Education, Inc.: Turning Learning into a Business

While educators want their students to grow into thoughtful and curious people, the overriding objective of corporations is to maximize their own profits. From that fact alone we can predict what is likely to happen to the nature and purposes of our schools when business becomes involved in the education of our children. This unique and timely anthology chronicles the extent of that involvement, along with the troubling consequences it has already brought.

Author Alfie Kohn and professor of education Patrick Shannon have assembled a provocative collection of articles, including

• an analysis of the racial implications of voucher programs
• vivid accounts of how schoolchildren are targeted by advertisers
• descriptions of how corporate propaganda is insinuated into classroom curriculums
• an expose of the political connections enjoyed by giant textbook and test publishers
• a critical look at the process whereby teachers are turned into grant writers.

Alfie Kohn was recently described by Time magazine as "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." He is the author of seven previous books on education and human behavior, including Punished by Rewards (1993), Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community (1996), and The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" (1999). A former teacher, Kohn now works with educators across the country and speaks regularly at national conferences. He lives (actually) in Belmont, Mass. and (virtually) at www.alfiekohn.org.

A former preschool and primary grades teacher, Patrick Shannon is currently a professor of education at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of nine books, including Reading Poverty (1998), text, lies, & video tape: stories about life, literacy, & learning (1995), Becoming Political: Readings and Writings in the Politics of Literacy Education (1992), and The Struggle to Continue: Progressive Reading Instruction in the United States (1990), all published by Heinemann.