Businesses have long had an interest in schools, both as venues to educate future employees and as places to sell their goods and services. But to what extent does the business community’s desire to make money influence what goes on in schools?
Kappan authors have raised that question numerous times over the years, with both businesspeople and educators weighing in. In January 1952, for example, Emerson Brown of the publishing house Harcourt, Brace, and Company (“The role of the textbook salesman”) noted that teachers and textbook sales representatives can work as partners, with publishers seeking to understand what teachers want so they can make as many sales as possible, while teachers learn from publishers about new content and teaching methods. According to Brown, sales reps might even act as advocates for teachers, telling publishers what works and what doesn’t:
Through salesmen, teachers influence the textbooks they teach. From the teachers, salesmen hear grass-roots suggestions and criticism of instructional materials. The salesman has a profound respect for the opinions of classroom teachers. He listens to them, for they are the audience his books must eventually please if they are to be sold and remain sold. Because he does respect teachers’ opinions, the salesman demands to be listened to and refused to be shouted down. By pounding on managers’ desks and by shouting in editors’ ears, the salesman communicates the teachers’ needs and hopes for better textbooks to the men who share responsibility for publishing them. (p. 277)
Big business, big tech, big influence
Some of our most extensive coverage of the relationship between business and education came in January 1967, in an issue titled “Big business discovers the education market.” In his introduction, guest editor Myron Lieberman (“Big business, technology, and education”) suggested that large firms with contracts with the Department of Defense may well turn to education once the nation no longer has “an economy based on armaments” (p. 185). Large companies like IBM and General Electric, given their extraordinary resources and technological capacities, might have the potential to transform the education system. Lieberman expressed hope that this new infusion of intellectual and financial resources would be a positive force, but he also urged educators to be circumspect:
What attitude should educators take toward the entry of big business in the education industry? Perhaps the wisest course is neither to deplore this development nor to greet it uncritically, but to investigate its constructive possibilities and its dangers and then to take appropriate action to achieve the former and avoid the latter. (p. 185)
In “The business interest in education,” Francis Keppel (a former U.S. Commissioner of Education and a board member at the General Learning Corporation) echoed Lieberman, going on to state that educators’ fears about a big business Goliath taking over their classrooms were understandable but unfounded. Much like Brown a decade before, he envisioned a partnership between business and education, where educators describe the goods and services they want, and business provides them. His own belief was that educators would continue setting the objectives for what schools should be doing; industry’s role should be to help them achieve those objectives and scale up the most effective solutions. Although industry partners could help reproduce effective practices across the country, he added, the decentralized nature of U.S. schools would prevent any one company from gaining an outsized influence. For the partnership to be beneficial, both sides would need to be open to doing things differently:
The “new” industry has to accept, as I believe it has already, that this is a business where quick profits are not necessarily good policy; that long development time, in close collaboration with educators and schools, is essential; and that pluralism is “the name of the game.” Education will in turn need to be willing to use talents and points of view that are not easy to assimilate, and will have to state its needs and wants both more precisely and perhaps in different language. It will have to bear major responsibility for deciding, through ever more sophisticated purchasing techniques, what to choose from industry’s new offerings. Both groups have much to learn, and the only safe assumption is that the road to effective collaboration is long and probably rocky. (p. 190)
Edward Katzenbach (“Industry can serve”), then the head of the education division at Raytheon, a major defense contractor, shared Keppel’s view, noting that solid collaboration “will be lengthy and expensive, both in time and dollars. But there can be no shortcut to success; changing educational practice and advancing knowledge will require patience and thoroughness” (p. 192). Acknowledging that companies have been guilty of “fragmented hit-and-run selling,” Katzenbach presented a vision of industry focused just as much on improving teaching and learning as on profits. Such work, he asserted, cannot be done without a real understanding of the education system.
However, questions about how businesses should be involved in education haven’t been confined solely to big business. Authors have also raised questions about local businesses that approach schools with a desire to serve, as Howard Ozman explained in his January 1982 critique of the Adopt-a-School program (“Adopt-a-School: Definitely not business as usual”). Through this program, businesses provided volunteers, material resources, and expertise to local schools. Ozman worried, though, that their executives, perceiving “a vacuum in educational leadership” (p. 350), would attempt to exert influence over their school partners, trying to shape curriculum and instruction and even holding teachers accountable for outcomes.
