5G: The fifth generation of wireless communications technologies. 5G technologies communicate by transmitting hi-speed “millimeter waves” over short distances. adaptive-learning (software): Educational computer programs that data-mine students’ responses to virtual-learning modules in order to “personalize” instruction by adjusting the student’s lessons based on his or her performance. Adaptive-learning software remediates lessons until a student shows progress; then, when the student progresses, the software makes lessons more challenging.
ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder): A cognitive-behavioral disability in which the person has difficulty focusing his or her attention. ADHD is characterized by restlessness, distractedness, and impulsivity.
adjustive/adaptive function of education: An educational theory set forth in the 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, by Harvard’s first Professor of Secondary Education, Alexander Inglis. According to the adjustive/adaptive function, the purpose of schooling is obedience training, which conditions students to obey fixed protocols for submitting to authorities.
AFC (American Federation for Children): A not-for-profit interest group that lobbies for “school choice” privatization.
AFT (American Federation of Teachers): A national teachers union founded in 1916. The AFT is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations).
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): Artificial intelligence (AI) which can perform the full range of cognitive tasks that any human being can perform. AGI might theoretically exhibit “self-awareness” and “self-will” which is comparable to human consciousness. AGI, also known as “strong” or “full” AI, is more complex than “weak” or “narrow” AI, which can only perform a limited range of humanoid cognitive tasks that are more or less predetermined.
ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council): a nonprofit interest group that lobbies to advance corporatist privatization across all sectors of the economy, including the for-profit expansion of privatized virtual charter school corporations. ALEC’s team of lawyers draft boilerplate bills that are disseminated across the nation to Congress members who pass these template bills into actual state and federal laws.
algorithm: A mathematical operation that sequences logical orders for definitively calculating series of data inputs and outputs. Basically, the data inputs and outputs of an algorithm work on an if-then continuum (if input “A,” then output “B”; if input “C,” then output “D,” etc.). In any technology that integrates digital computation, an algorithm can simply perform specific outputs in reaction to specific inputs; or an algorithm can identify and track complex data patterns by scanning all the individual input-output sequences.
AI (artificial intelligence): Any digital or computational technology that can mimic the cognitive operations of the human brain. AI can be as rudimentary as a complex stimulus-response algorithm or as sophisticated as a self-driving car. However, artificial intelligence (AI) should not be confused with artificial general intelligence (AGI). AI can only perform a limited range of humanoid cognitive tasks that are more or less predetermined. In contrast, AGI can perform the full range of cognitive tasks that any human being can perform, and AGI might theoretically exhibit “self-awareness” and “self-will” which is comparable to human consciousness.
a posteriori reasoning: A school of philosophy that believes all knowledge can only be derived after (post) a person has observed or measured specific phenomena. Also known as “empiricism,” a posteriori reasoning holds that a person must observe or measure specific data/evidence in order to derive knowledge.
a priori reasoning: A school of philosophy that believes knowledge can be attained before (prior) a person has observed or measured specific phenomena. Also known as “rationalism,” a priori reasoning holds that a person can employ formal logic and other modes of abstract analysis in order to scaffold universal principles and other abstract ideas to arrive at universal truths prior to gathering particular empirical data/evidence.
AR (augmented reality): A type of virtual technology that enables digital graphics or metrics to be overlaid onto the real physical world. Through cameras or transparent screens on smartphones, tablets, or headsets, AR software overlays text, images, and/or three-dimensional graphics or metrics onto the real-world images captured by the camera/screen.
ATC (American Technology Council): A US executive agency established by President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 13794.1 The ATC is basically a technocratic thinktank commissioned to advance hi-tech political-economic planning through public-private partnerships that improve government information technologies and IT infrastructures.
behaviorism: A psychological conditioning theory coined by John B. Watson, an American advertising executive who was a student of John Dewey at the University of Chicago.2 Behaviorist conditioning is the successor to classical stimulus-response conditioning and the precursor to operant conditioning. Behaviorism trains animals to respond to stimuli with conditioned reflexes by (1) associating rewards with “desirable” stimuli and by (2) associating punishments with “undesirable” stimuli.
BCI (brain-computer interface): Any transhumanist biotechnology or psychotechnology that links the human brain with a digital-electronic computer. See also brain-machine interface (BMI), human-machine interface (HMI), and human-computer interface (HCI).
blended learning: A technology-centered method of “personalized” education that teaches students in hybrid schools that combine traditional paper-and-pencil learning in a classroom with automated virtual learning on an internet computer module.
BIA (Bridge International Academies): A globalist charter school corporation that runs international chains of “blended-learning” virtual schools which have public-private contracts with governments across the globe.
