Reviews for Technology-Based Learning Maximizing Human Performance and Corporate Success

The average rating for Technology-Based Learning Maximizing Human Performance and Corporate Success based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-12-15 00:00:00 Lisa Sommers [ I'm going to review chronologically through quotes: "What a treat it would be to mingle with white people in places where as a youth he had never dared to enter. At last he felt like an American citizen."This is the attitude of the protagonist. In 1931 an "American" is perceived as a white male. Not much has changed. Nuff said. "What, indeed, was fifty, sixty or seventy dollars when one was leaving behind insult, ostracism, segregation and discrimination? Moreover, the whitened Negroes were saving a great deal of money by being able to change localities."Clearly assimilation had a great many advantages. The $50-$70 was the cost of the "process". The benefits are known today as "white privilege". It is real even today that as a white person one can expect to gain better access to money and improved living conditions at less cost. Additionally one can expect higher wages and more opportunity. True back then and true now though with some legislatively reduced voracity. "Because of her prominence as the proprietor of a successful enterprise engaged in making Negroes appear as much like white folks as possible, she had recently been elected for the fourth time a Vice-President of the American Race Pride League."Schuyler spares no one as he goes after leaders in black community who cash in by commodifying assimilation without actually achieving those ends. Wealth was built within the Black community by selling whiteness. Those successful proprietors achieved status as leaders due to their wealth thereby Black leaders profit from racism and discrimination. "As a boy he had been taught to look up to white folks as just a little less than gods; now he found them little different from the Negroes, except that they were uniformly less courteous and less interesting. "Grass isn't completely green on the other side, but it's still greener. Still, cultural identity beyond skin color is an important part of the richness within our lives. Without Blackness, there is no culture to appropriate (which is what the protagonist (now white) longed for). "The Honorable Walter Brybe, who had won his exalted position as Attorney General of the United States because of his long and faithful service helping large corporations to circumvent the federal laws, sat at his desk in Washington, D. C."There is no evidence that this type of thing still happens today…Oh who am I kidding as previously mentioned, the more things change… "Matthew had won the girl of his dreams and was thoroughly satisfied, except for a slight regret that her grotesque mother wasn’t dead and some disappointment that his spouse was so much more ignorant than she was beautiful."Ah Schuyler wasn't without his sexism and misogyny. Possibly, partially more reminiscent of the times with this skewering of women in general and white women in particular. Women in general are still objects to be owned and controlled. The biggest trophy of all was white women. The comment (in my view) drips with contempt for women. "The working people were far more interested in what they considered, or were told was, the larger issue of race. It did not matter that they had to send their children into the mills to augment the family wage; that they were always sickly and that their death rate was high. What mattered such little things when the very foundation of civilization, white supremacy, was threatened?"The more things change… "the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation."They are starting to notice the lack black people and their absence is unmasking that racial animus was an excuse to keep masses occupied while the upper class screwed the poor and disadvantaged. Blacks are scapegoated. Fast forward to 2020 and there are a ton of other disparate groups to add to blacks to be scapegoated. In 2020 in particular of course Muslims and anyone on the other side of our Southern border. But the overriding principle is that racism was/is used to divert attention away from economic disparity. Also, the use of the term "proletariat" has interesting implications on Schuyler's political commentary. "North and South, even foresaw the laboring people soon forsaking both of the old parties and going Socialist. Politicians and business men shuddered at the thought of such a tragedy and saw horrible visions of old-age pensions, eight-hour laws, unemployment insurance, workingmen’s compensation, minimum-wage legislation, abolition of child labor, dissemination of birth-control information, monthly vacations for female workers, two-month vacations for prospective mothers, both with pay, and the probable killing of individual initiative and incentive by taking the ownership of national capital out of the hands of two million people and putting it into the hands of one hundred and twenty million. "Um, the numbers of people betrays the time period, otherwise it's 2020. "He cleared his throat and talked for upwards of an hour during which time he successfully avoided saying anything that was true, the result being that thousands of telegrams and long distance telephone calls of congratulation came in to the studio."One of the candidates for President in the books. I doubt I need to say who it reminds me of. "They tried to pick some one not before mentioned, and went over and over the list of eligibles. None was satisfactory. One was too radical, another was too conservative, a third was an atheist, a fourth had once rifled a city treasury, the fifth was of immigrant extraction once removed, a sixth had married a Jewess, a seventh was an intellectual, an eighth had spent too long at Hot Springs trying to cure the syphilis, a ninth was rumored to be part Mexican and a tenth had at one time in his early youth been a Socialist."This reminded me of the Democratic primary in 2020 and the Republican primary in 2016. Politics…smh “What about an abortion?” suggested Bunny, hopefully. “Nothing doing. First place, she’s