Public Schools as a Commodity
Advertising takes place in many forms in schools today. The cars in the parking lot, labels on clothes, shoes and backpacks, and computers and other appliances in schools are all examples.
These tangible items that students either posses or do not posses cause stratification to occur in schools
Corporations are also directly contributing to the commodification of schools.In a New York Times article, Mary Tabor reported that a company called Noggin, an educational cable television channel, gave an elementary school in New Jersey $7100 to buy 30 classroom word processors in exchange for weekly focus groups with students for market research purposes. Corporate sponsorships of schools by companies like PepsiCo. are becoming more and more common. Many parents and education experts find this to be an exploitative practice.
Compulsory schooling has caused many changes in family structure. These changes are in many ways similar to those that the family underwent when men left the home for factory work during industrialization. Separate spheres has occurred with the removal of kids from the home. The education and socialization of children became largely the responsibility of the state, rather than the family.
“What drives many home-schoolers are the well-documented social troubles and declining test scores in public schools.” –Clark
“This reemergence of what is in fact an old practice has occurred for a distinctly modern reason: a desire to wrest control from the education bureaucrats and reestablish family as central to a child’s learning.” - Lines
Many home schooling families are very religious and want to regain the responsibility of socializing their children. They want to be the primary influence on the moral, social and educational growth of their children. They feel that the teachers cannot provide their children with the attention they need as well as the moral lessons they want for their children. This is an obvious reaction to the commodification of education.