Le professeur Todd Pettigrew, qui tient une chronique dans le Macleans On Campus, réagit à l’apparition d’une technologie permettant de vérifier si les étudiants ont lu les textes numériques recommandés.
Pettigrew explique qu’il n’en veut pas. D’abord, parce que le système n’est pas au point, mais aussi pour des questions de vie privée:
More worrisome, though, are the privacy implications.
Andrew Leonard, for instance, can’t help but notice that that same Times piece cited above, quotes a Texas A&M Dean who praised the software for being like “Big Brother” in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Although the Dean had insisted that the surveillance would be done “in a good way,” Leonard wryly observes that it’s still “never a good sign when Orwellian dystopia is cited in connection with a commercial product.”
Plus important, Pettigrew explique qu’il considère que ce n’est pas son mandat comme enseignant de contraindre les étudiants à apprendre:
“Some will, no doubt, object that professors need to find ways to get students to do the reading, lest students should fail to learn. But that, to me, misses the whole point of university teaching.
My aim is not to get you to learn: whether you want to learn or not is up to you. My job is to create an atmosphere in which you can learn a lot if you choose to do so.
I hope you do, but I’m not going to try to intimidate you into doing it.” [nos emphases]
Source: Pettigrew, Todd, “Technology lets professors track your reading – Prof. Pettigrew says he doesn’t want to know“, Macleans On Campus, 15 avril 2013.
