1/ In my first year @MacLabour I wrote a paper on teaching & surveillance. I argued that tech was increasingly being used to surveil teachers & their work, with ideas coming from factories

2/ The one place that couldn’t be surveilled/managed was the actual F2F classroom interaction. The eyes of management could only enter virtual spaces.

3/ I argued that this was a source of frustration for management. Evidence? Looked at conference workshop titles for Principals. Noted that many topics seemed to be about breaking through resistance to whatever the latest teaching fads were.

4/ My favourite? A workshop titled ‘Breaking Down the Classroom Door’ (I kid you not). The F2F classroom has been the only space of learning that is difficult to surveil.

5/ Difficult until now, where a right-wing government is using a pandemic to demand remote learning & grossly underfunding education. School board responses? Hybrid learning.

6/ Result? Cameras in classrooms. The ultimate way to surveil teachers & students. This is the Panopticon, where the all-seeing eye can see the inmates but the inmates can’t see who is watching.

7/If we allow this to happen in September there is no going back. Mass action is required by parents, educators & education unions. This isn’t just the gov’t, it’s management using a crisis to enact something parents & educators would have never allowed. We can’t allow it now.