The image is from the cover of Miseducating for the Global Economy (2018) by educational psychologist Gerald Coles.
Are there really millions of new tech jobs just waiting for students in schools that focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) starting in elementary school? Are subjects like social studies, art, history and literature irrelevant and a waste of time? In colleges, enrollment in history classes and the number of history majors has declined, as the purpose of a college education is more and more viewed by parents, students, and university administrators as vocational training. Are public schools failing to prepare students for future employment because recalcitrant teachers, administrators, and teacher unions refuse to accept new ways?
Or, as I think, the public is being sold a bill of shoddy goods being pushed by corporations anxious for higher profits, rightwing propagandists, and complicit public officials.
In Miseducating for the Global Economy (2018), educational psychologist Gerald Coles examines ideological distortions in corporate-funded educational materials developed by among others the Koch brothers’ funded front-organization the Bill of Rights Institute.
An opening summary of the Institute’s “lesson” for teaching about the Occupy Wall Street movement claims, “As the protests continue, issues related to the Bill of Rights have come into play.” Curiously, one of the key focus questions is “Are protesters infringing upon the rights of other citizens or business owners regarding issues of noise, sanitation, power usage, property rights, etc?”
According to Cole the Bill of Rights Institute (BRI) curriculum is designed to lead students to the conclusion that the police crackdown against Occupy Wall Street was justified because protesters had “damaged” a park where they set up their village and some surrounding property. Another way the Koch brothers influence what is taught in American schools is through their shadow group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC promoted legislative action in a number of states to endorse a Founding Principles Act.
Cole is also critical of curriculum developed by Khan Academy, whose founder, Salman Khan, is a former hedge fund analyst, and the Bill Gates sponsored “Big History Project.” Khan Academy lessons promote his notion of personal freedom and strong limits on government involvement in the economy including the nationalization of vital resources. A really boring Khan video voice constantly asserts it is “not going to take any political sides,” but then presents all the problems it sees with a national health care program and Social Security. Fortunately, it is unlikely any student will stay away through the lectures.
Bill Gates has argued for cutting education budgets and replacing teachers with videos of super-teachers. Cole calls Gates’ Big History Project, which promotes itself as “totally awesome,” “a soothing tale of the rise of modernity, with allusion to the horrors of the slave trade, though the curriculum offers no details on the effects of settler colonialism and early capitalist imperialism on Indigenous people in North America. There is no mention of the genocide of Native Americans.” The promo video features a really excited Gates. Big History videos are less boring than Khan Academy’s with some sexier images, but not that much else.
Why all the pabulum? Coles argues that “the worst nightmare for corporate leaders and the rich would be universal school success, in which vast numbers of graduates were fully able to do the purported extraordinary number of STEM jobs said to be awaiting them in the grand global economy,” jobs that just do not exist. According to Cole, studying global capitalism “is the last topic corporate powers governing the economy want in the curriculum.” Corporate curriculum try their best never to even mention the word.
In research I did for a 2015 blog in Huffington Post, I found that at least thirty-six colleges and universities including prestigious schools like Harvard and MIT receive Koch dollars, as do major American cultural institutions such as Lincoln Center, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
Bill Bigelow, an editor at Rethinking Schools and co-director of the Zinn Education Project, documented Koch influence at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference using the Bill of Rights Institute. According to Bigelow, “In its materials for teachers and students, the Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home its libertarian message that the owners of private property should be free to manage their wealth as they see fit.” Its goal was to infuse Koch anti-government propaganda into the school curriculum.
In addition, A NCSS bulletin on Teaching the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework (NCSS Bulletin 114) included a Koch-BRI lesson plan promoting their views opposing national health insurance and government regulation of companies Koch Industries that pollute the environment. The NCSS/BRI lesson for grades 9-12 is on the “necessary and proper clause” of the Constitution (39-46) and its goal, rather than to promote inquiry, is to convince students that the current interpretation is too broad. Its phantom civic action is a debate “Resolved: The Necessary and Proper Clause is not necessary or proper because it makes the principles of federalism and limited government obsolete.”
Much of this blog is based on a book review by Eve Ottenberg for Truthout. Ottenberg reviewed Gerald Coles (2018) Miseducating for the Global Economy: How Corporate Power Damages Education and Subverts Students’ Futures (Monthly Review Press).
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