The Imprint of Business Norms on American Education By Dameon V ...

the free-enterprise system that frames its existence (Tanner, 2000). Education claims to serve a social good: teaching students to be creative and independent thinkers with aims to cultivate a democratic citizenry (Tanner, 2000). I do not mean to suggest that a relationship between the business community and education is absolutely taboo. But, I believe that the business mode of helping schools resembles a type of corporate takeover.

The problems I perceive with the current corporate and education relations is that democratic education is lost, academic discourse becomes a restructured bias, and the social construction of knowledge in the classroom begins to reflect the corporate culture. All of this means that educational autonomy is at stake. Both schools and universities are losing sovereignty over the knowledge (re)production process by which schools reproduce the knowledge that universities produce.

Subsequently, what I defined as the Imprint—the social modes of business—is squeezing its way in as a knowledge producer operating through schools. This means that conventional modes of knowledge autonomy are also at stake. Freedom from external authorities exemplifies a democratic education, which promotes those ideals dedicated to preserving an “open society” where dissenting opinions are not merely tolerated but respected. In this manner, education flourishes because it is not possessed by specialists (Popper, 1994, p. 110). But, in the new economy, knowledge is now perceived as a product to be exchanged by commercial specialists.

What is problematic is that “the people” are not adequately represented in private companies as they would be in an open democratic process. Thus, the education (knowledge process) takeover by the Imprint resembles a premodern totalitarian state: The ruler and the people are separate, with the ruler having the say-so (Popper, 1983). This view attempts to control the knowledge processes (the product), restricting them to one mode of thought; a sort of knowledge monopoly exists, eliminating the competition (i.e., schools and universities). Strangely, this is a philosophical contradiction to the crux of capitalism, a system where the ideals of monopolies are unsavory (Smith, 1776/1937).