"Education-Industrial Complex": useful concept, but does it go too far?

Picciano and Spring's study, The Great American Education-Industrial Complex: Ideology, Technology, and Profit presents an engaging look at the intersection of formal, for-profit business and education. Not surprisingly, the target of their study is principally education technology companies. They cite a few factors for this choice, including the massive recent growth of this industry, the rhetoric around this industry to change and "reform" education, often in ways to make it more "business-like" and finally because these companies often target a change in the relationship between the teacher and the student in class. 

To my mind, another target could have been textbook companies - seldom has there emerged a better example of rent-seeking through policy influence in government - but my sense is that this target was spared because it did not target the classroom in the same way that technology advocates target it. For example, the authors write in the chapter on "technology in education":

A key question for discussion in this chapter is: Why the emphasis on technology in the education-industrial complex? Isn’t it the case that since technology is growing rapidly in all aspects of human endeavor, the same would apply to education? Perhaps, but education unlike other endeavors, has always been characterized as a high-touch human activity based largely on teacher–student relationships that extend over time. It has rarely been characterized as an auto-mated production of goods or services. (52)

 And later

In sum, education in the United States is moving from a teacher–student intensive activity to a machine–student activity. Funding this transition will be substantial with many private enterprises poised to make significant profits.(56)

The point that the authors make here is solid, but it is also unsatisfying. While they make a case that the case for uses of technology like "online learning" is weak at best (p 48-52) and seems the product of the "education-industrial complex" rather than solid educational research and rational action, the author's argument seems to return with little justification to the notion that any kind of mediation of teacher and student is dangerous.  As they write: "Good teachers at all levels seek to inspire their students to seek knowledge, to grow personally, and to contribute to society."  Yes, that statement  certainly seems self-evident, but the net the authors cast is so wide that by extension any technology in the classroom that touches teacher and student and is the product of the private sector begins to look suspect. The argument starts to look very essentialist - like the vision of a teacher and 15-20 students in a clasroom with a chalkboard and books is the perfect manifestation of education.

That's really a bad place to end up. The private sector should be looked upon to do the things that it does well, such as innovate with instructional systems to provide new tools for educators. That the sector needs to be controlled and constrained is clear and the authors cite strong evidence. But to vilify the very presence of technology in the classroom because of the rhetoric that helped place it there is just strange. Take for example Seymour Papert's research on technologies like Logo, the programming languages for children. Certainly this technology changes the relationship of teacher and student, but because it does so it does not erode the ability of a teacher to inspire and grow students.

Picciano, Anthony G., Joel Spring. The Great American Education-Industrial Complex: Ideology, Technology, and Profit (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education). 2012. 1st edition. Routledge.