Pearson, always earning
Monetising consciousness from the cradle to the gravy train
In response to Harry Ven following my article on BigEDU and BigData.
Yes Harry, that’s exactly what I am saying.
We are seeing practices from BigEDU that, hopefully, we would never accept from BigPharma.
Using Pearson as an example, although there are others such as Omidyar Network (who fund Teach for All). Pearson’s original business was in the creation and monetisation of content. Then, to ensure that its content had more value, it acquired and created an accreditation industry which generates $ billions while encouraging a global fetish for measurement and neo-taylorism via organisations such as OECD.
After the emergence of the web as a free content source thus challenging its business model, Pearson has been opening schools and hiring teaching staff as content delivery technicians supported by relentless testing and measurement regimes. So what we have is a closed loop system where an childs entire consciousness can be managed by one corporation.
This is what Sir Ken Robinson had to say about the “Education Economy” when I interviewed him for Learning {Re}imagined.
Pearson would like to see themselves as the “Google of Education”, omnipresent and all pervasive but this has massive implications on global democracy as learning and opinion is controlled by a suite of algorithms. In this context they use the same metrics of “network capitalism” where data becomes the new oil. Education is merely a trojan horse to capture the data for marketing, surveillance and consciousness management.
See this article with Pearson’s Chief Education Adviser and former McKinsey partner, Sir Michael Barber:
Further reading
Unless specifically stated, opinions and points of view shared are my own.
