How Technology "Great Men" Talk About Education: Analyzing the Discourses of Jobs, Gates, and Kahn

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Discourse Analyses of Market-Based Education Reforms

Abstract

This paper examines which technology narratives and discursive strategies are present and influence the debate around public education policy and politics in the United States. Employing critical discourse analysis tools, I identify four main discourses present in interviews and presentations given by three of the most influential technology leaders of the last decade: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Salman Khan. Using extant frameworks of technology discourse analysis, this proposal discusses how Silicon Valley's political advocacy and ideologies related to the "school of the future" mimic previous neoliberal reform discourses, contribute to creating a manufactured crisis and influence the debate about education policy and politics.

Author

• Fabio Campos, New York University