Big Data: The practice of collecting, aggregating, and analyzing massive amounts of data across all sectors of the political-economy in order to develop predictive computer analytics that can forecast, manipulate, and innovate trends in economic planning (such as corporate production, workforce development, and consumer spending) and government regulation (such as national security; public infrastructure; health and human services; and educational administration).
Bilderberg Group: A secretive nongovernmental organization (NGO) that surreptitiously plans the world political-economy through off-record international meetings between heads of states, international financiers, military leaders, corporate executives, intelligence operatives, media moguls, academics, technologists, and even royal families.
biofeedback: A method of neuro-psychological conditioning in which a person wears computerized biosensors that track his or her vitals in order to provide real-time digital feedback that tells the wearer how to manage stress. By monitoring heartrate, body temperature, brainwaves, and other electrochemical signals, biofeedback sensors condition the wearer by telling him or her when to correct neuro-psychological disturbances in his or her cognitive, behavioral, or emotional state.
biometrics: Any biological measurements used to identify or characterize a person. Biometric measurements include fingerprinting, voice-recognition, facial recognition, retinal scanning, and DNA sequencing. Such biometrics can be used to identify the unique “biosignature” of a specific person, or they can be used to infer a person’s physiological, psychological, or behavioral characteristics.
biotechnology: Any technology that can interface with, re-engineer, or synthesize organic biology.
BMI (brain-machine interface): Any transhumanist biotechnology or psychotechnology that links the human brain with a digital-electronic computer. See also brain-computer interface (BCI), human-computer interface (HCI), and human-machine interface (HMI).
C2C (cradle to career): A “school choice” buzz-phrase that refers to workforce-training curriculums through privatized charter schools and other public-private “school-towork” partnerships. Cradle-to-career workforce schooling parallels the “lifelong learning” systems of schooling promulgated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
CAI (computer-assisted instruction): any form of school instruction that utilizes a computer to assist student learning. career pathways: Workforce-schooling curriculums that train students for narrowly prescribed job skills in order to fulfill workforce development quotas projected by corporate-government school-to-work partnerships.
CBE (competency-based education): An educational policy that requires schools to measure learning in terms of how “competently” a student is able to perform prescribed “learning outcomes” which prepare him or her for workforce readiness. CBE policies stress that lessons should be flexibly administered so that a student can work at his or her own pace toward achieving workforce-competency outcomes. Hence, CBE policies often favor prescriptive “career pathways” curriculums on “personalized” computer modules.
CFR (Council on Foreign Relations): A non-governmental organization (NGO) that lobbies for international governance through “world trade” economics and globalist foreign policy. Established in 1921, the CFR is the American counterpart to the British Royal Institute of International Affairs.
cognitive-behavioral psychology: Any scientific application of any of the following methods of psychological or behavioral conditioning: stimulus-response conditioning, classical conditioning, behaviorist conditioning, operant conditioning.
CRISPR-Cas9: A gene-editing technology that uses enzymes to remove and insert DNA sequences for the purposes of genetic engineering. (“CRISPR” stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” “Cas9” stands for “CRISPR-associated protein 9”).
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency): One of the most powerful US military research-and-development agencies. data-mining: Any process by which digital technologies extract personal information from technology users.
deconstructionism: A postmodern philosophy coined by Jacques Derrida. Deconstructionism is a branch of linguistic-analysis philosophy which believes that there is no such thing as a canonical interpretation of a “text” because all interpretations are equally valid. According to deconstructionism, a “text” has no objective meaning because the meaning changes based on the subjective perspective of the reader relative to his or her position in the historical space and time of human culture. Simply put, deconstructionism holds that interpretation determines meaning (meaning does not determine interpretation). In this way, deconstructionist philosophy inverts the historical-grammatical method of literary studies, which believes that a “text” has an objective meaning derived from canonical interpretations grounded in the historical context of the “text.” For deconstructionists, everything is an empty, meaningless “text”; even the matter and energy of the universe are just “material texts,” and even people themselves are nothing more than “biological texts,” which can be endlessly reinterpreted ad hoc.
diagnostic/directive function of education: An educational theory set forth in the 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, by Harvard’s first Professor of Secondary Education, Alexander Inglis. According to the diagnostic/directive function, the purpose of schooling is to determine a student’s social role.
dialectical materialism: Karl Marx’s materialist theory of history, which postulates that the evolution of human civilizations occurs through the dialectics, or conflicts/ debates, of class struggles between dominant socioeconomic classes and subjugated socioeconomic classes. According to Marx’s dialectical materialism, history will eventually culminate in a crowning revolution in which the “bourgeois” capitalist classes who own the means of economic production are finally overthrown by the laboring classes of their “proletariat” wage-slaves, who will establish a classless society in a communist utopia.
differentiating function of education: An educational theory set forth in the 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, by Harvard’s first Professor of Secondary Education, Alexander Inglis. According to the differentiating function, the purpose of schooling is to segregate students according to their different roles in the social caste hierarchy.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): Sequences of organic molecules which are the biochemical building blocks of all organic life. DNA is basically a fancy name for “genes,” which consist sugars and phosphates connected to “nucleotides,” which are comprised of four chemical components known as “nucleobases”: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). Based on myriad sequences of A, T, C, and G combined into double-helixes, DNA genetically encodes the physiology of all organic life in all its diverse biological varieties of animals, plants, and microbes.
