“critical theory.”^16 Jonathan Kozol is of this school when he writes, “School is
in business to produce reliable people.”^17 Paulo Freire of Brazil puts it this
way: “It would be extremely naïve to expect the dominant classes to develop a
type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social
injustices critically.”^18 Henry Giroux, Freire’s leading disciple in the United
States, maintains, “The dominant culture actively functions to suppress the
development of a critical historical consciousness among the populace.”^19
David Tyack and Elisabeth Hansot tell us when this all started: between 1890
and 1920 businessmen came to have by far a greater impact on public
education than any other occupational group or stratum.^20 Some writers on
education even conclude that upper-class control makes real improvement
impossible. In a critique of educational reform initiatives, Henry M. Levin
stated, “The educational system will always be applied toward serving the
role of cultural transmission and preserving the status quo.”^21 “The public
schools we have today are what the powerful and the considerable have made
of them,” wrote Walter Karp. “They will not be redeemed by trifling
reforms.”^22
These education writers take their cue from an even weightier school of
thought in social science, the power elite theorists. This school has shown that
an upper class does exist in America, and its members can be found at elegant
private clubs, gatherings of the Trilateral Commission, and board meetings of
the directors of the multinational corporations. Rich capitalists control the
major TV networks, most newspapers, and all textbook-publishing companies,
and thus possess immense power to frame the way we talk and think about
current events. And on occasion they use it. ExxonMobil, for example, by some
measures the world’s largest corporation, gave $6 million over the last decade
to the National Science Teachers Association, chump change to Exxon but a
bonanza to the teachers. As a result, NSTA initially refused fifty thousand free
copies of Al Gore’s video about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth—
which was the Motion Picture Academy winner for “Best Documentary”—
citing “unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign” if they accepted. NSTA
does distribute a video by the American Petroleum Institute that a Washington
Post reporter calls “a shameless pitch for oil dependence.” So money
corrupts.^23
Nevertheless, it is inappropriate to lay this particular bundle on the doorstep