Thursday, March 28, 2013

Keeping Tabs . . .

From WND: Bill Gates' $100 million database to track students
... a massive $100 million public-school database spearheaded by the $36.4 billion-strong Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in the making that freely shares student information with private companies.The system has been in operation for several months and already contains millions of K-12 students’ personal identification ‒ ranging from name, address, Social Security number, attendance, test scores, homework completion, career goals, learning disabilities, and even hobbies and attitudes about school. . . .
And this is not just Mr. Gates . . .
. . .the Gates Foundation, entered the joint venture with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from a number of states. After Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify Education (a division of News Corp) spent more than a year developing the system’s infrastructure, the Gates Foundation delivered it to inBloom ‒ a nonprofit corporation recently established to run the database. . . . . . Louisiana, which, along with New York, is slated to input virtually all student records statewide. . .
Of course, longtime readers of this blog know that government collection and sharing of assumed private information on students and their families has occurred right under our noses in Utica through a federal grant:  The "Safe Schools" Project -- What's the real intent? (2002)

The same question can be asked here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

1984 arrived later but never the less arrived. we now have super data collections of virtually every facet of our lives and will soon have drones flying overhead. The matter not at all being discussed is what this does to the spirit of man? It has already shrunken our democarcy.

Dave said...

You'd think school administrators would have thought to package student personal data and SELL it to Korporate Amerika. Well, I guess that would be work and not as easy as just raising taxes.
School cooperation with industry is not new, of course. Remember Vo Ed, where taxpayers footed the bill for apprentice training?

Strikeslip said...

VocEd is not the same as the industry training going on now. VocEd taught skills that are almost always in need in society such as construction and barbering... skills that students could use to be independent entrepreneurs. Training in nanotech, for example, is highly specialized, has a limited shelf life, and requires employment by a large business to be useful. We have gone from training students to be self reliant to training them to be part of a soviet-style big business-government collectivized society.