EDM (educational data-mining): According to the US Department of Education, “EDM develops methods and applies techniques from statistics, machine learning, and data mining to analyze data collected during teaching and learning. EDM tests learning theories and informs educational practice.”9 ed-tech: Education technology.
empiricism: A philosophical school of thought which posits that all knowledge is derived from observation or measurement. Also known as a posteriori reasoning, empiricism favors inductive reasoning, which is a method of first logging specific observations or measurements in order to logically draw general conclusions that are probabilistic (rather than certain). epistemology: A philosophical discipline that is concerned with the study of knowledge, especially the study of how we know what we know.
ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act): A 1965 federal education law which once set the national rules for governing public-school standards across the United States.10 ESEA has been replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015.
ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act): A 2015 federal education law which sets the national rules for governing public-school standards across the United States. ESSA is the successor to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965.
ETS (Educational Testing Services): A nonprofit testing corporation that has been developing and proctoring academic standardized tests since 1947. Current ETS tests include the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the HiSET high-school equivalency test.
eugenics: The “science” of controlling genetic evolution through controlled breeding that promotes the reproduction of “fit” genes while preventing the reproduction of “unfit” genes. Coined by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton, eugenics was also known as “race hygiene” in Nazi Germany under Hitler. Today, eugenics is called “genetic engineering.”
existentialism: A philosophy which believes that existence precedes essence. Existentialists believe in the relative authenticity of subjective experience as a rejection of metaphysical ideals, rational universals, and empirical determinisms.
FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act): A United States law which regulates students’ privacy rights pertaining to their personal education records. gamification: A buzzword for converting traditional school lessons into computerized video games, including augmented-reality games and virtual-reality games.
GBL (game-based learning): Refers to “gamified” learning platforms that convert traditional school lessons into computerized video games, including augmented-reality games and virtual-reality games.
GEB (General Education Board): A Rockefeller philanthropy that was operational from 1902 to 1964. Across the United States, the GEB financed American schooling reforms that emphasized workforce-training curriculums taught through stimulus-response and behaviorist psychological-conditioning methods.
GSR monitor (galvanic skin response monitor): A transhumanist biofeedback technology that monitors a student’s “skin conductivity” in order to track his or her “socioemotional” engagement with school lessons.
HCI (human-computer interface): Any transhumanist biotechnology or psychotechnology that links the human brain with a digital-electronic computer. See also human-machine interface (HMI), brain-machine interface (BMI), and brain-computer interface (BCI).
Hegelian dialectic: A philosophical theory of history postulated by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The Hegelian dialectic theorizes that history evolves through dialectics, or debates, between opposing ideas that eventually synthesize into new ideas over time. One historical idea (thesis) conflicts with an opposing historical idea (antithesis); and as a result, a new idea (synthesis) is created by combining the opposing ideas of “thesis” and “antithesis.” The Order of Skull and Bones manipulates the Hegelian-dialectical evolution of historical ideas through the “problem (thesis) + reaction (antithesis) = solution (synthesis)” stratagem, which foments political conflicts while co-opting both sides of the dispute in order to narrow the resolution and thereby control the historical outcome.
historical-grammatical learning: A classical method of studying literature. In the historical-grammatical method of “close reading,” the language of a text is interpreted based on the historical contexts of the publication and authorship: who wrote the text; when was the text written; where was the text written; in what language was the text written; how/why was the text written. The historical-grammatical approach to literary analysis endeavors to extract the objective meaning of a text based on the internal coherency of the text’s logos, or logic, as it was authentically created. Thus, the historical-grammatical school of literary studies holds to certain canonical interpretations of a text’s objective logos, or logic, while rejecting other readings which rely on more or less “subjective” criteria that fall outside of the historical contexts of the publication and authorship.
HMI (human-machine interface): Any transhumanist biotechnology or psychotechnology that links the human brain with a digital-electronic computer. See also human-computer interface (HCI), brain-computer interface (BCI), and brain-machine interface (BMI).
IBM (International Business Machines): One of the first proto-computer corporations which was established in 1911. Today, IBM produces cutting-edge computer technologies which are commercialized across the global markets of the world economy.
IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act): A federal law that regulates the educational rights of disabled people in the United States of America. idealism: A philosophy that believes the world is ordered according to universal ideas, or truths, that are metaphysically transcendent.
integrating function of education: An educational theory set forth in the 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, by Harvard’s first Professor of Secondary Education, Alexander Inglis. According to the differentiating function, the purpose of schooling is to condition all students to behave as uniformly as possible by training them all to conform to a regimen of collectivist values dictated by school authorities. IQ (intelligence quotient): A psychometric score that measures the intellectual brain capacity of a human being.
IT (information technology): Any electronic or digital technology that can receive or transmit information or data. IT encompasses all communications technologies.
KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program): A chain of corporate charter schools which includes “brick-and-mortar” classroom schools and “blended-learning” hybrid schools that combine onsite classroom learning with virtual computer learning.
law of contradiction: The second law of formal logic, which states that the first law of logic (the law of identity) is violated when a grammatical-rhetorical expression (word/ phrase) is used in ways that controvert observation or in ways that contradict other grammatical-rhetorical suppositions (words/phrases). Simply put, the law of contradiction establishes that a statement is false whenever a word/phrase is used in ways that go against the identity of its own meaning/definition.
law of identity: The first law of formal logic, which states that a specific phenomenon has a specific identity that cannot be conflated with the identities of any other phenomena. Extended to grammar and rhetoric, the law of identity states that specific words/phrases refer to specific phenomena (which cannot be conflated with the identities of other words/phrases).
law of tautology: The third law of formal logic, which holds that certain grammatical-rhetorical expressions must either be true or false (because they cannot be both true and false at the same time). The law of tautology holds that, in certain instances, there is no “third” or “middle” possibility in which a logical premise is simultaneously both true and false; hence, the law of tautology is also known as “the law of the excluded third” or “the law of the excluded middle”).
learning analytics: According to the US Department of Education, “[l]earning analytics applies techniques from information science, sociology, psychology, statistics, machine learning, and data mining to analyze data collected during education administration and services, teaching, and learning. Learning analytics creates applications that directly influence educational practice.”
Learnsphere: A public-private data-sharing hub where teachers, school administrators, ed-tech engineers, social scientists, and other education researchers can share data in order to develop better teaching strategies, schooling policies, and ed-tech products.
lifelong learning: A UNESCO educational program that emphasizes the collectivist learning of globalist values in order to achieve “social stability” in a planned world economy. To keep up with the technological evolution of the global economy, UNESCO’s lifelong-learning program stresses continuing education that updates a person’s job skills throughout the course of his or her life.
linguistic analysis: A branch of philosophy that believes all knowledge is derived from language. By extension, linguistic analysists believe that all knowledge is a relativistic matter of how we subjectively use language to define phenomena (not necessarily how we use logic to rationalize phenomena; and not necessarily how we use empirical measurement to quantify phenomena).
logocentrism: “Logocentrism” combines the root “logos” with the suffix “centrism.” The word “logos,” which is a philosophical concept conceived by the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, basically refers to the metaphysical order, or logic, of the universe and the human mind/spirit. The suffix “centrism” means “to be centered upon,” or “to be fixated upon.” Thus, logocentrism means to be philosophically centered, or fixated, upon the logos, or logic, of the universe.
logos: The word “logos,” which is a philosophical concept conceived by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, essentially refers to the metaphysical order, or logic, of the universe and the human mind/spirit.
look-say reading: A method of literacy instruction that teaches students to read by memorizing whole words. The student is taught to “look” at a whole word as a single sound; then, the student is taught to “say” the whole word as a single sound. The look-say method of reading instruction is the opposite of the phonics method, which teaches students to dissect words into smaller parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots, that can be “sounded out” into syllables. (See also “whole-language learning” and “whole-word learning”).
materialism: A philosophical school of thought which believes that all reality exists as physics (matter and energy). Materialism holds that all reality can be objectively measured or observed by the five senses. Materialism denies the existence of any ideal, metaphysical, or spiritual realities that transcend the physics of matter and energy. For materialists, even consciousness is a material product of the physical interplay between matter and energy.
metaphysics: A branch of philosophy that studies the realities of phenomena which cannot be directly measured or observed. Since metaphysics studies the deeper realities that transcend the material physics of matter and energy, metaphysical philosophies rely on logical inference through a priori reasoning (rather than a posteriori empiricism). Metaphysics is the philosophical domain of theology, idealism, and other “spiritual” ways of knowing truth.
modernism: A philosophical movement that is skeptical of both the traditions of classical metaphysics as well as the progresses of humanist rationalism and materialist empiricism. Modernist philosophies emphasize the subconscious fragmentation of human rationality as a result of modern industrial-scientific methods of economic mass production, hi-tech mass communications, automated mass transportation, and mechanized mass-scale war.
MR (mixed reality): A digital platform that combines augmented-reality and virtual-reality technologies.
