Kappan authors ponder the role of business in schools 

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: 

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: