Remember the school days of old? At the beginning of the year textbooks were issued and students were instructed to cover those books. Remember saving up brown paper sacks for times such as these? Those textbooks were hauled from class to class, their covers donned with the signatures of classmates, and loaded into backpacks. Hours were spent poring over those textbooks, oftentimes with the assistance of parents who found themselves on homework duty. Those are the bygone days.

Today, curriculum has been hijacked by Big Tech. Chromebooks, iPads, digital badges, Clever, i-Ready, apps, and digital assessments, to name a few. The list goes on and on. Many parents are under the assumption that they have a grasp on what their children are being taught in the neighborhood school because they believe that they have seen the curriculum. They have been misled. How? Curriculum and assessments are being autogenerated. That means the curriculum is being created in real time as the student is answering the questions. Often, the teachers have no idea the content of the autogenerated curriculum.

When did this shift in education occur?

According to Purdue University, the commercial use of the internet was an integral part of the digitization of schools. “By 2009, 97% of classrooms had one or more computers, and 93% of classroom computers had Internet access. For every 5 students, there was one computer. Instructors stated that 40% of students used computers often in their educational methods, in addition to interactive whiteboards and digital cameras,” according to an article titled The Evolution of Technology in the Classroom on purdue.edu.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Sean Raesemann, former cyber warfare officer, on the Free YOUR Children radio show regarding the digitization of our schools. That interview can be found on the podcast portal at frontporchradiotn.com. He had some excellent questions for parents to ask of their local school board members and public school officials.

Who is voting for the digitization of curriculum? Who voted for the data mining of students? Who gave the school system permission to access the home network when a child brings home a device? Who voted to increase the budget to manage the IT department? Who controls the data that is being collected on students? Who are the third-party vendors your school system has partnered with? Where is the repository for all of this data? Are breaches announced? What type of security is in place to protect all of this data they are collecting? Your local school board members should know the answers to these questions; if they do not, send them on a fact-finding mission. In my county, the answers to many of these questions were the school board itself. It is crucial to educate your school board members about the dangers of these topics. If they have not attended a Free YOUR Children seminar, host one in your area and encourage them to attend.

Why should parents be worried about data collection?

The county IT department typically sustains the IT enterprise, and schools are a huge cyber-target. There are hundreds, if not more, third-party vendors that have access to student data. FERPA allows this data to be collected without parental consent. There is also an interoperable, longitudinal database that makes it easy for vast amounts of data to be shared. The state also collects its own data on students, and they also have control over the data they collect. They too can disseminate this data to any entity in the name of educational research. Data is big business, and the data of our nation’s children is the commodity.

“Nearly three-quarters of the most popular apps and online platforms directed at children are likely profiting from user data—even if they claim otherwise,” according to Common Sense Media, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization that studies the impact of technology on youth.

Parents should also be concerned about what their children can access on school-issued devices. After speaking to a local school board member, he stated that according to the county’s IT department, they cannot stop the children from navigating around filters they have put in place. So yes, if a child learns how to navigate around the filters, they can be, and are, finding themselves on sites that are not appropriate for children.

Is Big Brother watching you?

Another issue that parents need to be aware of is that many of these school-issued devices have microphones and cameras that have the potential to record in the privacy of your home unbeknownst to parents or students. So yes, conversations and videos could be recorded of you and your family in the privacy of your own home without your knowledge. It has already happened to some families.

So, who is protecting the children? It certainly isn’t who you think it is.

The National Republican Platform states that it believes:

“ . . . federal funds should not be used in mandatory or universal mental health, psychiatric socio-emotional screening programs. The federal government has pushed states to collect and share vast amounts of personal student and family data, including the collection of social and emotional data. Much of this data is collected without parental consent or notice. This is wholly incompatible with the American Experiment and our inalienable rights.”

They say all the right things, yet they are doing the exact opposite.

During the most recent legislative session in Tennessee, Rep. Scott Cepicky touted, “Artificial intelligence is the new frontier in education.” On the heels of this statement, wate.com reported that Anderson County schools in Tennessee would be using AI technology “Mirror,” by Swivl, to implement Social Emotional Learning. This is a very odd statement coming from a Republican representative. Have our Republican representatives not read their own national platform? Social Emotional Learning programs are one of the number one ways that the data of our children is being mined and then sold to the highest bidder. Students are also accessing mental telehealth services via apps on school-issued devices. How are schools paying for all of this digitization? You guessed it—government monies. Republicans are sponsoring bills and voting for many of the very initiatives they claim to fundamentally oppose. Again, they are violating the tenets of their very own national platform.

So who is protecting the children?

Parents, that has to be you.

Do your research and educate yourself on what is really going on in education. The focus of the neighborhood school is not to teach little Johnny to read and do math. Their purpose is to use the digital curriculum to change their thoughts, values, behaviors, attitudes and beliefs and to collect vast amounts of data on your child. Your child is a social experiment and a cash cow. Only you can stop it.

I encourage you to check out the Free YOUR Children toolkit on freeyourchildren.com for more information on pertinent topics in education. Each topic has multiple resources to help you better understand this agenda. Education is key.

Before you can win a war, you must first identify the enemy.

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Photo, top, by Todd Trapani / Pexels

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