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Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?

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Each page in "Why is Corporate America..." is rich, full of fascinating (and at times quite disturbing) detail about the status of our schools. More accurately, the status of corporate/government intrigue over education and schools. It's required reading for anyone concerned about education, be they layman or professional. As a life-long educator, I'm pretty upset over the way our representatives and corporate leaders have demeaned what are the most important institutions in our society--our public schools. Thank goodness there are writers like Ohanian and Emery telling it straight and honestly. A really important book at a really troubled time in public education.
PS The book is also quite rich with humor, irony, and human emotion.

People who are interested in both social justice and public education read dozens of books which inspire...and motivate...and challenge us. But we haven't read any books which spell out clearly how the policies we dislike are being created, because there haven't been any books that explain this - until now. I could quibble with one or two of the arguments made by Emery and Ohanian, but they have given us a place to start. They have provided an in-depth, materialist, fact-based analysis of the corporate movers who develop the policies which are disliked by most educators. So, if you're only going to read one more book on education this year, read this one.

Susan's book is based on Emery's major thesis, but is written
with all the fury and fire that Susan can muster over
the insidious crawl of corporate America into the
public educational system. It is written in what I
call, 'Ohaniaspeak'. This is the Susan-language that
created such words as 'standardistos' and
'testocrats'. My favorite new phrase in 'Ohaniaspeak'
is 'to sit in navel-gazing silence'. You will love her
'Ten Commandments for Securing Funding for Systemic
Reform'. The book is heavily documented if
documentation is what you need.
It is a serious case of truth, if you can handle the truth.
Every teacher, every administrator, every Politician ought to read it. No one ever died from an inundation of truth!

One retired teacher speaking. gh

Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian get together to take educators and anyone who will listen on a tour behind the public education policy scene and the impact of No-Child Left Behind. Their book "Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools" is a reference guide to the Business agenda for public schools and other enemies of public education. With appropriate outrage, they connect the dots of yesterday's failed reform initiative to today's current bogus reforms, scripted curriculums, "Blame-the-Teacher" attitudes, the national highstakes performance drive and the death of academic freedom. Kathy Emery & Susan Ohanian even devote an entire chapter to San Francisco & California education issues and how they relate to corporate interest. Throughout the book there is a sense of foreshadow as the language and the direction of SFUSD and public schools across the country in their current policies comes in sinister harmony with the progression of the de-democratization of public schools in Houston, Texas through the co-opting of teachers, parents, unions and most importantly public opinion and education discourse. A must read for everyone who is touched by education. A word of warning though, as the picture they paint becomes clear, you too will feel the anxiety, the outrage and the urgency to do something about what the Business community, Superintendents and other school district officials have in store for our children. One of the most useful and comprehensive books on whom and what's driving today's public school policy reform.

Kathy Emery and Susan Ohanian have written an angry book about the devious ways that corporations and their allies have appropriated public schools to serve their narrow, selfish agenda. They document their indictment by showing how an organization with the benign-sounding name of the Business Roundtable has infiltrated virtually all aspects of schooling in this country through a network of organizations. They pull no punches in analyzing the implications for society.

They stumble only when they deal with the overall subject of testing. Readers unfamiliar with assessment will likely come away with the distinct belief that testing per se is worthy of demonization. That impression weakens their otherwise airtight case. Testing is an indispensable part of the instructional process, both for students and teachers, because it provides feedback. What Emery and Ohanian fail to point out is that when the right tests are used and the results properly incorporated into the learning process, everyone benefits.

It's time that the public wakes up to the way they are being manipulated. Unfortunately, the same forces that have hoodwinked the media so effectively up to this point will no doubt successfully enlist their help in discrediting this disturbing book.

The book Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools purports to expose the agenda of a group of corporate and political elites called the Business Round Table (BRT). Reportedly, the book is based on the doctoral dissertation of Emery, a former teacher, but the teeth marks of Ohanian, a social activist, are salient throughout the book. According to Emery and Ohanian, the BRT wants to pigeonhole educational problems into a corporate framework. Why? Whoever frames the debate has the advantage. The use of "ed-bizspeak" establishes that schools are like businesses. "Learning" is hard to define, but "profit" is not.

For Emery and Ohanian, corporate and political elites have set the standard that all students have to go to college (or schools have failed). However, the truth is that there are more highly skilled workers than there are jobs. Corporate America prefers a surplus of workers; when you have lots of people competing for a few jobs, then workers are scared and compliant. The BRT agenda provides corporate America with a two-pronged victory. First, with a surplus of workers, the fat cats get fatter. Secondly, public education becomes the scapegoat when things go wrong, like the outsourcing of jobs to other counties. Unfortunately, in the long run, there is a big problem. We are not actually reforming education; we're just making it inhumane for children. The high skilled jobs are an illusion and most jobs being created do not pay a living wage. But most importantly, as vividly depicted by examples from North Carolina in the final chapter, schools have lost the focus on teaching children that learning can be interesting. Rather, children are treated like pliable automatrons, stuck in a machine bureaucracy that produces test scores.

The authors paint a grim picture across the country. BRT and its "cronies" have put a lot of money into public relations campaigns stressing the importance of high standards and high-stakes tests. Poor test scores provide proof that schools are failing and opens the door for privatization and scapegoating.

I don't even know where to start. Emery and Ohanian have surely done it. This book is packed with a punch and filled with referenced documentation. Its raw and emotional examples captivate the true essence of NCLB and the "Standardistas" who back it. The Business Roundtable has one goal in mind and that is, to privatize the public system. Let this book take you on a journey through disheartening facts. Change can only happen through grassroots movements and that can only begin by becoming educated in truth.

Our school systems fail because of the lack of understanding what education should be about. Education is about helping people understand things. See Teaching and Helping Students Think and Do Better: Things to Help Students Think and To Do Better in School and In Life. Students need to understand the physical world, mathematical logic, culture and politics. They need to understand how to think rationally and how to question. See the new book, Rational Thinking, Government Policies, Science, and Living. Rational thinking starts with clearly stated principles, continues with logical deductions, and then examines empirical evidence to possibly modify the principles.

Here are some quotes:

p. 45. "High standards are needed to increase the number of students who can succeed in college, at work..." Note that success is the stress, not understanding.

"Task completers and problem solvers are two different..." Emery stresses that schools teach doing, not understanding.

p. 46. "Solving problems ... requires attitudes..." So true!

p. 72. "... learning for learning's sake is to be stamped out." This makes my blood boil! This point alone justifies the cost of the book!

p. 80. More educational nonsense: "... the joy of [students] reaching their full potential." Here joy is the goal, not understanding.

p. 166. "How does a busy principal chart professional growth. Ask ten people what to think critically and creatively means."

p. 202. "High-stakes testing is having the effect of eliminating whatever there has been of learning for the joy of it, learning to develop higher-order thinking skills, or learning something because it is what one is interested in."

Corporate America does not endorse the customer having control of their experience. However, public schooling does give the power to the children. Power which, incidentally, neither the children or mentally sound adults want them to have. It's pleasant to take the 'higher ground' against business, corporations, and people that have children, but when responsibility for children has been abdicated by society...someone will step in.