NEA (National Education Association): The largest labor union in the United States of America. Founded in 1857, the NEA represents public schoolteachers and other public school employees across the USA.
NIH (National Institutes of Health): A US federal-government agency that funds and oversees research task forces commissioned to investigate public health issues. The NIH also funds and directs public-private research initiatives that actively develop innovative healthcare technologies and medical treatments.
nominalism: A branch of philosophy that believes words, or “names,” do not represent universal ideas or metaphysical truths. Rather, nominalism believes that words/names are merely arbitrary labels which humans use for decoding their empirical sensory experiences of material objects. According to nominalism, all that exists is the material matter and energy of the physical universe; and the words/names we use to define such material phenomena are merely ad hoc tools that can be more or less helpful for deciphering and manipulating material objects for practical utility. Nominalism provides the groundwork for modern schools of linguistic-analysis philosophy.
OAI (Office of American Innovation): A White House thinktank established by Donald Trump’s “Presidential Memorandum on the White House Office of American Innovation.” The OAI pushes public-private political-economic planning that concentrates on hi-tech innovations through corporate-government partnerships.
OBE (outcomes-based education): An educational policy that requires schools to measure learning in terms of whether a student can perform predetermined “outcomes” which prepare him or her for workforce readiness. Targeting pre-established “learning outcomes,” OBE policies favor instructional methods that narrowly focus on workforce-training lessons which teach students the basic job skills required to perform standardized workforce-readiness outcomes. OBE policies usually allocate school funding based on whether the students at a school have achieved such predetermined workforce-readiness outcomes.
ontology: A branch of philosophy that studies “being,” or “ultimate reality.” Ontology is the philosophical study of “existence”: what absolutely exists; how does it truly exist; and why does it actually exist.
OOO (object-oriented ontology): A philosophy that believes inanimate objects are “non-sentient entities” which exist independently of human observation and utility. OOO theory holds that the ontology, or ultimate reality/being, of inanimate objects is not determined by human beings. Thus, OOO theory believes that the ultimate existence/essence of non-sentient objects is equal to the ultimate existence/essence of sentient human beings. As such, OOO theory blurs the lines between human beings and objects.
operant conditioning: A form of psychological conditioning coined by B. F. Skinner. Operant conditioning is the successor to the behaviorist conditioning popularized by John B. Watson and E. L. Thorndike. Skinner’s operant conditioning emphasizes the strategic scheduling of “positive-reinforcement rewards,” “negative-reinforcement rewards,” “negative punishments,” and “positive punishments” in order to “shape” an animal’s conditioned associations between external environmental stimuli and the animal’s own internal cognitive-behavioral responses.
P-16 Council: A public-private workforce-schooling council that operates at the state level. The “P” stands for “preschool,” and the “16” stands for “age 16.” P-16 councils coordinate public-private economic planning through preschool, elementary-school, middle-school, and high-school workforce-training programs. P-16 school-to-work programs parallel the “lifelong learning” systems of education promulgated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
P-20 Council: A public-private workforce-schooling council that operates at the state level. The “P” stands for “preschool,” and the “20” stands for “age 20,” or “education after college.” P-20 councils coordinate public-private economic planning through preschool, elementary-school, middle-school, high-school, collegiate, adult-education, and other workforce-training programs. P-20 school-to-work programs parallel the “lifelong learning” systems of education promulgated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
panopticon: An “all-seeing” prison system designed by the utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, in 1791. In Bentham’s panopticon prison compound, a single guard has a 360-degree vantage point where he can view all of the prisoner cells form his single watchtower; yet none of the prisoners can see the guard from their cells, which encircle the tower. Consequently, even though the guard cannot actually see all the prison cells at the same time, his constant presence in the watchtower conditions the prisoners to behave as if he can actually see them all at once. Thus, the panopticon watchtower psychologically conditions prisoners to self-censor any behaviors that might be punished by the guardsman (even when the guard cannot actually see the prisoners). The postmodernist philosopher, Michel Foucault, re-popularized the “panopticon” concept as a term for referring to any mass-surveillance system, especially a digital-electronic surveillance grid of cameras or internet data-mining, which causes the people being surveilled to self-censor any behaviors that might be penalized by the authoritarian surveillants.
pedagogy: A fancy term that is basically synonymous with “educational philosophy” or “educational methodology.” Pedagogy encompasses the theories and practices of teaching methods. As an academic discipline, pedagogy studies the art of teaching instructors how to teach. Pedagogies systematize teaching tactics that instructors can apply to strategically deliver skill exercises and concept lessons which effectively engage student learning.
phenomenology: A school of philosophy which believes that the only things humans can directly experience are the internal phenomena of their own subjective minds. Phenomenology holds that objective external reality can never be truly known because humans’ empirical experiences of the material matter and energy of the universe are always filtered through the subjective interpretations of their internal mental processes. (Unlike solipsism, which denies the existence of anything outside the human mind, phenomenology is merely skeptical about the ability to objectively know anything about the real existences outside the human mind).
phrenology: A nineteenth-century eugenical pseudoscience that diagnosed people with psychological and sociological characteristics based on the shapes of their skulls.
physiognomy: A eugenical pseudoscience that diagnoses people with psychological and sociological characteristics based on their facial features. PII (personally identifiable information): information, or data, that can reveal the specific identity of the person to whom the info/data belongs. PII includes a person’s name, address, social security number, etc.
