Business and Curriculum

Aside from media transnationals, the largest corporations in the world are now in the business of public education. Most notable would be the owners of such technology giants as Microsoft and Google. The Gates Foundation is as we speak opening high schools across the country and offering grants to high schools that fit the criteria the foundation has set for such a cash infusion. On the surface, the relationship seems extremely beneficial and timely considering the diminishment of public funds in the last thrity years. But the harm is deep and profound. Once private entities control funding, they control curriculum and the results have been and will continue to be catastrophic. The most disquieting part of this reality is the "buy in" by so-called doctors of education (ED.D.s), departments of education across universities, and private educational consulting firms across the country.

One of the strongest advocates of the private/public engagement in education today is the International Center for Leadership in Education and its founder Dr. William R. Dagget. This is a powerful private consulting firm (now owned by Scholastic) whose ideas, such as they are, are sweeping the nation's public school districts. The firms packaging of so-called innovative ideas towards curricula and its constant reference to research and data - the majority of which is just jargon masquerading as scholarly work - has put Daggett and his disciples at the forefront of the business of education. His white papers, which are readily available on the institutes website, "Globalization - Tipping the Scale of Economic Supremacy" and "Jobs and the Skills Gap" are two of the most historically inaccurate, factually misinformed, and social scientifically unqualified papers of their kind. They are therefore, the most dangerous of documents for they are a testament to the neo-liberal, late capitalist mentallity that is destroying every possibility for a populous to be literate, progressive, informed, critical, analytical, and above all life affirming. The repeated message in the papers is the constant reminder that the United Sates must apply new standards to public education and the result must be a concentration on math, science, and technology - the fields we are drastically lagging behind in comparison to India and China. Both papers follow the path of what Paulo Freire refered to as the Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

In my next entry I will specifically address how curriculum is changing in order to benefit the corporate sector with the aide of such educational consultants as Daggett who, in his white paper "Jobs and the Skills Gap" calls for the diminishment if not the complete removal of literature from the English curriculum. In the place of poetry, novels, essays and philosophy, quantitative materials and tech manuals should be made part of the reading materials of middle school and high school students. Why this is damaging to our students and devastating to the nation will be thoroughly exposed.