What does the alienation of fact and data mean? What are the reasons for these distortions, and why are they dangerous? The book’s subtitle suggests the main causes in the education sector: government’s decreasing role in regulation and finance; and digital educational privatization, that is, the increasing involvement of information and communication technology (ICT) and content provider firms in education.

The main value of the book is that it shows, via many examples, the harmful/dangerous side of the changes made to education in the last half-century. The positive impacts are outlined only, without detailed suggestions. Saltman does not explore the themes of volunteering, participatory democracy, or activism by concerned civilians. He instead demonstrates the disingenuous practices of for-profit educational corporations, new educational technologies, philanthropy, and democracy promotion.

The author presents a strong anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal, anti-conservative, anti-rightist attitude. Many of his arguments refer to Theodor Adorno and Henry Giroux.

In both modern society and education, every decision is centered around measuring collected data, that is, it is data driven. However, in many cases, the motivation behind collected data is hidden and the figures shown to decision makers are imbalanced. So, policy proceeds free of evidence, real argument, or theoretical justification. Going beyond a positivist’s number-crunching comprehension would demand the use of critical pedagogy, not just more facts or better facts.

On the other hand, the overuse of ICT tools in education may remove teachers from students, and tests can oversimplify the evaluation of knowledge and skills and thus hide some real capabilities. Education may go grey and--contrary to the declared intent--uniformize teaching instead of customizing it according to the individual. By lessening direct, personal interaction and discussion between teachers and students, it may be inefficient. On the basis of collecting data about the emotions and physical effects of participants in a digital session, students are taught how to behave peacefully during the session and in society, neutralizing differences, solving their problems individually instead of together with others in similar situations.

The preface includes some terms--terms that are often used in sociology and philosophy--without defining their meaning. Their actual meanings are underpinned by the notes (quasi references) given in each chapter. In these detailed parts, their meaning is clear and consistent. Saltman clarifies his point of view and terminology in chapter 1.

Chapters 2 and 3 describe the role of ICT giants and content providers: they uniformize and influence--according to their profit-oriented interests--the education of poor and disenfranchised people and countries. He does not cover applications based on large language models (LLMs) and transformer architectures, but in my opinion he would have similar warnings about these. However, these new capabilities could be developed to provide alternative answers/solutions, so they could help apply critical educational traditions by engaging debates on different aspects and interests in the classroom. It would have been interesting to cover the theme of smart cities/areas, the development of which relies on participatory democracy in western culture and its close ties to the education of both young and older generations. The controversial relationship between open source and ICT giants is also not mentioned.

Chapter 4 deals with the LEGO Foundation and its increasingly ambiguous role in the improvement of young people through play and the quantification of play.

Chapter 5 treats conspiracy theories. Illiberal politics and dictatorships are intended sources of misinformation. Their social atmospheres are a seedbed of disillusion in media and in science, thus encouraging the spread of false, manipulative theories. The impact on society justifies the treatment of these phenomena at many points throughout the book:

The refusal of evidence, argument, and theory has become stunningly mainstream. ... A growing number of people embrace outlandish conspiracy theories, with the least educated being the most vulnerable to believing them.

The number of climate deniers decreases slowly even in the US Congress. The theme of chapter 6 is a consequence of the previous one: trust in numbers, distrust experts.

The next chapter discusses aspects of privatized education that aim to influence campus culture, for instance, “privilege checking,” “virtue signaling,” and “safe spaces.”

A short summary stresses the essence of the messages. The relatively self-contained chapters can be read out of order. When re-reading, however, it is advisable to go through the whole book in order so that all of the author’s contributions are more fully conveyed. Note that readers will have to accept some repetition.

This book is a synthesis of many of the author’s earlier works. Most of his examples are from the US, but his analyses and findings are also useful for people elsewhere.

The book’s audience includes education policymakers in government and philanthropic organizations, including their advisors; methodology designers in ICT tool development for education; content providers; education and sociology graduate students; and interested professionals.