Friday, November 01, 2013

Teaching children to see like a state

My second-grade son came home with the following schoolwork last week:

"Numbers that Name You: There are lots of numbers that label, count, measure, or order information just about you. For example, you have a birthday and an address. Do you have an ID number for a club you belong to? What's your shoe size? Think about all the numbers that name you. Write these numbers in the person shape.... Find out what a social security number is. Do you have one? Why is this an important number?"

It's easy to mock theory for having jargon.  But if this is anything other than interpellating the child as subject of the modern surveillance state in the form of data, let me know.

1 comment:

Bruce Boyden said...

I hope this was his response: http://youtu.be/tra3Zi5ZWa0?t=2m44