Resisiting Technophilia
Morgan Anderson · 2022
Educational policy that frames technology as the panacea for the problems facing public schools, the uncritical acceptance of technology into all aspects of teaching and learning, the proliferation of screen time in the lives of children, the dehumanizing effects of technologically mediated interactions, the predatory practices of powerful companies that exploit discourses of progress and innovation, and the technological restructuring of education are all issues that I’ve raised in my discussion of schools and technology. A key strategy of the neoliberal restructuring of public education has been to control the language that we use to discuss basic aspects of teaching and learning. Language is a central site of the production and maintenance of power, particularly surrounding claims to truth and knowledge. The Luddites came to be characterized as counterrevolutionaries of the Industrial Revolution, though as Thomas Pynchon points out, the machinery that was the object of the Luddite antagonisms had been around for nearly two centuries.