too frail, and second place she’s got some fool idea about that being a sin.”One way to tell who had the procedure was the color of the offspring. The wife of the protagonist doesn’t know he's black and she's pregnant so she's about to find out. I bring this up only to show that abortion was also an issue in 1931 and Schuyler demonstrates a rather cavalier and sexist view of it all. The attitude of it being only about convenience is ancient and persistent and frankly, deadly. "There was joy in the Democratic camp, gloom among the Republicans. For the first time in American history it seemed that money was not going to decide an election. The propagandists and publicity men of the Democrats had so played upon the fears and prejudices of the public that even the bulk of Jews and Catholics were wavering and many had been won over to the support of a candidate who had denounced them but a few months before."Remember in 1931, the basics of the political parties are reversed. The role of Democrats then would be the Republicans role now. Otherwise, the more things change… "Dr. Crookman’s amazing brochure started the entire country to examining shades of skin color again."Turns out that the process made black people slightly whiter than white people. So inevitably actual white people wanted to darken their complexion. They wanted to be able to differentiate people again. To be able to reinvent racism after it was abolished. (hide spoiler)]

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-26 00:00:00 James Scott Here is a fantastic brainspinning cringemaking you-can’t-say-THAT! satire from 1931 which would be a perfect addition to any Black Lives Matter reading list in order to show that in the right hands a broad comedy about racism in the USA is not only possible but is a very welcome place to rest and recuperate for a moment or two, and look at the whole problem again from the strangest perspective. George Schuyler has the highest of high concepts – a black doctor invents a process to turn black Americans white. It’s cheap and available to all. Got that ? Now let the uneasy laughter begin. The process is available at the various clinics operated by Black No More Incorporated, and it’s immediately wildly popular. Our author drily comments : A lifetime of being Negroes in the United States had convinced them that there was a great advantage in being white. We follow the fortunes of one black chancer Max Disher, who wants to be the very first to turn white. And he does. The leaving of black society give him twinges of remorse : Max stood irresolutely in the midst of the gibbering crowd of people. Unaccountably he felt at home here among these black folk. Their jests, scraps of conversation and lusty laughter all seemed like heavenly music. Well, that wistfulness doesn’t last long. He immediately thinks What a treat it would be to mingle with white people in places where as a youth he had never dared to enter. At last he felt like an American citizen. Very soon Max is off on some adventures amongst the racists of the southern states. Let’s just take a pace back here. This is a science fiction idea and you have to swallow it lock stock & barrel for the satire to work. George Schuyler dismisses any issues of different physiognomy – it seems all this is “fixed” during the whitening process. That leaves one very obvious difference – language. Surely all these blacks-turned-white would still speak in the same way, using their usual vocabulary, mannerisms, slang, and so on, and therefore be instantly recognisable. George Schuyler waves all this away in one unconvincing paragraph. The reader has to just get on board with the idea that these whitened blacks cannot be distinguished from white people. He follows through the logic of this massive ironic offensive idea mostly in order to deal satirical blows to both white and black politics, wheelers and dealers, the capitalist barons who use race to suppress the Southern white workers, the grandiose black charities, the community leaders, the great and the good - they all get it in the neck. I think he loves to goad intellectuals the most : Like most men with a vision, a plan, a program or a remedy, he fondly imagined people to be intelligent enough to accept a good thing when it was offered to them, which was conclusive evidence that he knew little about the human race. and again During his leisure time he wrote long and learned articles, bristling with references, for the more intellectual magazines, in which he sought to prove conclusively that the plantation shouts of Southern Negro peons were superior to any of Beethoven’s symphonies and that the city of Benin was the original site of the Garden of Eden. and yet again His well-known work “The Fluctuation of the Sizes of Left Feet among the Assyrians during the Ninth Century before Christ” had been favourably commented upon by several reviewers, one of whom had actually read it Of Dr Bonds, head of the Negro Data League : He was engaged in a most vital and necessary work, i.e. collecting bales of data to prove satisfactorily to all that more money was needed to collect more data. The revolutionary Black No More process, strangely, according to George, does not provoke any white supremacist violence : As there had never been more than two million Negroes in the North, the whitening process had been viewed indifferently by the masses because those who controlled the channels of opinion felt that the country was getting rid of a very vexatious problem at absolutely no cost. It’s quite true that Schuyler does not get into the detail of how the “new whites” would possibly live their lives, and how existing whites would reacts to the rapid vanishing of black people in the USA (by page 132 practically all blacks in America are now white). But to do any of that would capsize the fast and furious momentum of this delicious novel as it races towards some final corkscrewingly ironic twists. Oh yes, and when you think George has, well, been softer and kinder to everybody than you were expecting, he ambushes you with an ending that shows the teeth and dripping red claws under this brilliant comedy. Totally recommended.