::fibreculture:: microsoft and the critical classroom

[David Teh]

hugh said:   
   I believe Microsoft and others regard this as a marketing strategy: provide
   (cheap/free) MS training to  students to decrease the probability they will
   subsequently purchase/use anything else.  In light of that tendency from the
   companies, as exemplified by the Redfern school, it is essential that
   teachers in all forums bring the limitations of any single solution to the
   attention of the students.

agreed. it IS essential. but who out there is confident that it will happen like 
this in the shiny new Redfern ITeen campus (powered by Microsoft). one serious 
problem is that politicians don't much care about these finer points of 
pedagogical independence. and in the heavily cross-affiliated co-branded 
technoscape of 'National Knowledge-building' [ knowledge nation - clever country 
- whatever ] c.2010, will we still be able to see into the contractual 
relationship between business and our schools.  

Keeping this relationship transparent, from the project proposal and tendering 
stage, via syllabus development, right through to the daily operations of the 
classroom, must be a consistent focus of our policy-makers. this affects 
everything from the overall structure and objectives of the courses to such 
matters as the guidelines for recruitment etc. i must say i'm not all that 
optomistic about our chances of keeping it all see-through. 

lobby-groups have recently mobilised in the US to fight the insidious corporate 
infiltration of the school tuckshop. i think it was Naomi Klein who cited a stat. 
that over 6000 (PUBLIC!) american schools have Pizza Hut and Subway in the school 
cafeteria. with fiscal conservatism at the helm, we are facing a similar 
situation (though arguably more dire) as soon as we make the slightest 
pedagogical concession in return for sponsorship dollars. particularly in light 
of how our public institutions have fared recently, can we reasonably expect 
government to police this? do we want to leave this responsibility to the Parents 
and Citizens Associations?

the first questions are:
is the sponsor-school relationship privileged/confidential? what aspects of it 
are / are not? can a school be made platform-exclusive, or application-exclusive? 
has the law on this been tested?

and then:
how do we make sure that corporate involvement in education is (as close to) no 
strings attached (as possible)? perhaps some guidelines, a code of practice, or 
an ombudsman is the answer. is there a way to encourage such sponsors without 
scaring them off?

perhaps one of the chapters of ::fibreculture:: could be devoted to formulating 
some measures to ensure that the independence of our schools is maintained. 

dt


David Teh
Power Department of Art History and Theory
R  C  Mills  Building   A 26
University   of   Sydney     
N S W   2 0 0 6  AUSTRALIA

Tel:(H) 9569 9970              (M) 0402 257 324
    (W) 9699 7707 (mid-week)   (U) 9351 6905
    (E) dteh at arthist.usyd.edu.au


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