Shock Education Doctrine

IS THERE A COVID -19 SHOCK DOCTRINE?

By Stephen Wilson

 

           'Humans are biohazards, machines are not. '

 

            Anuja Sonalker, GEO of Steertech.

 

            'We should also accelerate the trend towards remote learning, which is being tested today as never before. Online, there is no requirement of proximity, which allows students to get instruction from the best teachers, no matter what school district they reside in'.

 

            Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

 

            It is strange that as a person rushes around a bustling city, he often views another person as an inconvenient obstacle. Other people get in the way, distract or annoy him. An old person who walks slowly will be pushed or told " to get out the way" or "Hurry up ". A person can be viewed by others just as a primary obstacle. The person might be in such a hurry to get to their destination or are wholly absorbed in their gadget and get annoyed when someone bumps into them by accident or rather, they don't get out of the way on time. Some people regard a teacher as a primary obstacle who should have the decency to get out of the way. There is even a notion that a machine would be able to teach a student better because a machine, in contrast to a teacher, has no complexes or becomes stressed out! He or she is a hazard, not a help!  

This is the distinct impression you obtain from hearing some comments by Eric Schmidt, of Google, or Bill Gates, who are seeking to exploit the impact of the Covid- 19 crisis on the education system. They are arguing that the switch to the emergency online education in schools should not be a provisional but permanent matter. The Mayor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, announced that Bill Gates, as well as Eric Schmidt, would lead a new panel planning a complete overhaul of the education system in New York. Schmidt declared with gusto that, "The need for fast experimentation

will also accelerate the biotech revolution. Finally, the country is long overdue a real digital infrastructure if we are to build a future economy and education on tele-everything'. For most people this Covid -19 is a dreadful crisis, but for those

businessmen it represents a welcome but bizarre experiment to attain new lucrative markets through 'restructuring'. As Naomi Klein states: 'The Pandemic Shock doctrine that is being rushed into being as the bodies still pile up, treats our past weeks as physical isolation not as a painful necessity to save lives but as a living laboratory for a highly permanent - no touch future". She describes the vision of such businessmen as being 'A new screen deal ' and 'no touch

future'.  

The view that capitalists can use a deep crisis as a spur to introducing massive restructuring that intensifies the exploitation of the poor that might otherwise not be introduced in stable times is not new. About 13 years ago Klein wrote an intriguing book called 'The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'. The major idea is that, 'Believers in the shock doctrine are convinced that only a great rupture, a flood, a war, a terrorist attack can generate the kind of vast, clean canvases they crave. It is in these malleable moments, when we are psychologically unmoored and physically uprooted, that these artists of the real plunge in their hands and begin their work of remaking the world.' For example, following the disaster in New Orleans, the guru Milton Friedman wrote 'Most New Orleans schools are in ruins, as are the homes of the children who who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the education system'. The disaster was used as a pretext to introduce a new voucher system and more charter schools. As many as 4700 teachers who belonged to a strong union were fired. Other kinds of crisis cited are September 11, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and at present, the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

            But will people who are shocked and disorientated allow such a nightmare vision to be implemented?  The facts are that Bill Gates has a bad track record concerning reforms in education. The attempt to wholly impose charter schools proved to be a flawed and failed experiment. And the so-called experiment of moving to online has proven many of the limitations of online technology rather than the benefits. How

do you organize a physical education lesson online? Doing exercises at home is hardly sufficient compensation for playing active team sports. It is likely that the more intelligent strategists of capital would oppose the extreme proposals of Bill Gates and Schmidt on the grounds that it would even harm the children from middle-class backgrounds, never mind poor and could lead to a backlash which even they could not contain or control. Already the Covid 19 crisis has inspired all kinds of outlandish and far fetched conspiracy theories. One of the those ideas is that Bill Gates created this Covid 19 virus as a means of increasing his profitability. The fact that Bill Gates is pushing such a radical vision will only reinforce the suspicion of such people who you encounter in both America and Russia.

 

            Russia also has such proponents of applying a 'no touch vision' into schools. If this has been an experiment, it has turned out to be flawed. Not all school children were awed by the screen, many complained of the adverse impact on their physical and mental health and many parents have especially found it overwhelming. For school teachers it is a time of increased anxiety where they worry about whether they might lose their income as well as jobs. The Ministry of Education and Science has made statements attempting to reassure school teachers they have no plans to switch to a full online model as it proved too counter productive. 'The Ministry of Education don't plan to cut teachers and move to an all out on-line distance learning system. This is very expensive for the government since we have more than 700,000 children, there is no technological possibility for full scale lessons in distance learning since not all families have computers, smartphones or I- pads '. 

     So proposals to radically restructure the education system straightaway following this crisis have been spurned because they simply don't work and alienate too many people. Much more attractive and alluring proposals would be to more than double the number of school teachers, employ more librarians, psychologists and encourage people to either do more sport, dance or sing songs. There is no reason why we can't create a more caring and improved education system if we fight for it.