Tag: corporate agenda

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The Dissolution of the Institution of Education

I’ve been a critic of the institution of education in the U.S. for quite some time. Little did I know that in my lifetime I would see this institution be threatened with elimination. At this moment, I’m trying to contend with this radical change in status. Yes, we’ve had many problems, many of which were rooted in the politics of education. National standards and high stakes testing have been problematic. The ways in which teachers are treated, including low salaries, their systematic deprofessionalization, and their portrayal in the media and by politicians. But, now that we are faced with the destruction of the U.S. Department of Education and the massive defunding of public education, I wouldn’t mind going back to the way things were. An institution with all of its problems is better than no institution at all.

Without an institution of education, without a federal department of education, our children face a grim future. Those who will suffer the most are the poor and middle class. The wealthy can send their children to private schools. The rest of us, even with vouchers or other support, will not be able to access these schools. Just like public charter schools and public magnet schools, the vast majority of which cater to the wealthier families by making the process for applying and being accepted difficult and time-consuming to navigate. The parents in poor families spend their time trying to make enough money to survive and have little time for anything else.

Even going to private schools can be problematic. Many teachers have no academic preparation for teaching. Some private schools barely manage to act like baby-sitters. And, those private schools with some sort of brainwashing agenda can fail to provide the kind of education that is necessary for survival, let alone for thriving, in a world that is changing in ways that cannot be anticipated.

Children will be deprived of a basic education. For many children, schools provide them with the only healthful food they eat in a day. For many, school provides a rare safe zone, where they don’t have to worry about physical or psychological violence. And, as problematic as our education system has been, it did provide for these basic needs.

If some sort of free school arises from the ashes, they will be corporate run. The publishers and testing companies may step in to fill the gap. Then, they can control the very system that can rake in billions of dollars in profits. And, at the same time, these corporate entities can control what children learn, how they learn it, and what values children develop. As corporatized as we may have thought schools were, this will pale in comparison to the corporate schools that may arise. It will be brainwashing at its best. And, teachers will be forced into submission to the teacher-proofed corporate curriculum. Education for democracy will not even be a thought. Child-centered education may become a catchy phrase, but will have lost its essential meaning. Children will not be anywhere near to “center” of focus. They will be pawns to be manipulated for profit and for control.

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The Arts (in School?)

Even though I’m a science educator, I feel like the arts are at the core of our humanity and are critical components of schooling. But, the arts need to be “taught” well, not with more “standards” of knowledge about the arts (teaching the arts as a set of content standards is being done, by the way!), but as ways of exploring and representing children’s experiences of the world. How often do we hear children say, “I can’t draw,” “I can’t sing”? Everyone can draw and sing. But, I’m damaged goods in this regard. Personally, I feel incomplete and like damaged goods, because of a couple of bad experiences (especially in music, where the took me out of the elementary school chorus “because I couldn’t sing” and took away my melody flute “because I couldn’t play,” I am still working with those scars). I’ve tried to remedy the situation as a adult, but the lack of confidence and self-consciousness have been huge obstacles.

I dont’ know which is worse… Damaging children with poor teaching of the arts or not teaching the arts at all. However, I just keep coming back to the idea that without the arts, we’re just less than human.

I do try to draw and use photography as an art form, but music in another story. I wonder how many children share such experiences? I certainly hear children say they can’t draw, can’t play music, or can’t sing. But, the same holds true for many subjects that are kept in schools — many children say they can’t understand science, they can’t write, they don’t like to read, and so forth. It’s all pretty sad.

The reduction or elimination of the arts from schools is really an awful state of affairs. And, there’s an incredible amount of evidence that shows how the arts have impacted children in positive ways, including increased motivation and learning in other subjects. In many ways, the arts help all of us see the world in more authentic and meaningful ways. The arts provide both the artist and the receiver of the arts with deeply emotional connections to our worlds and to our own humanity.

The same sort of disconnect that is being propagated with the arts in schools is characteristic of the way the Common Core is suggesting we teach everything. Reading is about “getting” some arbitrary content. Reading (in which the Common Core has a greatly reduced emphasis on fiction, which is where the real learning and thinking lies) is not about opening up worlds of imagination, questioning social patterns, or re-developing the way one sees and connects with the world. Studying science is not about inquiry and learning about the nature of science (how science works), but about “learning” some set of concepts, but also NOT learning about other sets of concepts that might threaten the corporate status quo.

But, then again… who benefits from children’s lack of passion for the arts, for reading, for science, and so forth? “We” say we want children to be able to read, but do we want them to enjoy reading, to be voracious readers, or to read because of impassioned curiosity? Remember, people who are knowledgeable and who can think deeply can’t be manipulated as easily. So, again, who benefits? Have you ever tried to “reason” with a corporate representative about an ethical business practice? They can read the script, but they don’t understand a word of the argument. And, that’s just the way the corporations want it. They want employees who can read the script, but who are otherwise clueless. And, heaven forbid, they certainly don’t want employees at the public interface who can actually think out of the box, who see the world in different and creative ways, or who can be empathetic.

