Outsourcing Cognitive Capacity

Outsourcing of Cognitive Capacity:

There is an ill trend in academics today, as the corporate vines wrangle ever deeper into our college campuses, duping teachers into relinquishing their duties in the name of increased profits. Profits now received not just through the purchasing of books, but from the purchasing of Internet “Pass keys.” As if the former costs were not high enough in these discouraging economic times, now students are required to purchase Internet "pass keys." The purpose? To access student academic activities online, take hyperlinked exams, and daze over the LCD print as one fills out multiple choice study plans. Corporations such as Pearson Education are hijacking our learning experience, creating an infertile learning environment as the outsourcing of the cognitive capacity realizes itself in the swindle of online learning. Students find themselves navigating through one vacant gulf after the other within the community of learning, losing themselves in the realm of cyberspace, where the only contact between student and teacher is the clammy grip one holds upon the mouse and keyboard. A year ago it was on a trial period in the mathematics department, as It had an auxiliary roll in student homework and studying. Today, these my"insert subject here"labs have infiltrated nearly every academic department; Math, Spanish, Human Development, Social Sciences, History. Now the company provides the power point slides, study guides, quizzes, and exams! Our teachers who at one time had to use their creativity in the pursuit of an energized learning experience have now fallen back into the trenches of vocal droning and perpetual mouse clicking. The making of tests? A thing of the past! Pearson Education has them all made up for each chapter. This is blatant national corporate standardization of our learning. It is an infringement on the diversity of information, and the democracy of learning. It is not acceptable in its current life sucking form. I have talked to many students, NO ONE has comments worth any merit for Pearson Education. It is boring, black and white, and too mechanical for todays day and age. It reeks of Industrial Revolution and factory lines, and its smog rains down on us in an acidic sterilization of learning and future personal growth. As students and humans we should not and cannot sit back as our schools are further transformed into factories, as people like us turn into academic merchandise to be sold to the workforce. We are people, and deserve a instructional pedagogy for humans, not items to be bought and sold to the highest bidder.

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