Channel One (Educational News Program)

A powerful examination of the rightist resurgence in education and the challenges it presents to concerned educators, Official Knowledge analyzes the effects of conservative beliefs and strategies on educational policy and practice. Apple looks specifically at the conservative agenda's incursion into education through the curriculum, textbook adoption policies and the efforts of the private and business sectors to centralize its interests within schools. At the same time, however, he points out areas of hope for the future, showing how students and teachers have continued the struggle and are now successfully engaged in building more democratic education policies and practices. Finally, Apple writes in personal terms about his own teaching techniques and work with students which challenge some of the ideological and educational policies and practices of the Right.

This book challenges readers to consider the consequences of commercialism and business influences on and in schools. Critical essays examine the central theme of commercialism via a unique multiplicity of real-world examples. Topics include: privatization of school food services; oil company ads that act as educational policy statements; a parent's view of his child's experiences in a school that encourages school-business partnerships; commercialization and school administration; teacher union involvement in the school-business partnership craze currently sweeping the nation; links between education policy and the military-industrial complex; commercialism in higher education, including marketing to high school students, intellectual property rights of professors and students, and the bind in which professional proprietary schools find themselves; and the influence of conservative think tanks on information citizens receive, especially concerning educational issues and policy.Schools or Markets? Commercialism, Privatization, and School-Business Partnerships is compelling reading for all researchers, faculty, students, and education professionals interested in the connections between public schools and private interests. The breadth and variety of topics addressed make it a uniquely relevant text for courses in social and cultural foundations of education, sociology of education, educational politics and policy, economics of education, philosophy of education, introduction to education, and cultural studies in education.

What happens when kids are held captive to an endless stream of MTV-like television commercials? Armed with a tape recorder, Fox, a language and literacy researcher, spent two years interviewing over 200 students in rural Missouri schools. Why? Because more than eight million students in 40% of America's schools watch TV commercials as part of Channel One's broadcast every day. Students "read" commercials far more often than they read Romeo and Juliet. These ads now constitute America's only national curriculum. In this groundbreaking study, Fox explores how these commercials affect kids' thinking, language, and behavior.

Giving the Kids the Business exposes the way in which corporate America is turning schools into profit centres, and lowering the quality of public education.