An investigation of the role of educational privatization and technology in the crises of truth and agency.\nToday, conspiracy theories run rampant, attacks on facts have become commonplace, and systemic inequities are on the rise as individual and collective agency unravels. The Alienation of Fact explains the educational, technological, and ideological preconditions for these contemporary crises of truth and agency and explores the contradictions and competing visions for the future of education that lie at the center of the problem.\nSchools are increasingly reimagined as businesses, and high-stakes standardized testing and curricula, for-profit charter schools, and the rise of educational AI put capital and technology at the center of education. Yet even as our society demands measure, data, and facts, politicians and news outlets regularly make unfounded assertions. How should we make sense of the contradictions between the demand for radical data-driven empiricism and the flight from evidence, argument, or theoretical justification?\nIn this critical investigation of the new digital directions of educational privatization—AI education, adaptive learning technology, biometrics, the quantification of play and social emotional learning—and the politics of the body, Saltman shows how the false certainty of bodies and numbers replaces deliberative and thoughtful agency in a time of increasing precarity. A distinctive contribution to scholarship on public school privatization and educational technology, politics, policy, pedagogy, and theory, The Alienation of Fact is a spirited call for democratic education that values creating a society of “thinking people” over capitalistic gains.

The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers

Saltman, Kenneth J.

Reference

The MIT Press

The story of the Edison Schools is a gripping tale of money, kids, and greed. What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in U.S. history lose respect, money, and credibility in such a short time?Revealing how American McEducation went from glory to crisis, The Edison Schools tracks entrepreneur Christopher Whittle's plan to introduce a standardized nationwide curriculum and cut administrative waste. Education specialist Kenneth J. Saltman finds that the critics' predictions came true in Edison schools across the country: Experienced teachers left in droves, students were virtually given answers to standardized tests to drive up scores, and difficult students were "counselored" out.

The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education (Positions: Education, Politics, and Culture)

Science & Math

Chemistry

Routledge

The story of the Edison Schools is a gripping tale of money, kids, and greed. What began in the 1980s as an enterprise to transform public schools quickly became a troubled business battling falling test scores and dismal stock prices. How did the most ambitious for-profit education company in U.S. history lose respect, money, and credibility in such a short time? Revealing how American McEducation went from glory to crisis, The Edison Schools tracks entrepreneur Christopher Whittle's plan to introduce a standardized nationwide curriculum and cut administrative waste. Education specialist Kenneth J. Saltman finds that the critics' predictions came true in Edison schools across the country: Experienced teachers left in droves, students were virtually given answers to standardized tests to drive up scores, and difficult students were "counselored" out.

The Edison Schools (Positions: Education, Politics, and Culture)

Business & Money

Education & Reference

From schools advertising McDonaldOs, Nike, and Shell oil to military generals appointed as superintendents; from corporate CEOs hailed as education experts to students suspended for wearing Pepsi tee shirts on Coke day; Collateral Damage sifts through a wide range of incidents to reveal how the rising corporatization of public schools needs to be understood as a part of a broader attack on the public sector. Uniquely, Collateral Damage considers the privatization of public education in relation to both globalization and local struggles over curriculum, schools, and culture. Saltman describes the dangers to democracy posed by educational policy debates increasingly framed by the language and logic of the market. He reveals how the language of school choice, competition, monopoly, and accountability shifts the grounds of debate to naturalize education along business models rather than for the public good. The commercialization and militarization of public schools, and media images of out of control teachers reveal how political and economic struggles over privatization involve culture, citizenship, nation, identity, and even bodies.

Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools--A Threat to Democracy (Culture and Politics Series)

Education & Teaching

Schools & Teaching

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

From schools advertising McDonald's, Nike, and Shell oil to military generals appointed as superintendents; from corporate CEOs hailed as education experts to students suspended for wearing Pepsi tee shirts on Coke day; Collateral Damage sifts through a wide range of incidents to reveal how the rising corporatization of public schools needs to be understood as a part of a broader attack on the public sector. Uniquely, Collateral Damage considers the privatization of public education in relation to both globalization and local struggles over curriculum, schools, and culture. Saltman describes the dangers to democracy posed by educational policy debates increasingly framed by the language and logic of the market. He reveals how the language of school choice, competition, monopoly, and accountability shifts the grounds of debate to naturalize education along business models rather than for the public good. The commercialization and militarization of public schools, and media images of out of control teachers reveal how political and economic struggles over privatization involve culture, citizenship, nation, identity, and even bodies.

Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools, A Threat to Democracy

Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market (Critical Perspectives Series: A Book Series Dedicated to Paulo Freire)

As Junk Bond felon Michael Milken attempts to transform public education on the model of the HMO, he is hailed in the mainstream press as having 'done more to help mankind than Mother Theresa.' Even as BP Amoco, a notorious U.S. polluter, is charged with funding and arming paramilitaries in Colombia, it freely distributes science curricula that portrays itself as a loving protector of citizens from a dangerous and 'out of control' nature. These as well as many other examples abound as Professors Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman take on the corporate educators, media monopolies, and oil companies in their new book Strange Love: How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market. Saltman and Goodman show how corporate-produced curricula, films, and corporate-promoted books often use depictions of family love, childhood innocence, and compassion in order to sell the public on policies that ironically put the profit of multinational corporations over the well-being of people. In doing so Goodman and Saltman reveal the extent to which globalization depends upon education and also show how battles over culture, language, and the control of information are matters of life, death, and democracy.

Goodman, Robin Truth

Economics

As Junk Bond felon Michael Milken attempts to transform public education on the model of the HMO, he is hailed in the mainstream press as having "done more to help mankind than Mother Theresa." Even as BP Amoco, a notorious U.S. polluter, is charged with funding and arming paramilitaries in Colombia, it freely distributes science curricula that portrays itself as a loving protector of citizens from a dangerous and 'out of control' nature. These as well as many other examples abound as Professors Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman take on the corporate educators, media monopolies, and oil companies in their new book Strange Love: How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market. Saltman and Goodman show how corporate-produced curricula, films, and corporate-promoted books often use depictions of family love, childhood innocence, and compassion in order to sell the public on policies that ironically put the profit of multinational corporations over the well-being of people. In doing so Goodman and Saltman reveal the extent to which globalization depends upon education and also show how battles over culture, language, and the control of information are matters of life, death, and democracy.

The Corporatization of Education: Selected Writings of Kenneth J. Saltman

Saltman introduces 11 of his most influential writings across his career with new contextual information for each piece. The volume is framed by a new introduction and conclusion by the author, which re-examine the scope of his work, discuss the larger development of the field over time, and considers what is still to be done.

The Corporatization of Education

The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Saltman, Kenneth J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Saltman, Kenneth J.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Saltman, Kenneth J.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers

The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education (Positions: Education, Politics, and Culture)

The Edison Schools (Positions: Education, Politics, and Culture)

Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools--A Threat to Democracy (Culture and Politics Series)

Collateral Damage: Corporatizing Public Schools, A Threat to Democracy

Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market (Critical Perspectives Series: A Book Series Dedicated to Paulo Freire)

Strange Love: Or How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market (Critical Perspectives Series: A Book Series Dedicated to Paulo Freire)

The Corporatization of Education: Selected Writings of Kenneth J. Saltman

The Corporatization of Education

The Edison Schools: Corporate Schooling and the Assault on Public Education