I was excited to see Freire (1971) on the reading list this week. As a former public school teacher, it is a book I have had several opportunities to sit with over the years. Friere’s conceptualization of the “Banking Model” is especially well cited and continues to hold sway–I suspect because, unfortunately, there are still many teachers and professors who remain fiercely dedicated to it. At the same time, it was refreshing to think about Freire in the context of LMSs and, in a broader sense, in the shadow of the current financialization efforts taking over public education. Especially compelling in Brenden (2023), is the way that educational technology is implicated in individualizing learners while firmly placing them in isolated relationships with their teachers. This immediately conjured the image of a zoom classroom where the teacher is potentially the only person with their camera on or microphone unmuted, and where students take turns interacting with the teacher and less time interacting with each other. And of course, this dynamic is extended across the entire LMS platform, where students asynchronously log-in, submit assignments, review grades, and read feedback, all without any real need to interact with fellow students. The Friere dovetails nicely here in how this type of system becomes instructive (and part of a larger pedagogy) as it internalizes in students a willingness to adapt to an unjust world instead of critically engaging with it for the purposes of changing it (p. 74).  

Source: From On Edtech’s “About” page. 

The market analysis from On Edtech and eLiterate was also interesting. Both were written before the pandemic and provide coverage on the sale of Instructor to the private equity firm Thoma Bravo (one article before the sale and one after). As the author’s point out, Instructure needed to grow in order to secure its long term sustainability and profitability, which it had not done so to that point—despite its strong stock performance and large user base. To reach these goals, Instructure needed the capital to acquire smaller companies and expand services that it could then sell back to its users. In the years since the sale this is exactly what Instructure has done, going public again in 2021 while acquiring Certica Solutions, EesySoft, and Concentric Sky (the makers of Badgr). 

Source: From Thoma Bravo’s landing page. 

Lastly, the images pasted above caught my attention for the strategic language both companies use, both of which I found over the top and almost satirical, and which I thought people would enjoy.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. On page 72 Freire writes, “the interests of the oppressors lie in ‘changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them’;  for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.”
   
   1a. What is the relevance of Friere’s “banking model,” if any, to your experiences as a student and or teacher? Does the quote above resonate with those experiences?
   
   1b. If we are to accept Freire’s assessment of education, then who, at CUNY, might fill the role of the oppressors, and who might fill the role of the oppressed?

2. In the conclusion of his article, Brenden (2023, p. 308) writes, “The challenge for critical literacy is to shock education awake and to critically reflect on what we are doing and why, in both online and physical classrooms. If the LMS is here to stay, then meeting this challenge requires us to recalibrate the meaning of education, and that we ask students to pay critical attention not just to the content but also to the forms of their schooling.”
   
   2a. Has any professor ever asked you to critically assess the digital tools and platforms you were required to use for a class (i.e., zoom, blackboard, google docs)? Or to reflect on how they have affected your learning (for better or for worse)? If so, what was your assessment?
   
   2b. Do you agree/disagree that this work is necessary or required? Put another way, are you convinced that students need to critically assess the “forms of their schooling”?

3. If you were forced to speculate, what would you say is the future of online learning at CUNY? What do you imagine?
   
   3a. What role will CUNY’s transition to Brightspace play in that future?
   
   3b. What roles will CUNY administrators, professors, and students play in that future?  

            Like a small insect at work, I plug away at my personal knowledge infrastructure primarily with notebooks. Devoutly, I organize my thoughts and process information with my hands (i.e., when I shop for clothes I rub the fabric between my fingers, or when I purchase knickknacks, I hold them in my palm first to feel their heft and weight). Putting pen to paper, I jump from one idea to another—one plateau to another—processing and generating new conclusions which would otherwise not arrive. Notetaking in this way, as a generative thinking practice, was a door I completely stumbled upon during my second year of teaching when a student’s mom had sent him to school the week before Christmas break with a small gift, a set of MUJI notebooks. My first thought was the price, because teachers are informed every year that they cannot accept gifts greater than $5 (according to the ethics guidelines provided by the city). Luckily, the price tag was accidentally left on the back of the thin packet of notebooks, wrapped in cellophane, reading $2.99. At the time, I didn’t think much of them and packed them away in my closet. 

            It wasn’t until I ran across David Allen’s Getting Things Done—a system I, to this day, still wish I had the discipline and dedication for—that I started to think more seriously about the value of externalizing ideas and setting them aside, as opposed to walking around with them in my head and thinking about them all day long. At first, I thought notebooks would provide a space to ‘offload’ ideas, as Allen advises, but quickly I began to realize that the blank canvas of a page afforded other opportunities (i.e., drawing, diagraming, categorizing, schematizing, and so on). Using my notebooks in this way, they quickly became generative spaces wherein new ideas and connections would arrive, akin to what friends describe during, or moments right after, dreaming. 

            In thinking of this week’s assignment, I could not help but go back to those MUJI notebooks—especially because I have been on the hunt for the perfect (the ideal!) notebook and pen combination ever since. After years of testing, I still rely on MUJI notebooks and find them to be the best for my hand and eyes (my ideal pen is a blue, mass market, Paper Mate that is no longer in production). So, in the spirit of our course, I began to think about where do these notebooks come from? And how are they made? (What are the system of substrates that make it possible for me to purchase MUJI notebooks just a few blocks from the Graduate Center, across the street from Bryant Park?). A quick search revealed that MUJI is short for Mujirushi Ryōhin, a publicly traded corporation based in Tokyo, Japan that was founded in 1980 as a “product brand” of a Japanese supermarket chain, The Seiyu (est. 1946)—which changed the way that I think about MUJI, from a stylish but ‘lowkey’ retailer to a subsidiary of a much larger retail chain, one akin to Walmart or Best Buy. I started to wonder about every aspect of the notebooks materials along with the entirety of its production, from the sourcing of the materials to the shipping across oceans—a scope that would far exceed the 500 word limit of which I am already over. As the semester moves forward, I want to keep thinking about my notebooks and pens, both as conceptual landscapes but also as material objects, considering where they come from and how I perhaps might find a better, but comparable, alternative to minimize the hidden costs associated with stationary goods that are produced half-way around the world and neatly organized by size and color at MUJI store on 5th avenue.