PK-16 Council: A public-private workforce-schooling council that operates at the state level. The “PK” stands for “pre-kindergarten,” and the “16” stands for “age 16.” PK-16 councils coordinate public-private economic planning through preschool, elementary-school, middle-school, and high-school workforce-training programs. PK-16 schoolto-work programs parallel the “lifelong learning” systems of education promulgated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
PK-20 Council: A public-private workforce-schooling council that operates at the state level. The “PK” stands for “pre-kindergarten,” and the “20” stands for “age 20,” or “education after college.” PK-20 councils coordinate public-private economic planning through preschool, elementary-school, middle-school, high-school, collegiate, adult-education, and other workforce-training programs. PK-20 school-to-work programs parallel the “lifelong learning” systems of education promulgated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
PMI (Precision Medicine Initiative): A public-private research initiative funded by the US federal government under the auspices of the National Institutes of Health. The Precision Medicine Initiative advances the research and development of gene therapies and other genetic medicines that “personalize” healthcare by treating individual patients based on their unique biogenetic signatures/markers.
positivism: A philosophical school of thought that believes all knowledge comes from the experiences of empirically observing or measuring the particulars of material phenomena. Positivism denies metaphysics and rejects idealism while denouncing a priori reasoning. Coined by Auguste Comte,22 positivism forms the philosophical basis of “scientism,” which is basically the pseudo-religious worship of the scientific method.
posthumanism: A scientific philosophy that believes the biogenetic evolution of the human species will be superseded by the technological evolution of artificially intelligent machines, which will subsume human intelligence and ultimately render human consciousness into obsolescence and extinction.
postmodernism: A philosophical movement that rejects the traditions of classical metaphysics as well as the progresses of humanist rationalism and materialist empiricism. In rejection of absolute truth, universal metaphysics, objective ideas, and practical utility, postmodernist philosophies believe in the subjective relativism of ideas, the absurdity of rational determinisms, and the meaningless “performance” of sensuous existence.
PPRA (Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment): A 1978 federal law which, according to the US Department of Education, “seeks to ensure that schools and contractors obtain written parental consent before minor students are required to participate in any ED-funded survey, analysis, or evaluation that reveals [sensitive student] information.”23 PPRA-protected information includes a student’s “1. Political affiliations; 2. Mental and psychological problems… 3. Sex behavior and attitudes; 4. Illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating and demeaning behavior; 5. Critical appraisals of … close family relationships; 6. Legally recognized … relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers; or 7. Income.”
pragmatism: A school of philosophy that believes truth and ethics are merely a matter of what is useful or helpful. Popularized by the American psychologist, William James, pragmatism believes that whatever is useful is true, and whatever is helpful is ethical. There are no transcendent metaphysics, universal ideas, or absolute determinisms that predicate pragmatic truth or pragmatic ethics.
precision education: An educational methodology that uses genetic screening to digitally create student-learning profiles that facilitate “personalized” instruction based on the student’s genetic IQ. Precision-ed gene profiles also identify and accommodate a student’s cognitive-behavioral learning disabilities. Precision-ed gene screening can also be enhanced with other biometric and psychometric ed-tech, such as socioemotional biofeedback wearables.
precision medicine: “Personalized” medical treatments that include gene therapies and other genetic medicines that treat individual patients by targeting their unique biogenetic signatures/markers.
propaedeutic function of education: An educational theory set forth in the 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, by Harvard’s first Professor of Secondary Education, Alexander Inglis. According to the propaedeutic function, the purpose of schooling is to train elite groups of students to take over the reins of the governing/schooling system in the future. As such, propaedeutically trained students are also taught how to manage the rest of their student peers who have been “diagnosed” into the lower castes of the sociopolitical hierarchy.
psychometrics: Any verbal, behavioral, neurological, or biological assessment used to identify or characterize a person’s cognitive, emotional, or behavioral psychology. Psychometric measurements include IQ tests, personality tests, reflex tests, career aptitude tests, and other standardized educational tests. Such psychometrics can be used to diagnose a person as pathological, learning disabled, job-competent, or genius.
