1st Edition

Schools or Markets? Commercialism, Privatization, and School-business Partnerships

Edited By Deron R. Boyles Copyright 2005
    268 Pages
    by Routledge

    272 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book challenges readers to consider the consequences of commercialism and business influences on and in schools. Critical essays examine the central theme of commercialism via a unique multiplicity of real-world examples. Topics include:
    *privatization of school food services;
    *oil company ads that act as educational policy statements;
    *a parent's view of his child's experiences in a school that encourages school-business partnerships;
    *commercialization and school administration;
    *teacher union involvement in the school-business partnership craze currently sweeping the nation;
    *links between education policy and the military-industrial complex;
    *commercialism in higher education, including marketing to high school students, intellectual property rights of professors and students, and the bind in which professional proprietary schools find themselves; and
    *the influence of conservative think tanks on information citizens receive, especially concerning educational issues and policy.

    Schools or Markets?: Commercialism, Privatization, and School-Business Partnerships is compelling reading for all researchers, faculty, students, and education professionals interested in the connections between public schools and private interests. The breadth and variety of topics addressed make it a uniquely relevant text for courses in social and cultural foundations of education, sociology of education, educational politics and policy, economics of education, philosophy of education, introduction to education, and cultural studies in education.

    Contents: A. Molnar, Foreword. Preface. C. VanderSchee, The Privatization of Food Services in Schools: Undermining Children's Health, Social Equity, and Democratic Education. L. Trammell, Measuring and Fixing, Filling and Drilling: The ExxonMobile Agenda for Education. R. Hewitt, Priming the Pump: "Educating" for Market Democracy. D.A. Breault, Jesus in the Temple: What Should Administrators Do When the Marketplace Comes to School? B. Weiss, Teachers, Unions, and Commercialization. J. Block, Children as Collateral Damage: The Innocents of Education's War for Reform. B. Baez, Private Knowledge, Public Domain: The Politics of Intellectual Property in Higher Education. G.A. Miller, The Two-Way Street of Higher Education Commodification. L. Stultz, Egocentrism in Professional Arts Education: Toward a Discipline-Based View of Work and World. L. Wilson, Controlling the Power Over Knowledge: Selling the Crisis for Self-Serving Gains. D. Boyles, The Exploiting Business: School Business Partnerships, Commercialization, and Students as Critically Transitive Citizens.

    Biography

    Deron R. Boyles

    "The text is extensive in its philsophically- and academically-grounded critiques of commerical interests partnering with educational institutions which instructors and teachers in a variety of education-related subjects will find useful. It reiterates and extends critiques such as that of Thorstein Veblen (1918) and his "captains of erudition" from the early 1900s. It also effectively shows the ways that corporate influence in schools goes well beyond education per se, to affect health, social justice, and our more intangible quality of life issues." - David B. Bills and Ryan Wells in Educational Studies, Vol. 43, No.2.