The Big Biz of Spying On Little Kids

theodp writes: "'The NSA,' writes POLITICO's Stephanie Simon in her eye-opening Data Mining Your Children, 'has nothing on the ed tech startup known as Knewton. The data analytics firm has peered into the brains of more than 4 million students across the country. By monitoring every mouse click, every keystroke, every split-second hesitation as children work through digital textbooks, Knewton is able to find out not just what individual kids know, but how they think. It can tell who has trouble focusing on science before lunch — and who will struggle with fractions next Thursday.' Simon adds, 'Even as Congress moves to rein in the National Security Agency, private-sector data mining has galloped forward — perhaps nowhere faster than in education. Both Republicans and Democrats have embraced the practice. And the Obama administration has encouraged it, even relaxing federal privacy law to allow school districts to share student data more widely.'"

Comments

Wow!

[DaMattster]

We really need a third party - I'm sick of both of the Republicans and Democrats. They both suck!!

Re:Wow!

[Zenin]

That's interesting. Especially given that the right have been driving the entire political landscape in the US for the last 30+ years. We're at the point now where we have three parties, "Batshit crazy extremist right-wing nuts" (The Tea Party), far right extremists (Republicans) and right-wing (Democrats).

The reality is that Obama is solidly to the right of Reagan on nearly everything. Reagan, if he were alive to run today, would be denounced as a RINO and destroyed in the primaries. Hell, even if he converted to a Democrat he'd get denounced as being too liberal for the mainstream.

America doesn't know what left or progressive is, given they've rarely ever seen a progressive candidate in much of the last century.

Re:Home schooling

[CRCulver]

That's why I home school.

Home-schoolers are one of the biggest markets for "e-learning" products. I don't think the average home-schooling parent is aware of the privacy-violation potential.

Re:big data,,,

[causality]

Is there any analysis that shows the rewards of big data are not meeting the risk (ie dismantling the intrinsic built-in trust of a civilised society and the govts we elect to serve us)?

A more cynical person might suggest that dismantling the trust is the reward some people seek. Divide and conquer is an old, venerable tactic used by both current and would-be tyrants everywhere.

And yet strangely, the technique and how to recognize it is not taught as a regular part of every school's history or civics class.

In a less dysfunctional society where at least a few important things are not run by sociopaths, "Divide and Conquer" (perhaps taught by reading some Julius Caesar), "Propaganda Techniques", and "Logical Fallacies" would be mandatory courses for every human being.