Obviously your example is disturbing and hopefully would never happen, but what would your thoughts be if a more reputable company bought naming rights or other exclusive advertising rights to something in a school.
For example, what if Apple wanted to buy naming rights to various high schools and also become the exclusive technology provider for the school district. The school would benefit financially, while Apple would benefit by creating a group of students who only have experience with their computers and other technology - hopefully creating life-long consumers of their product.
Would you view that as a win/win situation, or do you see some negative influences on the students here as well?
I definitely see negative influences of Apple running schools. Corporations are very difficult to trust when putting things into their own hands, because the high schools may become "corporate schools," teaching children the basics of why corporations are better than other forms of business.
Noam Chomsky argues that this is dangerous, as well. Education is ignorance when the only purpose is to perpetuate economic status quo in a failing economy. We use terms like Anti-American to describe other economic systems. Currently, education is more or less funded by businesses, perhaps in a subtler manner.
In order to understand a society, one must understand how it is educated. In order to understand education, one must understand how the government functions. This second premise may sound simple, but complexities in the U.S. government make it quite difficult to understand the driving mechanism of why schools are run the way they are, but it makes perfect sense that since corporations pay mega bucks to the government, the government feels obligated to return the favor and structure schools for corporate benefit. Corporations were never meant to be as powerful as they were, and according to Chomsky, even the strongest believers in the free market, in the 19th century, opposed privatizing the corporate structure, but felt obligated to do so for fear of mini-globalization (New Jersey was at one time the only state that allowed private corporations). If we allow the schools to run fully centralized by the federal government, we have what we have now. If no government control whatsoever restricts what private schools teach, schools turn into business as seen in my above cartoon. Local governments are necessary.
Obviously your example is disturbing and hopefully would never happen, but what would your thoughts be if a more reputable company bought naming rights or other exclusive advertising rights to something in a school.
ReplyDeleteFor example, what if Apple wanted to buy naming rights to various high schools and also become the exclusive technology provider for the school district. The school would benefit financially, while Apple would benefit by creating a group of students who only have experience with their computers and other technology - hopefully creating life-long consumers of their product.
Would you view that as a win/win situation, or do you see some negative influences on the students here as well?
I definitely see negative influences of Apple running schools. Corporations are very difficult to trust when putting things into their own hands, because the high schools may become "corporate schools," teaching children the basics of why corporations are better than other forms of business.
ReplyDeleteNoam Chomsky argues that this is dangerous, as well. Education is ignorance when the only purpose is to perpetuate economic status quo in a failing economy. We use terms like Anti-American to describe other economic systems. Currently, education is more or less funded by businesses, perhaps in a subtler manner.
In order to understand a society, one must understand how it is educated. In order to understand education, one must understand how the government functions. This second premise may sound simple, but complexities in the U.S. government make it quite difficult to understand the driving mechanism of why schools are run the way they are, but it makes perfect sense that since corporations pay mega bucks to the government, the government feels obligated to return the favor and structure schools for corporate benefit. Corporations were never meant to be as powerful as they were, and according to Chomsky, even the strongest believers in the free market, in the 19th century, opposed privatizing the corporate structure, but felt obligated to do so for fear of mini-globalization (New Jersey was at one time the only state that allowed private corporations). If we allow the schools to run fully centralized by the federal government, we have what we have now. If no government control whatsoever restricts what private schools teach, schools turn into business as seen in my above cartoon. Local governments are necessary.
Naming rights are merely the beginning to this control... forgot to mention that
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the stuff I said about Chomsky can be found:
ReplyDeleteChomsky, Noam. "Education Is Ignorance." ( excerpted from Class Warfare, 1995, pp. 19-23, 27-31)
http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm