Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota(PEJAM): Corporate Reformers: Architects of Apartheid Education

Public Education Justice Alliance of Minnesota(PEJAM): Corporate Reformers: Architects of Apartheid Education:

Corporate Reformers: Architects of Apartheid Education

Alfie Kohn, a leading author and lecturer on progressive education, spoke Thursday evening at Macalester college in St. Paul, MN as part of the Theodore Mitau Lecture Series.  The event was hosted by Macalester's political science department.  A regular speaker at education conferences, Kohn noted the unique setting and focused more on educational policy than pedagogy.  His speech was titled, "Many Children Left Behind: "School Reform" and Corporate-Style Education Policy."

Kohn highlighted a number of destructive features of the corporate education reforms.  Among these, he discussed the increasingly poor experience forced on children who have historically been the most underserved: children of color, low-income students, English language learners, and special education students..   He was visibly angered by what the corporate reformers are doing to the children they claim to be trying to help, such as depriving them of recess time and exposure to the arts and music.   He also highlighted the "reformers" obsession with competition as a strategy to improve schools, as they ignore the fact that competition means there must be "losers." 

Corporate reformers have been using the "invisible hand" of the "free market" to actively destroy our system of universal public education for decades.  Blind faith in competition has