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The Common Core Standards – Keeping Our Kids Dumb

It may be a knee-jerk reaction on my part, but I’m suspicious of political efforts in education. Fundamentally, I don’t think the real intent and motivation is to help children. The quote from the Standards web site brings up a number of questions and thoughts.

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

From: http://www.corestandards.org/

  • Why do we want all students to learn the same things?
  • Do children who are homeless need to learn the same things as others?
  • Do children living in big cities need to learn the same things as others?
  • How can the same content be relevant and meaningful to all students?
  • Why is content (information) the most important thing to learn?
  • Shouldn’t we be teaching children how to find and evaluate information, rather than having them learn this content?
  • Shouldn’t we be valuing children’s diverse styles, interests, individual personalities, contexts, etc?
  • Why is certain knowledge (and there’s a lot) not addressed in the core standards?
  • Who decides (I couldn’t find the list of people involved in developing the standards, but the “voices of support” are politicians and business people with one exception) what content to include?
  • What is their agenda?
  • Who is going to benefit from demanding one set of standards for all children?
  • What are their philosophical orientations?
  • What is the depth and extent of their experience and knowledge of child development, child psychology, learning and cognition, teaching, curriculum theory, cultural epistemology, and so forth?
  • How can anyone think that they know what is “good” for all children (seems like an error of hubris to me)?
  • While stating a desire to help children succeed in “college and careers,”
    • how do they know what each child needs to succeed (whatever that means)?
    • why is education about “success”; what does “success” mean?
    • why is education about careers and what careers are valued? Is waste disposal (garbage collector) a valued career
    • why should all children go to college?
  • What would happen if all kids were “successful” at the school game? What would this look like? Who would benefit?

The key to understanding this effort is found in the last sentence. The entire political motivation is about money, about economic competitiveness, or about economic domination. The whole approach is based in a global corporate agenda. I couldn’t find any reference to social justice, ecology, or the environment. These ideas are not of concern to the corporate agenda. In fact, they are a threat to this agenda.

The approach is mechanistic (as if children were little non-human robots) and positivistic. We’re in the middle of a revolution as the worldviews of positivism and mechanism, having created life-threatening and culturally disconnecting problems, are being challenged by more holistic and complex worldviews. We’re witnessing the kicking and screaming of positivists and mechanists as their materialistic and narrow views of power and control are being undermined. It’s the middle of a revolution. Our consumerism is eating back on itself. Within the context of economic growth, consumerism, and materialism, we’re destroying families, cultures, and the environment upon which we depend for our very survival.

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Corporate Schooling, Not Public Schooling

I was listening to NPR earlier this week (but I usually have trouble listening for very long, since they really should be NCR or National Corporate Radio, but that’s another story). One of the (non-)advertisements was about the Broad Foundation and their program of recruiting corporate CEO’s to become school superintendents. I was flabbergasted. How much more blatant can it be that the real agenda for schooling is corporate? Yes, this is just what we need… more people “in charge” of schooling who have never set foot in a classroom (other than being a student).

So, what is the corporate (and political… I think they’re the same) agenda for schooling? Corporations want employees at the massive lower levels of labor who will not question the authority of those above them. They want employees who will follow instructions and “policies” without questioning or thinking about the assumptions that underlie these instructions and policies. For instance, how many times have you tried to work out a problem with an employee (even at the supervisor level) of a corporation only to have them keep repeating the policy without listening to your problem? Usually this happens to me on the phone, but it happened last week at Costco. I tried returning a TV a friend of my son’s gave him. However, since we’re not “members,” it is against “policy” to return an item. Does this make any sense? How could anyone buy a gift for someone else? Of course, the supervisor looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about and just repeated the “policy” over and over again. The same sort of “policy” routine was just encountered at my doctor’s office when the staff people said it was against their “policy” to accept a patient (my son) with secondary insurance (I’m sure my doctor has no idea this policy even exists). Of course, when I mentioned that “policies” only serve to kill an organization (like a physician’s practice), they looked at me like I was talking in some foreign language. “Policies” prevent any kind of adaption, personal relationships, and flexibility of any kind. But, this kind of reaction by employees is just what corporations want. They don’t want employees who can think at deeper levels, who can actually relate to customers.

Corporations also want employees who will (unquestioningly) conform to certain (arbitrary) standards. This conformity can be in dress and appearance (which used to be the characteristic of IBM, gray suits, no facial hair, short hair, etc.), behavior, thinking, talk, and so forth. Individuality is not a value in such contexts.

In schools today, blind obedience, not questioning authority, and conformity are usually the standard practice, along with reams of policies. And, no where (with the exception of some individual teachers and principals) are concerns for the individual child to be found. No Child Left Behind is a prime example of a super-“policy” that has no concern for children. NCLB is concerned with political capital and with keeping teachers so busy with teaching-to-the-test that they can never teach children how to think, teach them in ways that develop deep and meaningful understandings, teach them in ways that help them develop their full capabilities and unique passions, and teach them in ways that allow them to develop into decent and creative human beings.