Schools are oppressing, not educating

Farahmandpur is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of
Education and Information Studies.

By Ramin Farahmandpur

In recent years, the commercialization, corporatization and
militarization of public schools has been at the center of much
heated public debate and controversy. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s
and Exxon are among a long list of corporations providing financial
assistance to some of the nation’s 80,000 public schools.
Indeed, this is true in the case of many urban school districts
that are forced to accept corporate funding because of a shortage
of qualified teachers, textbooks, resources and materials.

Using new marketing techniques, corporations are targeting the
53 million schoolchildren, who serve as potential future
“consumer-citizens.”

Jean Kilbourne, the author of “No Logos” (1999),
reports that the growing corporate investments in primary and
secondary schools has skyrocketed from a mere $5 million in 1965 to
an astounding $500 million today. Oftentimes, corporate funding
comes in sleekly designed pre-packaged curricula, which amounts to
no more than promotional material for corporate products in public
schools.

For example, during a 1994 school assembly dedicated to
“National Depression Screening Day,” two
representatives of Eli Lilly, the giant pharmaceutical corporation,
spoke to students at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda,
Maryland on the benefits of the medical treatment of depression.
Although they did not make direct references to the drug Prozac,
they distributed Prozac pens, pads and brochures to students.

It is not unusual these days to see school buses in certain
states covered with advertisements for Burger King and
Wendy’s fast food chains. It has become fashionable for
elementary school children to carry books wrapped in free book
covers plastered with ads for Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts and Fox TV
personalities. School districts have eagerly granted Coca-Cola and
Pepsi exclusive contracts to sell their products in schools.

In health education classes students are taught nutrition by the
Hershey Corporation in a scheme that includes a discussion on the
important role of chocolate in a balanced diet. A classroom
business course teaches students to value work by exploring how
McDonald’s restaurants are operated and what skills are
needed to become a successful McDonald’s manager, and
providing instructions on how to apply for a job at
McDonald’s.

Ecological and environmental education now involves students
learning ecology from a “Life of an Ant” poster
sponsored by Skittles candy and an environmental curriculum video
produced by Shell Oil that concentrates on the virtues of the
external combustion engine.

Students in K-12 public schools are not only forced to withstand
the assault of profit-hungry corporations, but they must also
endure unwarranted interrogation and surveillance by
administrators, teachers, school security guards and the police on
a daily basis. In his recent book, “The Rogue State,”
William Blum reports that students are being suspended in schools
throughout the country for various reasons.

In cases involving medicine, one student was suspended for
merely carrying a bottle of nonprescription painkiller Advil to
campus. Another student was punished for bringing
“drugs,” which turned out to be lemon drops. One
student was caught giving a classmate a Midol tablet for relief
from menstrual cramps and suspended.

There are worse cases. In one school, a student dyed their hair
an “unacceptable” color. A nice Christmas gesture can
even turn sour, as was the case with a student who was punished for
bringing a wrapped bottle of wine as a present for a teacher.

What about the student who was punished for bringing a small
paring knife to cut her fruit for her meal while another suffered
the consequences for waving around a drawing of a gun? The
six-year-old boy who was sent back to his house after kissing a
girl on the cheek? The eight-year-old girls who were strip searched
while on school grounds for stolen money which was not even
recovered on them?

Then there are the pre-schoolers to 6th graders given genital
exams as a requirement for their physical; the high school
officials who conduct arbitrary Breathalyser tests in search of
students with alcohol; the 14-year-old girl who was strip-searched
and sent home from school for two weeks simply because she
expressed to other students that she could sympathize and
understand the feelings of the Columbine shooters; and the high
school students investigated by police for demanding to know
whether or not a chemistry book was a resource for making
explosives.

Captivated by new forms of media technology and popular culture,
students are faced with the daunting task of decoding and analyzing
the multiple meanings and complex messages that are generated by
advertising, commercial and film industries.

By replacing the students’ values and beliefs with their
own pre-packaged curricula, corporations are turning students into
passive consumer-citizens.

The growing violence against children in public schools should
be a cause for great concern among educators. Protecting children
and guarding them against the commercialization, corporatization
and militarization of public schools is an urgent undertaking.

This struggle can begin by replacing corporate and surveillance
pedagogies with a critical pedagogy, which provides students with
meaningful learning and educational experiences.

The aim of critical pedagogy is to deepen the roots of democracy
by encouraging students to actively participate and engage in
public discourses and debates over social, economic and political
issues that affect their lives.