Article Tags: Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling

2. Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling

by John Bellamy Foster

July 1, 2011

As the articles in this section indicate, the new corporate schooling in the United States combines many of the worst aspects of capitalist schooling in a period of economic stagnation, financialization, and militarization/securitization together with a strategy of privatization of the schools. Public education is being degraded, regimented, and increasingly racially segregated—while the resulting worsening conditions in the schools are used to justify the restructuring of the entire education system.

Testing, Privatization, and the Future of Public Schooling

by An Assessor

July 1, 2011

Standardized testing occupies a central place in the ongoing reorganization—or demolition—of public education in the United States. The key question is not whether leading sectors of capital—major foundations from Gates on down, business groups including the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce, a near-endless array of think tanks and policy groups, major media, well-funded "Astroturf" (faux grassroots) groups such as Stand for Children, and leading forces in both major political parties at the state and national levels—promote standardized tests as a tool for making major, "high-stakes" decisions about students, educators, and schools. The better, and unanswered, questions are: Why are tests such an important weapon, What are the goals of the test-driven offensive, How does testing interact with other corporate school "reform" goals, and What can be done to turn this around?

Militarism and Education Normal

by Erica R. Meiners and Therese Quinn

July 1, 2011

With the military's ready and waiting personnel, infrastructure, and resources, no one should be surprised that the JROTC [Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps] is now offered as the alternative to physical education in urban school districts, or that the Department of Defense has responded to the educational crisis by opening and staffing public military schools. Currently, the military is education normal.… [P]ublic schools [have become] recruiting entities, and their targeting is not race, class, or gender neutral.

Reflections on the Racial Web of Discipline

by Crystal T. Laura

July 1, 2011

One of the most powerful metaphors in critical education literature is "the school to prison pipeline." The phrase conjures a vivid, unambiguous image, the meaning of which few would debate: poor and black and brown children being sucked into a vortex from mainstream educational environments and heaved onto a conveyor belt carrying them onto a one-way path toward privatized prisons, where the economic outcome of under-education and discipline is most evident.… Excessive discipline is often a critical first step out of schools for select youth—black boys, in this case—who disproportionately find themselves in prison. Being designated as disabled nudges the other foot out of the schoolhouse door.

The Culture of Poverty Reloaded

by Monique Redeaux

July 1, 2011

Although the student body in the United States is becoming more and more diverse, the teaching staff is strikingly homogenous… [W]hile many legislators may be unaware of the role of cultural competence, i.e., the ability to relate to diverse cultures, in teaching children in the United States, those who are on the ground in classrooms and schools everyday recognize its importance.… Education consultant Ruby Payne [—a self-proclaimed expert on the "mindset of poverty"—] represents one particular response to the culture clashes in the classroom. Her widespread success at once highlights the salience of race and class inequities, and speaks to the absence of practical educational strategies to confront them.

Inclusive Education, High Stakes Testing and Capitalist Schooling

by Mara Sapon-Shevin

July 1, 2011

This article is about our educational system and how it is working. I do not say how it is "failing," because that would imply that it is not working. We need a different set of more nuanced questions. I want to ask: Working for whom? Working to do what? Failing whom? And failing to do what?… If we are concerned that we are failing to educate all children, or failing to prepare our future citizens, or failing some commitment to equity and social justice—then, yes, the system is failing. But one could also argue that our system is actually succeeding perfectly. It does a superb job sorting out the winners from the losers, perpetuating a highly-classed society, and creating the work force that our stratified, capitalist society requires.

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