Chapter 12: Juxtaposing Cultural Artifacts to Peel the Onion of Hegemony

The corporatization of public schools in America depends upon two critical factors: historical amnesia and the domestication of teachers and administrators in colleges of education. College professors need to recognize that their failure to act responsibly is also political and will eventually lead to their own demise as downsizing of colleges of education is on the horizon. A central thesis for critical educators is control over means of production (Gramsci, 1971)). Corporatization represents an antithetical power struggle for dominance over the curriculum through testing and certification, as well as how teachers are to be prepared.

Domestication into technicism will lead to well-behaved employees who will administer official packages of curricula without question. With the privatization of public schools will come the end of traditional certification, replaced by corporate certification similar to the “fidelity” requirement of the publishing companies that currently market snake oil reading programs. These companies are benefiting from programs such as Read First, where schools become money launderers of taxes that are funneled back to the publishers. The publishers provide in-service workshops on scripted programs and then supervise teachers and submit reports to administrators on whether or not the teachers exhibited “fidelity” to the scripts. These company representatives are experts in the package, but understand little about epistemology or the essence of literacy. If they did they could never hawk the garbage they push.