The 500-pound gorilla

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 84, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 113-119

  Kohn, Alfie ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 1942513992     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. See Stephen Metcalf, "Reading Between the Lines," The Nation, 28 January 2002, pp. 18-22.
2. This article is reprinted in Alfie Kohn and Patrick Shannon, eds., Education, Inc.: Turning Learning into a Business, rev. ed. (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002).
3. Notice that the phenomenon by which a company makes money by testing students, then turns around and sells materials designed to prepare students for those tests, is not limited to McCraw-Hill. Many of the major textbook publishers are represented in this list of test manufacturers.
4. For other explanations of the fascination with standardized testing, see Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Standardized Testing (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2000), esp. pp. 2-4;
5. Robert L. Linn, "Assessments and Accountability," Educational Researcher, March 2000, esp. p. 4;
6. and Gary Natriello and Aaron M. Pallas, "The Development and Impact of High-Stakes Testing," in Gary Orfield and Mindy L. Kornhaber, eds., Raising Standards or Raising Barriers? (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2001), esp. pp. 20-21.
7. See Alex Molnar, "Looking for Funds in All the Wrong Places," Principal, November 2000, pp. 18-21. Thanks to Patrick Shannon for calling to my attention this article and the one mentioned in the next note. As of early 2002, between 300 and 400 school districts had signed exclusive beverage contracts - more than double the number in mid-1999 - according to the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education.
8. Bradley S. Greenberg and Jeffrey E. Brand, "Channel One: But What About the Advertising?," Educational Leadership, December 1993/January 1994, pp. 56-58.
9. For more examples of - and ideas for responding to - this phenomenon, contact the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education (www.commercialfree.org) or Commercial Alert (www.commercialalert.org).
10. See also Alex Molnar, Giving Kids the Business: The Commercialization of America's Schools (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1996), or contact his Commercialism in Education Research Unit (www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/ceru.htm).
11. "Your child's science teachers may be summering with Weyerhaeuser or the hunting lobby. They may be teaching about our food supply with a lesson plan developed and donated by Monsanto. And the video on how oil is formed? An Exxon production. Andrew Hagelshaw, director of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education in Oakland, said such programs are an attempt to establish brand loyalty. He said the logging companies and oil industry have figured out what fast-food restaurants have long known: 'If you just start educating people at young ages around these facts, then they accept it as truth, and that means customers for life.'" See Chris Moran, "Education or Indoctrination?," San Diego Union-Tribune, 13 May 2002.
12. David F. Labaree, How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 51.
13. Chubb is quoted in Bernie Froese-Germain, "What We Know About School Choice," Education Canada, Fall 1998, p. 22.
14. Deborah Meier, The Power of Their Ideas (Boston: Beacon, 1995), pp. 79, 8, 104, 7.
15. Nick Bromell, "Summa Cum Avaritia," Harper's Magazine, February 2002, p. 76.
16. Ethan Bronner, "Better Schools Is Battle Cry for Fall Elections," New York Times, 20 September 1998, p. A-32.
17. On this point, see Alfie Kohn, "Students Don't 'Work' - They Learn," Education Week, 3 September 1997, pp. 60, 43;
18. and Hermine H. Marshall, "Beyond the Workplace Metaphor: The Classroom as a Learning Setting," Theory Into Practice, vol. 29, 1990, pp. 94-101.
19. Ellwood Cubberley, Public School Administration (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), p. 338.
20. The Fortune article is quoted in Daniel Tanner, "Manufacturing Problems and Selling Solutions: How to Succeed in the Education Business Without Really Educating," Phi Delta Kappan, November 2000, p. 198.
21. Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), p. 40.
22. Jeff Archer, "New School Role Seen Critical to Respond to Modern Economy," Education Week, 8 May 1996, pp. 1, 8;
23. Catherine S. Manegold, "Study Says Schools Must Stress Academics," New York Times, 23 September 1994, p. A-22;
24. A Business Leader's Guide to Setting Academic Standards (Washington, D.C.: Business Roundtable, 1996);
25. Mary Ann Zehr, "Manufacturers Endorse National Tests, Vouchers," Education Week, 14 January 1998, p. 14;
26. and Business Task Force on Student Standards, The Challenge of Change: Standards to Make Education Work for All Our Children (Washington, D.C.: National Alliance of Business, 1995).
27. Many writers, of course, have grappled with education's ultimate goals. I attempt to sort through some of the underlying issues in The Schools Our Children Deserve (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 115-20.
28. See, for example, an analysis of the powerful Business Roundtable, whose "main objective is not quality education but the preservation of the competitiveness of corporate America in the global economy," in Bess Altwerger and Steven L. Strauss, "The Business Behind Testing," Language Arts, January 2002, pp. 256-62. The quotation appears on page 258.