The generalization in the title is based on published research surveying 100 pupils aged 13 to 14 from two UK schools, which is to say, not reliable. I was able to access some of the original work at NRC, though I imagine it is paywalled elsewhere. Here's another paper from the same work (with none of the references to Foucault etc. cited in the other paper). I question not only the unrepresentative sample but the study itself. "Each pupil was asked to respond to a statement in turn that was presented to them by the interviewer. For example, statements introduced were 'I would recommend using the Fitbit to other people my age because … ' and 'as a result of wearing the Fitbit I learnt … '." There's no indication that the study was sponsored by FitBit (the authors credit Richard Benjamin Trust, whose website is several years out-of-date). Personally, I think there's a big difference between being required to wear devices, and then being surveiled, as these studenmts were, and choosing to wear the device on one's own, keeping the data private. I think there's really interesting work to be done on the relation between education and surveillance. But this isn't the way to do it.
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