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

Businesses are private entities serving private interests. The contradiction between the goals of education and business should be apparent. The American educational system is contextually a democratic process serving, in effect, the interests of the people; therefore, the ways in which students are educated should represent the people’s interests by upholding the ideals of educational liberty.

However, the principles of business serve private interests, akin to profiteering in the first instance (Sowell, 1980). Private enterprises do not maintain documentary contractual agreements between the owners and the people (i.e., workers), ensuring the ideals of liberty. Instead, there exists only a type of “psychological contract” between an owner and a worker, where the employee is aware of his or her responsibility to conform to organizational standards in exchange for employer fairness regarding job security and compensation (Rousseau, 1989). A breach of the psychological contract violates only employees’ trust in the organization. Thus, businesses do not sustain the ideals of democracy as education does; rather, they uphold the ideals of fair play.

Corporate interests potentially interrupt the democracy of education due to the tacit primacy of their biased specialist interest, which is prevalent in business-education relations. This interruption is due to the contextual differences between what businesses do and what schools do. An example of corporate primacy can be seen in education today.

A U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report identifies in schools several types of commercial activities serving corporate interests: product sales, direct advertising (i.e., posters), indirect advertising (i.e., sponsored educational materials), and market research (Larson, 2002). Corporations alter the social environment of schools, reflecting a discourse that is germane to business norms. Because knowledge is a social construction, the social arrangement of schools is a crucial element in pupils’ learning (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). In this way, the social discourse of schools becomes the centerpiece of contention between the wants of liberal educators and the needs of industry.

Corporations are increasing their involvement in schools: “Since 1990 commercialism in schools has risen 473 percent” (Molnar & Reaves, 2001).