| Chapter 1: | Initial Thoughts |
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themes of entrepreneurial ethics, transferrable social skills, and high technology emerge as ways in which the Imprint is manifested in educationin an attempt to control knowledge (re)production processes.
Democracy: A Diminishing Concept
Some businesses invest money and resources into schools to help students learn better. What is wrong with that? The problem is not the corruptibility4 of their intentions but the unintentional effects of their pedagogic practice. In this section, I illustrate the contextual contradictions between what businesses do and what schools do that can lead to a neglect of certain aspects of intellectual development. This discussion will then allow me to highlight a broader philosophical argument about knowledge (re)production.
The problem with corporate enterprises investing in educational processes can be seen by broadly considering the ideal of democracy. From this, other crucial issues emerge, such as the social construction of knowledge and educational autonomy. First, I will consider what democracy is and its intended practice in education.
The first forms of democracy arose in ancient Greece. The word democracy “suggested a system in which the people did the ruling”: a system of consulting the citizens about policy within the Greek city-state (Peters, 1966, p. 196). Today, there are two forms of democracy practiced: direct and indirect. A direct democracy refers to the ideal that citizens govern themselves, whereas an indirect democracy suggests that citizens elect public officials to govern on behalf of the people (Cullop, 1999). The United States operates as an indirect democracy, also known as a democratic republic.
This corresponds to education in the United States because schooling is perceived as a means to cultivate a democratic citizenry—people who uphold democratic ideals (Urban & Wagoner, 2000).5 The founding fathers of the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson, engaged in arduous debates about the best way to establish an educational system that sustains ideals of schooling both as a way to cultivate in students the