Giving Kids The Business: The Commercialization Of America's Schools

The book offers an unrelenting and awakening take on the effect of corporate marketing on the public education system. Molnar offers themes such as schools for profit, corporate funded curriculum, advertising in schools, and schooling as a business with the enforcement of market based principles to build a powerful defense against a big business influence in modern day schooling. Strengths of the reading are many including Molnar's constant criticism of Nation at Risk and Workforce 2000, as depicting a failure of public education during the Reagan administration and a deceptive insufficiency of skilled workers in the 1990s which called for increased immigration to make up for the deficit. Molnar enforces the idea that there is no real skills shortage at all, only a decreased opportunity structure. The conclusion that reorganizing schools through market principles and emphasizing continuous worker training as the answer to school failure is just an excuse for corporations to blame schools and teachers for the corporate world's inability to reform public education. Molnar also criticizes big business for taking on a "schizophrenia quality" by later adopting reforms supported by the education establishment to create a situation where there is more equitable funding for both rich and poor school districts by employing private philanthropy instead of supporting an adequate tax base in spite of millions of dollars in profits. The author points out schools are eventually thrown into the free market to complete against consumer demand. As a result, profit and competition now become part of the school system by way of vouchers and charter schools. Molnar also directs the reader to become aware of the competition between corporations to compete with the minds of the children for brand loyalty by employing market driven principles within the curriculum disguised as efforts in school improvement. Even though weaknesses are infrequent, I think the author should have explored more viable solutions on how to take hold of the public education system and get the business world to relinquish their power over schools and our children. There is a type of open-endedness or "cliff-hanger" type ending of the book where Molnar leaves the reader to ponder solutions for the future. Though an excellent read with an abundance of attacks on the corporate influence in schools, just a few more options for direction in confronting the controversy could have been undertaken. In short, the book is a useful and effective critical analysis of the dominant market principles in schools. As an educator, I plan to use this information to further investigate and criticize divergent angles continue reflecting on my own ideology and philosophy regarding educational issues in our school system today.

In the 1980s, starting with the Reagan administration, the government started deregulating or reducing controls on the way private businesses and corporations managed their finances. The proponents of deregulation argued that regulatory oversight was an additional government bureaucracy, costly to the taxpayers, or as some like to put it, "too much government". They also argued that the private sector would regulate itself and in its attempt to gain business it would provide better commodities at lower costs. Some of the most notable examples of deregulation include the 80s Savings and Loans scandal, and the 2000s collapse of Enron and MCI-World Com defrauding investors out of millions while emptying their retirement accounts. More recently deregulation lead to the collapse of the housing market and many banks and investment corporations including Lehman Brothers, AIG and the entire US economy. Molnar's book, Giving Kids the Business describes what happens when deregulation and corporate interests are allowed to get their hands in the public education system. Molnar essentially describes the introduction of Channel One TV into public schools, the introduction of advertisement into the schools, the contracting between schools and corporations for advertising and selling their products, and school vouchers and charter schools. According to Molnar, Channel One was introduced into schools with the idea of providing schools with advanced technology free to schools. Channel One would provide children with 10 minutes of news and two minutes of advertising daily. School would receive this for free but would make these 12 minutes of TV watching mandatory. Corporations essentially would pay Channel One a fee to allow them to advertise to children. The introduction of mass advertisement into schools was accomplished by private businesses that emerged to advertise for corporations by presenting corporate products in so called educational packages. To me, the most obvious abuse of this is by a General Mills' product called Gushers which is essentially a gummy candy with a juicy filling. The candy was presented to kids as part of a science lesson where they would experience the candy's juice exploding in their mouths like a geyser or volcano. This was supposed to awaken children's interest in geological sciences. Of course the only thing that would happen was that a candy maker would get cheap advertising. By introducing their products in schools as educational, corporations would get tax breaks along with cheap advertisement. The exclusive contracting by companies, particularly soda companies with schools became extremely controversial because schools were supposed to reach target sales goals as part of their contracts. This has happened at a time when the incidence of adult onset diabetes (type two) has increased significantly in children, along with obesity. School Vouchers and charter schools were introduced with the idea of giving parents and

Alex Molnar's "Giving Kids the Business" portrays the self-serving, deceptive agendas of corporate schemes as they wedge unto the flushed open spheres of public education. Insightfully, there are many instances where the book reads very much like an engaging John Grisham fiction novel, particularly when reading about Christopher Whittle's propagandizing measures via "Channel One," the Edison Project, and the brainwashing of poor minorities. One keeps thinking that such realities are fictitious and can't possibly be real. Regardless, Molnar exhibits the "usual suspects" aiding Whittle, via Benno Schmidt, former president of the prestigious Yale University, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, corporate associate John Golle and a diversity of other corporate minded agents, politicians and organizations. In addition, Molnar demystifies the truth behind fundraisers, including the infamous "Book It" Pizza Hut reading program, General Mills tasty "Gushers" and many others, in revealing how they may actually do more harm than good, in addition to exposing the covert, and greed based operations behind vouchers and private schools. Here Molnar triggers the angry neurons of readers upon realizing how the corporate get rich and the socioeconomic deficient communities struggle to educate the diversity of children in overpopulated public schools. In essence, the text functions much like an undercover agent setting out to expose how the well minded facades of partnerships with big name business, with their tempting incentives and rewards, with the fancy labels of private schools, and the political recommendations, prove to be nothing more than a swindling redistribution of power where money shifts from the public sector to the private sector, from the altruistic economic well being of community members to the overfilled pockets of corporate agents, where the upper class looks to diminish the opportunities of the struggling class, and where public schooling is seen as a means towards a tax break rather than an altering and benevolent reforming of education arenas. Moreover, it is overwhelming to witness the rigid relationships between corporate minded individuals and both Democratic and Republican leaders. Also, it portrays how despite continued failure on the part of vouchers and the Charter school system, a rebirth and thus, continued attempts at re-swindling of public school economies, is reborn every so number of years. Respectively, this reading gets your blood and your mind boiling, and despite an informative appendix outlining key organizations fighting the schemes of corporate America, your temper will need virtuous patience to soothe itself.

This is a rather unique book with many well expressed arguements as to why the current trend to commercialize our public schools is a really bad idea. Hello!! Calling all our elected and appointed Boards of Education. Before you decide to plug the boob tube into our schools' classrooms, or make it easier for students to guzzle liquid candy, also known as soda pop, READ this book! It might just help you to stiffen your collective spines in the face of corporate propaganda and other forms of pressure!

Molnar's Giving Kids the Business is one of the most important books written about the frightening influence of for-profit corporations on the American education system. The section "And Now a Word From Our Sponsors" is a sensational argument loaded with pithy insights and biting sarcasm. A must read for all who are concerned about education.