This work argues that private businesses use public schools as worker training sites, resulting in a devalued teaching force, students as uncritical consumers, and schools as economic markets. Boyles analyzes school-business partnerships, revealing false philanthropy and the ulterior motives behind fast-food reading campaigns and supermarket "sales for schools" promotions. This important book criticizes the practice of privatization itself, revealing it to be a conservative gambit to secure class differences, and not a simple extension of free market business influence into the public sector.

Schools as Sites for Consumer Materialism * Corporate Culture and Schools * The Kroger Connection * Privatization and the Future of Public Schools * Critically Transitive Teachers. Index.