psychotechnology: Any technology that can interface with the brain or nervous system and thereby alter any cognitive, emotional, or behavioral powers of human consciousness.
rationalism: A philosophical school of thought which posits that knowledge is attained by reasoning through universal ideas that transcend the particulars of observation and measurement. Also known as a priori reasoning, rationalism favors deductive reasoning, which is a method of deducing truth by drawing formal-logical conclusions from universal ideas that are transcend empirical phenomena.
relativism: A philosophical school of thought that denies the objectivity of ideas. According to relativist philosophies, there is no absolute truth, nor is there any ultimate reality; nothing transcends a person’s subjective perspective. Relativism believes that every subjective idea is equally true from its own relative perspective regardless of any apparent contradiction.
school choice: A euphemism that refers to the privatization of public schooling through public-private charter schools; public-private voucher programs; and government tax credits for private tuition expenses and “education savings accounts.”
scientism: A “scientific” pseudo-religion which holds the radical-positivist tenet that human beings should only believe scientific facts which can be objectively proven. As a political philosophy, scientism believes that human society should only obey scientific laws which can be objectively proven.
SEL (socio-emotional learning): An educational policy that tracks students’ emotions and social behaviors in order to condition them for “precision” learning outcomes. SEL policies integrate ed-tech that digitally data-mines a student’s socioemotional behaviors through galvanic skin-response bracelets, emotional face-recognition scanners, and EEG brainwave headbands.
Singularity: The climax of transhuman/posthuman technological evolution, which futurists predict will culminate in the perfect merger of humankind with brain-computer interfaces jacked into artificially intelligent computers linked to the internet-of-everything.
SIS data (student information system data): Data that tracks the institutional demographics of a school’s academic and behavioral outcomes: attendance and suspension rates; course grades, course levels, and class sizes; standardized test scores; learning disability and IEP classifications; free/reduced-price lunch distribution; ethnic population ratios. In addition, SIS data contains certain health information such as absences due to illness or other physical or mental health complication. SIS data can also contain criminal justice records pertaining to in-school arrests and other school code violations. skepticism: A philosophical school that believes the ultimate and absolute answers to the “big” questions about reality and truth can never be known. Simply put, skepticism believes that, if ultimate realities or absolute truths do actually exist, humans can never know them.
Skinner box: A mechanized teaching device developed by B. F. Skinner. The operant-conditioning mechanisms of the Skinner-box “teaching machines” were modeled after B. F.’s puzzle-box animal-training experiments, which were modeled after E. L. Thorndike’s behaviorist animal-conditioning experiments. The Skinner box is the precursor to contemporary adaptive-learning computer software.
Social Credit System: A Chinese-government total-surveillance grid that utilizes internet-of-everything “smart cities” to digitally keep track of citizens’ financial, social, and political behaviors in order to penalize or reward those behaviors with restricted or streamlined access to transportation, healthcare, housing, and even civil due process. Based on “good behaviors,” a citizen gains points on his or her social credit score; based on “bad behaviors,” a citizen loses points on his or her social credit score. A high score awards a citizen by granting him or her privileged rights; but a low score punishes a citizen by restricting his or her rights.
stimulus-response psychology: The first scientific psychological theory, which was the brainchild of Wilhelm Wundt, who is the founding father of laboratory psychology as a field of academic research. Wundt’s stimulus-response theory of psychology scientifically dissects all aspects of human thought and behavior into series of reflexive responses to environmental stimuli. Wundt’s stimulus-response principle of psychological conditioning is the core building block of all forms of cognitive-behavioral conditioning, including classical conditioning, behaviorist conditioning, and operant conditioning.
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics): An educational reform that emphasizes technocratic learning at the expense of the arts and humanities.
subjectivism: A philosophical school of thought that believes the truth of an idea is relative to a person’s subjective perspective. Subjectivism is the opposite of objectivism. Subjectivism believes that there are no objective ideas which are universally true, for there is no objective truth which transcends the relativity or partiality of a person’s subjective perceptions.
TA bot (teacher-aide bot): Any artificially intelligent technology that assists teachers by data-mining and graphing students’ learning analytics. By providing teachers with student-learning data, TA bots give the teachers suggestions as to which students are excelling, which students are falling behind, which students need more challenging lessons, and which students need remediated lessons.
