Ginni Thomas

Common Core Expert: Techno-Progressives Seek To Violate Your Child’s Privacy

Ginni Thomas Contributor
Font Size:

“Techno-progressives” in local and federal governments are gathering more and more information on students in public and private schools — and many parents don’t realize it, says Jane Robbins, an attorney and senior fellow at the American Principles Project.

According to Robbins, “techno-progressives” hope to guide workers from birth to the workplace with their social engineering in a planned economy, which benefits vendors hoping to grow rich from big data.

Whereas self-determination and families used to guide students in choosing their career path, proponents of Common Core think they know better when it comes to jobs that communities supposedly need. Privacy safeguards for concerned parents — much less for the students themselves — have been eviscerated over the last two-and-a-half years by agreements, regulations and the allure of federal funding to school districts for extensive, non-academic information being collected on students.

“Common Core is not a political issue. It’s an issue of their children,” Robbins told The Daily Caller. “You can mess with a lot of things. You can have the IRS going after people. You can have the NSA spying on people, but when you start to mess with people’s children, they start to pay attention.”

From Robbins’ experience, most parents are surprised at how the education establishment typically “views parents as an adversary” in the process of teaching children. In her opinion, teaching — to the professionals — is not a joint effort and they want parents to remain quiet.

Most troubling to Robbins, who co-authored a 60-page report issued from the Pioneer Institute, Cogs in the Machine: Big Data, Common Core and National Testing, were the hints of where the edu-crats want to go with the future of the fine-grained student data they are seeking to collect and analyze.

Techno-progressives value smart, well-trained experts running society from the top down, with lots of data. Robbins’ eye-opening report discusses the use of physiological and psychological measurements to see how students are responding to their lessons.

In this 15-minute video interview, Robbins cites a recent appearance by Professor James Gee of Arizona State University, who has discussed how video games “cannot only impart academic knowledge, but they can change the child.” He goes on to discuss how “if you can change the child, you can change society.”

The National Education Data Model, discussed by Robbins, recommends states collect over 400 data points per child, including data on health care, voting, religious beliefs, bus stops, family income, hobbies, and extra-curricular activities. States are at varying points along this path. Robbins summarizes the report on Common Core and the new data initiatives as these education elites have “a lot of plans and not a lot of protections [for students].”

This video interview ends with Robbins discussing a February 2013 report from the U.S. Department of Education, titled “Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance,” which discusses technology capable of obtaining student information during testing or tutoring online about beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, values and ways of perceiving oneself — things critical to educational success, they say. The government report shows a “brave new world” with one set up to showing sensors gathering subtle physiological responses, something they claim “is not practical for the classroom … yet.”

Robbins also discusses the new Advanced Placement U.S. History Standards released by the College Board to be implemented in high schools starting next year. She says it is “a leftist revisionist view of America.”

Robbins says it focuses exclusively on the negative story of America — slavery, Indians, Japanese internment; no mention of the founders except George Washington — so common for the ideological left. America’s best and brightest high school students will be left without pride in America’s greatness, and without an awareness of sacrifices made by our forefathers to preserve liberty.

For more information on Jane Robbins and the American Principles Project, click here.

Mrs. Thomas does not necessarily support or endorse the products, services or positions promoted in any advertisement contained herein, and does not have control over or receive compensation from any advertiser.