In June 1982, Shirley Hansen and Becky Schergens (“Business/education partnerships: Making them education’s business”) responded to Ozman, pointing out that while, yes, some partnerships are counterproductive, the business community has a lot of expertise to offer, and schools should make use of it, but with a careful eye to how such partnerships affect students:
Caution is warranted, of course. Business/education partnerships should not be the ties that blind. Educators are the gate keepers of the public trust. Children are required by law to attend school. It is the responsibility of teachers, school administrators, and school board members to be sure that this captive audience is not subjected to exploitation. However, implying that all businesses seek to use the schools for their own ends is unfair to their legitimate concerns about education. Further, this argument denigrates the ability of educators to discern the difference between exploitation and blatant commercialism on the one hand and bona fide help on the other. (p. 695)
Channel One and commercialism
The idea that students are a captive audience was one reason that, in the 1990s, a media company called Channel One garnered national controversy. Founded in 1989, Channel One provided schools with televisions and satellite receivers, the only stipulation being that the schools show the channel’s daily news broadcast, created for a teen audience. The idea was that schools would receive much-needed technology, while students would learn about current events. The problem? The news program included two minutes of advertising.
Kappan covered the controversy in its February 1995 issue. In “Channel One: The dilemma of teaching and selling,” Jerome Johnston presented an overview of the program and how teachers and students responded to it. Roughly 12,000 schools subscribed to Channel One, noted Johnston, meaning that it reached almost 40% of 12- to 18-year-olds in the U.S. According to a survey he sent to all participating schools, teachers, principals, and students generally held positive views of the programming. And, as for having to air advertisements, he added, most teachers and principals considered that to be an acceptable trade-off, given the program’s benefits:
It seems to me that this is a reasonable stance to take, unless one argues that there should be no advertising of any kind in the schools. But if that is the case, schools should be required to exclude any and all vestiges of commercialism in the schools, including the soft drink ads on the athletic scoreboards, the print ads in classroom magazines, and the encouragement-to-read programs supported by many fast-food franchises. (p. 441)
Ellen Wartella (“The commercialization of youth: Channel One in context”) took a more skeptical view. For Wartella, Channel One was just one of many examples of how corporate interests were using mass media to reach young people, often by sponsoring educational programs:
In short, American schools have become another marketing venue for companies that find it increasingly difficult to reach their young target audience through television advertising alone. Indeed, one might predict that the increased fractionalization of the television marketplace — with more cable channels, video games, and programming on demand in the future — will make promotional targeting through the schools even more attractive. Furthermore, by coupling marketing practices with the promise of advancing teaching goals (such as encouraging literacy or providing direct support for school programs), marketers become important “partners” in American education. In turn, the schools become partners in the increasing commercialization of American youth. (pp. 450-451)
The conversation about how Channel One and other corporations were reaching out to schools — and, by extension, students — continued in a lengthy special report by George Kaplan (“Profits R Us: Notes on the commercialization of America’s schools”), published in the November 1996 Kappan. Kaplan examined what he saw as three forms of commercialization: (1) school/business partnerships, in which businesses provide expertise and material or financial resources, ideally with no strings attached; (2) marketing to students, in which businesses plug their wares to potential consumers; and (3) privatization, in which businesses take over a school function, an entire school, or even a chain of schools (such as Edison Schools, founded by Channel One’s cofounder Chris Whittle). For Kaplan, all of these are linked:
It looks like a long jump from corporate infiltration to the privatization of public schools, but in reality it may be just a short step. Despite persuasive contrary evidence, the notion that American education has collapsed inspires politicians and journalists of all political stripes, as well as venture capitalists, to pine for alternatives to what The American Enterprise terms the “child dooming nightmare of urban schools.” Their motives cover a wide range, including honest ideological conviction about the mission of education, a ferociously held belief in free markets, a desire to eliminate government fat (though not subsidies for business), and — by far the strongest of the lot — a quest for profits. (p. K7)
But despite his criticism of many of the corporate players, Kaplan did not recommend an outright ban:
If commercialism has gone too far, both in the culture and in the classroom, we have no one to blame but ourselves. After all, we accept and glorify it. But our collective response should not be to bash or ban it. Business is a powerful contributor to our national health, as well as to the health of public education, and it does not prosper under onerous regulation. The real mission for teachers, parents, elected officials, the clergy, and representatives of the media is to reaffirm what democracy and civic life are all about and to make sure that the message reaches children in the classroom. A key component of that message is that we must above all be responsible citizens and not gluttonous, unthinking consumers. (p. K11)
As with so many things in schools, there’s no clear and simple answer to how schools and business should interact, but careful attention to the long-term implications for kids is always warranted.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Teresa Preston
Teresa Preston is an editorial consultant and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan and director of publications for PDK International, Arlington, VA.
Visit their website at: https://prestoneditorial.com/