Tao: The word “Tao,” which is a philosophical concept conceived by the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, essentially refers to the metaphysical order, or “Way,” of the natural universe and the human mind/spirit.
teacher bot: Any artificially intelligent technology that replaces a human teacher by substituting the human instructor with a virtual instructor. A teacher-bot can be a software-based AI that is either virtually embodied on a computer screen (as a visual-graphics avatar) or disembodied through a computer speaker or instant-messaging platform (as audio or text only). More advanced teacher-bots are hardware-based AI that are mechanically embodied as humanoid robots with real-world mobility which can physically interact with a student body in the real-life material environments of the student’s brick-and-mortar classroom or homeschool.
technetronics: Any technologies that combine electronics and digital computation.
text-centrism: A postmodern term invented by the deconstructionist philosophers, who coined the term in contrast against metaphysical, idealist, and rationalist philosophies of “logocentrism.” “Text-centrism” combines the root “text” with the suffix “centrism.” The root “text” refers to any symbol or medium, such as writing or speech, that can convey language or otherwise communicate meaning. The suffix “centrism” means “to be centered upon,” or “to be fixated upon.” Thus, “text-centrism” means to be philosophically centered, or fixated, upon the “subjectivity” of a text. Stated differently, “text-centrism” means that there is no objective meaning contained in any text; but rather, the meaning of a text changes based on the subjective perspective of the reader relative to his or her interpretive position in the historical space and time of human culture.
Thing Theory: A “critical theory” philosophy, which posits that objects are defined by language, and that language defines objects in terms of human relationship or human utility. Thus, an object becomes a “thing” when it cannot be readily explained in terms of its relationship to human utility. According to Thing Theory, since “things” are not clearly categorized as useful in any particular way, “things” are thereby opened up to new interpretations and new experimentations so that humans can make new uses of the “things.” By extension, when an aspect of humanity itself becomes a “thing,” that part of the human being/experience becomes opened up to new interpretations and new experimentations so that humans can make utility out of it.
transhumanism: The “science” of re-engineering human evolution by transforming organic human biology through genetic-engineering and other biotechnological advancements, such as human-computer interfaces, which rewire human physiology and neuropsychology. Coined by eugenicist Julian Huxley, transhumanism is neo-eugenics, which is the “science” of merging humans and computers into a new cyborg species that is part human, part machine.
Trivium: The classical “liberal arts” method of qualitative learning through a three-part methodology of language arts: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The Trivium is the foundation of all classical learning, and it provides the groundwork for learning the quantitative Quadrivium of mathematics and science: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
tutor bot: Any artificially intelligent technology that assists students by replacing human tutors with virtual tutors. A tutor-bot can be a software-based AI that is either virtually embodied on a computer screen (as a visual-graphics avatar) or disembodied through a computer speaker or instant-messaging platform (as audio or text only). Tutor-bots usually function like automated customer-service bots that are specially designed for the educational industry.
UBI (Universal Basic Income): A communist-style universal welfare payment that provides everyone a basic income to offset mass-unemployment resulting from the AI automation of the workforce.
UII (user interaction information): Psycho-behavioral data collected by adaptive-learning software. UII data keeps real-time track of a student’s screen time along with his or her number of keystrokes per learning-module. Using adaptive-learning algorithms, UII maps these student-response feedback loops into “personal” psychological profiles for tailoring “individualized” digital instruction.
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization): An international governance organization formulated by the United Nations. UNESCO promotes the international development of scientific and cultural education as a global human right.
utilitarianism: A philosophy coined by Jeremy Bentham. This philosophy believes that ethics and truth are measured simply in terms of what is most useful to human society. Measuring “good” and “bad” based on a “hedonic scale” that quantifies “pleasures” versus “pains,” utilitarianist ethics are essentially based on the following equation: ethics = the minimization of human suffering + the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. For utilitarians, there is no universal moral principle or other objective truth that transcends this ethical calculus.
VR (virtual reality): A type of virtual technology that can digitally induce real-world experiences through headsets which display three-dimensional virtual environments. VR computer systems can be connected to other biosensors that virtually induce other sensory experiences, such as tactile/touch experiences and auditory/sound experiences.
whole-language learning: A method of literacy instruction that teaches students to read by memorizing whole words. The student is taught to “look” at a whole word as a single sound; then, the student is taught to “say” the whole word as a single sound. The whole-language method of reading instruction is the opposite of the phonics method, which teaches students to dissect words into smaller parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots, that can be “sounded out” into syllables. (See also “whole-word learning” and “look-say reading”).
whole-word learning: A method of literacy instruction that teaches students to read by memorizing whole words. The student is taught to “look” at a whole word as a single sound; then, the student is taught to “say” the whole word as a single sound. The wholeword method of reading instruction is the opposite of the phonics method, which teaches students to dissect words into smaller parts, such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots, that can be “sounded out” into syllables. (See also “whole-language learning” and “look-say reading”).
WIA (Workforce Investment Act): A US federal law that allocates monetary resources toward developing economic industries through government grants, public-private partnerships, school-to-work programs, and other workforce-planning projects. WIA is the precursor to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014.
WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act): A US federal law that allocates monetary resources toward developing economic industries through government grants, public-private partnerships, school-to-work programs, and other workforce-planning projects. WIOA is the updated successor to the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998.
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