Written by: Sam Pietsch
Abstract: Since 2011, ClassDojo, a platform used to facilitate classroom and school management, parent-teacher communication, and student surveillance, has swept through classrooms across the world. The platform’s rapid growth has allowed its parent company to influence both management practices and ideologies that govern millions of classrooms. Despite rhetoric designed to appeal to modern sensibilities such as diversity, inclusivity, and innovation, ClassDojo represents nothing more than a digital version of past management practices that have upheld white supremacy and classism in education. Though its digital nature, reliance on data, and rhetorical positivity make ClassDojo an appealing tool for teachers, administrators, parents, and students, these aspects only serve to obscure the propagation of neoliberal ideology and the construction of oppressive race-based identities. These functions become clear when examining the parallels between the application’s educational philosophy and management techniques with Lancasterism, New England pedagogy, and progressive education, the three most prominent educational movements in United States’ history. Understanding how historic systems of oppression continue to operate in the digital age is key in dismantling these systems and creating new structures that might push education in a more equitable direction.