Social Credit Systems Sneaking Into Our Schools
'Dignity Index' Would Inject Social Credit Scores Into Schools
‘Dignity Index’ Would Inject Social Credit Scores Into Schools
The University of Utah recently opened the first official office for the Dignity Index, a program based on an eight-point scale that rates how statements sound during political or social disagreement. Project UNITE, the Index’s creator, is marketing the speech-classification framework to politicians, business leaders, and educators across the country, and several school districts and universities have already adopted the tool.
The Dignity Index was created by the nonprofit Project UNITE and piloted in Utah through a partnership with researchers at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, David Eccles School of Business, and Hinckley Institute of Politics. As detailed in the Utah Pilot Project Technical Summary, the demonstration phase relied on Eccles School and Gardner Policy Institute leadership and a team of 22 trained student coders who scored political statements each week on the Index’s eight-point scale. The Dignity Index categorizes speech from Level 1 — described as the most contemptuous — to Level 8, which reflects language focused on connection and cooperation (“we’re bound together”). According to the Dignity Project’s public materials, the model is intended to help students and adults recognize how their tone affects political dialogue.
In 2022, the project expanded nationally with the involvement of…