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

Chapter 1

Initial Thoughts

—Calvin Coolidge, 1925

The Premise

I have always been curious about the concept of knowledge—specifically, how knowledge is acquired and lost, valued or dismissed, and produced and controlled, as well as how knowledge relates to one’s practical understanding and wisdom within certain contexts. This book endeavors to satisfy a part of my curiosity. The context to be explored is twofold: business and education.

By business, I mean complex social organizations structured as legal entities, such as corporations, limited liability companies, sole proprietorships, and so on, that epitomize profiteering as the sellers and producers of products or service-providing institutions functioning within a market economy. Nonprofit institutions will also be considered a part of my conception of business by virtue of the sociomanagerial norms of