to post daily on the class Twitter and Instagram accounts she set up.
Let me translate that for you:
She indoctrinates them to provide free personalized information to marketers, corporations, and governments, and brainwashes them into believing that 'sharing' (i.e. not preserving your very much human RIGHT to privacy) is 'normal' and 'natural' and that 'hiding things' (i.e. 'exercising your right to privacy') is WRONG and BAD.
These kids will grow up, even more so than Millennials, to believe that anyone who doesn't have so-called 'social media' accounts, and doesn't share everything about their day-to-day lives with the entire WORLD, must either be suffering from a mental illness, or is some sort of criminal.
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These kids will grow up, even more so than Millennials, to believe that anyone who doesn't have so-called 'social media' accounts, and doesn't share everything about their day-to-day lives with the entire WORLD, must either be suffering from a mental illness, or is some sort of criminal.
Probably true. Many people are suffering from some form mental illness, and most of us are some kind of criminal.
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there's a *reason* ... (Score:2)
There's a reason my kids don't have smart phones, and that I keep them off FaceTwit.
I'm not going to be happy if they are legally required to go have some bimbo (paid by my tax dollars) "teach" them to use all these stupid marketing services.
Pharma (Score:2)
Sounds like pharma in the 80s. Company offers some "samples" and maybe some kickbacks in return for good recommendations to the patients/students.
Today at least you have to keep it on the down low. In medicine.
Tools used to teach American schoolchildren (Score:2)
Simpsons prescoence again (Score:2)
Reminds me of an episode from years back.
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And that episode was named... or had in it....? Please do tell! It was probably really funny.
"premium classroom technology " (Score:2)
A real hero (Score:1)
My Mom has run the computer lab at an elementary school in Santa Clara, CA for over 31 years. No one will ever do as much for children as she has, teaching everything from the basics of what a computer is to programming. I guess the difference is that my Mom's background is in science instead of social media.
I grew up with specturm, commodore... (Score:1)
They are all doing this (Score:2)
My son is in 3rd grade, and every year the school or the teacher has had some kind of social media account that they posted school assignments, announcements, or pictures of the classroom. On one hand, it is actually really nice to see picture of them working on a project, etc. On the other hand, I refuse to sign-up for social media account du jour. It wouldn't be so bad if they picked one, kept it closed, and used it again the next year.
Slight aside: This is why people aren't using email any longer. Th
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race, gender??? what is she/he/they doesn't identify with such restrictive labels? or what if she/he/they does identify with such labels but only in the safe space of their home, and wish to be exempt of such controversial talk when they are in the public sphere of their journey?
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This kind of commercialism and self promotion has no place in the classroom. Why can't US politicians get a grip on providing a decent education system for everyone?
Yes, so much of a joke that so many in the rest of the world would give anything to be here to get it. Yet students here for the most part hate it. Think of it as jail even. The Democrats and teachers unions are working hard to dumb things down. Just like they did in Germany in the 1930s. Makes it easier to erase history, take down monuments, names, etc.