Beverly Eakman
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Beverly Eakman is the author of five books on education policy. Her areas of expertise are the psychologizing of schools at the expense of academics and traditional values, and threats to individual privacy rights from predictive computer technology. The latter covers political profiling; data-mining and –laundering; computer cross-matching, monitoring and tracking; and, finally, microchip implants that provide not only physical location through global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, but facilitate links to other personal data-files. Mrs. Eakman was the first writer to alert the public concerning development of a viable human chip ID that included a tracking device. By 2002, the first such devices were being marketed, under names like “the Babysitter,” “the Constant Companion,” “the Invisible Bodyguard,” and “the Micro-Manager.” In a 2002 piece for Chronicles magazine, she predicted that the next step would be military ID’s in preparation for a national ID chip that provides links to computerized databases. A front-page news story in August 2006 in the Washington Post’s “Examiner” confirmed that prediction.
Mrs. Eakman began her career as an educator during the volatile 1960s and 70s, teaching students ranging from “remedial” to “gifted.” In the early 1970s, she wrote an English grammar study guide for Vietnamese immigrants and a unique spelling curriculum for middle school remedial students. Both were picked up by a district in California. In 1987, she wrote a political science text for high schoolers, The Strategy of Defense, that was used in Colorado and Texas.
Dissatisfied with the classroom environment, Mrs. Eakman left academia for the scientific realm. She became a technical writer and quickly rose to become editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper. One of her feature articles, “David the Bubble Baby” was picked up by the mainstream press and later made into a film starring John Travolta.
Mrs. Eakman moved on to other challenges, including a brief stint again as a teacher in the NASA area of Houston, where in 1979 she was offered a position heading a high school creative writing program and debate team. Again, she came away disappointed, as supposedly advanced 11th-graders could scarcely write a coherent paragraph, much less pursue the kind of research that once characterized debate programs nationwide. Upon returning to her native Washington, DC, she ventured into speechwriting and wound up penning presentations for numerous high-profile officials, from ambassadors to a former Chief Justice of the United States (the late Warren E. Burger). She also ghosted several magazine articles. In 1988, she was hired away from the Bicentennial Commission on the U.S. Constitution to become speechwriter for the director of the Voice of America.