Currently Happening Presently Now: EDUCATION

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" For the psychology of Leipzig was, in the eighties and nineties, the newest thing under the sun. It was the psychology for bold young radicals who believed that the ways of the mind could be measured and treated experimentally-and who possibly thought of themselves, in their private reflections, as pioneers on the newest frontier of science, pushing its method into reaches of experience that it had never before invaded. At any rate they threw themselves into their tasks with industry and zest. They became trained introspectionists and, adding introspection to the resources of the physiological laboratories, they attempted the minute analysis of sensation and perception. They measured reaction times, following numerous and widespread ramifications. They investigated verbal reactions, thus extending their researches into the field of association. They measured the span and fluctuations of attention and noted some of its more complex features in the 'complication experiment,' a laboratory method patterned after the situation that gave rise to the astronomer's problem of the 'personal equation.' In their studies of feeling and emotion they recorded pulse-rates, breathing rates, and fluctuations in muscular strength, and in the same connection they developed methods of recording systematically and treating statistically the impressions observed by introspection. They also developed the psychophysical methods and in addition, made constant use of resources of the physiological laboratory. And, throughout all their endeavors, they were dominated by the conception of a psychology that should be scientific as opposed to speculative; always they attempted to rely on exact observation, experimentation, and measurement."
-Edna Heidbreder, Seven Psychologies, 1933, page 94-95.

Simon, S. (2012). Biosensors to Monitor Students’ Attentiveness. Chicago Tribune.

Gates officials hope the devices, known as Q Sensors, can become a common classroom tool, enabling teachers to see, in real time, which kids are tuned in and which are zoned out...The engagement pedometer project fits neatly with the Gates Foundation's emphasis on mining daily classroom interactions for data. One of the world's richest philanthropies, the foundation reflects Microsoft founder Bill Gates' interest in developing data collection and analysis techniques that can predict which teachers and teaching styles will be most effective.

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of the experience) and the distinction between true and false...no longer exist."
-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Hoskin, K. W., & Macve, R. H. (1986). Accounting and the examination: a genealogy of disciplinary power. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 11(2), 105-136.

Historical elaboration of Foucault's concept of “power-knowledge” can explain both the late-medieval developments in accounting technology and why the near-universal adoption of a discourse of accountancy is delayed until the nineteenth century. It is the disciplinary techniques of elite medieval educational institutions—the new universities and their examinations—that generate new power-knowledge relations. These techniques embody forms of textual rewriting (including the new “alphanumeric” system) from which the accounting advances are produced and “control” is formalised. “Double-entry” is an aspect of these rewritings, linked also to the new writing and rewritings of money, especially the bill of exchange. By the eighteenth century accounting technologies are feeding back in a general way into educational practice (e.g. in the deployment of “book-keeping” on pupils) and this culminates in the introduction of the written examination and the mathematical mark. A new regime of “objective” evaluation of total populations, made up of individually “calculable” subjects, is thereby engendered and then extended — apparently first in the U.S. railroads — into modern comprehensive management and financial accounting systems (systems of “accountability” embodying Foucault's “reciprocal hierarchical observation” and “normalising judgement”), while written examinations become used to legitimate the newly autonomous profession of accountancy.



 


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