“Did Somebody Say Computers?” Professional and Ethical Repercussions of the Vocationalization and Commercialization of Education

The federal and corporate initiative to technologize education has transformed schools, colleges, and uni versities into a new frontier for the computer industry. While educational institutions have maintained an equivocal relationship with markets and the state, they had striven to preserve a simulacrum of independence until the early 1980s. Then, neoconservative ideolo gies and their accompanying discourse on restructuring education discovered in the computer the ideal neutral tool to promote, in its virtual clothes, their gospel. The Clinton administration and big corporations, taking advantage of the myth of the computer and the new vocabulary associated with computers, launched a massive program of wiring schools. The process, still unfolding at a rapid pace, poses grave problems for the teaching profession and the role of schools in society. The author argues that the unethical ways in which computers force their ways into many educational institutions, the values they embody, the contexts of their multiple usages, the hyperfragmentation and increas ing commodification of knowledge that they cause through online education, the vocationalization of education, and the atomization of teachers are likely to shrink pedagogical and democratic possibilities both at local and global levels. In the United States, public schools, colleges, and universities have traditionally had ambivalent rela tionships with the market. Schools have been reluctant to invite business participation, as they are unwilling to surrender the freedom they have in managing and giving their institutions the direction they feel is necessary for students. At times, the emphasis is laid upon the need to strengthen business partnerships with the private sector and allow corporations to tailor educa tional institutions to fit their goals. At such times, there is a greater advocacy for the state and the federal government to withdraw from education and allow local constituencies to manage educational institutions. Invariably, self-sustainability puts an enormous pressure on public schools, colleges, and universities to seek funding. As schools do not generate money, the pressure quickly poses ethical dilemmas, which have, in many instances, resulted in financial scandals and notorious cases of malpractice. In the past two decades, there has been an acceleration of the intrusion of large corporations in educational institutions at every level (Goldberg, 1999). The computer and the ideology surrounding it, combined with other advanced devices, have become the incontestable alibi for transforming schools, colleges, and universities into vast malls. In this article, I explore the ways in which the language of school restructuring, in combination with the language of computer innovation and the process of globalization, is being unethically eulogized to ration alize an increasingly complex web of school-business partnerships whose ultimate goal is to promote corporate values and fragment, package, commodify, and sell knowledge all over the world at astronomical speeds. The ultimate goal, in futuristic terms, could be described as a movement to reconfigure downsized schools into institutions without teachers, hard copy, and walls, and with virtual outsourcing. It will undeniably weaken community integration, unions, and other alliances formed to defend and widen democratic spaces and to advance the rights of the poor and working classes. Because the focus on skill acquisition will impoverish the scope of the educational experience, children, especially those of poor backgrounds, will be limited in their chances to broaden their horizons.