General Ned Ludd was the Robin Hood of the early textile workers; a mythological young man who passionately wielded his hammer against the machinery that was meant to speed his production and diminish his craft. The real workers he inspired lived through a turbulent era of political revolution and industrialization of the natural world during the early 19th century. These Luddites, a name used as a pejorative by the merchant class, smashed machines to protect the quality of their craft, but also acted collectively, the foundation of unionism, according to historian E.J. Hobsbawm.
Two hundred years later, turbulence abounds. Over the last 20 years, students’ cognitive abilities have declined for the first time since the introduction of public schooling. Our environment is blistering while data centers suck fresh water away. Student anxiety levels are high, while Meta has been forced to settle in court for pushing addictive social media. Communities throughout the country are rejecting perpetual Flock camera surveillance.
In Massachusetts, the Springfield Empowerment Zone attempted an AI instruction experiment on students, which is currently suspended as the union organized an effective response, and the district was ironically shut down due to a cyberattack. Meanwhile, elected officials across the country are scrambling to issue various degrees of moratoriums on Big Tech, while also trying to satiate their tech–bro overlords because they know the overinvestment in artificial intelligence could devastate the economy at any moment. This, as usual, has intensified the motivation to send excess tech products into the hands of public school students, burdening already austere budgets.
As education workers, we employ the figurative hammer of our imagination and experience, smashing through the illusions and false promises of education technology. As the parents of our students exponentially raise skepticism about AI, we can demystify this moment and contextualize it by including it among the problems of excessive screen time and the online, boxed curriculum we have opposed for the last two decades.
What good is a cell phone ban if we continue to put students on Chromebooks for 6 hours a day? Melrose educators this spring said, “Books Not Chromebooks,” and handed out hundreds of free books to enthusiastic parents and students, using a Mass Child grant. Now we could add “Educators NOT Ed Tech, Schools NOT Screens, Authentic NOT Artificial!"
One-quarter of the MTA Board of Directors’ priorities for this coming year is based on a pillar of Deb Gesualdo’s and my campaign platform: building power to secure educator dignity and autonomy/academic freedom, which includes getting back to quality pedagogy that works for our students. The MTA will provide resources to locals for contract language, school committee policy resolutions and coordinated actions to put the focus back on student well-being, data protection and the human core of our craft.
Simultaneously, we will build a statewide campaign to direct politicians to go beyond “guardrails and guidelines,” because they really don’t mean “understanding” tech when they say “AI literacy.” That’s code for more tech subservience. Our public schools are held in common by our communities; they are not private mines for corporate interests to develop their next product. Labor historian Peter Linebaugh slightly modified a poem by William Blake to express our current moment:
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my [hammer] sleep in my hand:
Till we occupy the commons,
To green and chill our baked lands.
