If You Don't Eat Your Meat, You Can't Have Any Pudding

Your Class Reading Just Got a Little More Biopolitical

The New York Times recently profiled a new technology start-up called CourseSmart that allows professors to track exactly how you’re reading the digital coursework.

If You Don't Eat Your Meat, You Can't Have Any Pudding
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!?

 

The days are gone where you could read the intro and conclusion of a book and call it a day. CourseSmart offers professors a little too much info about reading habits.

They know when students are skipping pages, failing to highlight significant passages, not bothering to take notes — or simply not opening the book at all.

Gawker reports:

The Silicon Valley start-up—soon to be known as betrayer of bullshitting college students across academia—was founded by publishers Pearson and McGraw-Hill Education. It has been gathering information from the 3.5 million students and teachers already using the system and plans to expand the tracking program broadly by fall semester 2013

Wasn’t the whole point of that shitty standardized testing to know if students actually learned anything? Tracy Hurley, the dean of Texas A&M’s business who is testing the technology, remarked: “It’s Big Brother, sort of, but with a good intent.” We’re pretty sure Tracy Hurley has never actually read 1984, or comically failed to understand its message.