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?