By Guest Blogger George Thompson It seems almost sacrilege to question the Globe and Mail’s recent proclamation that “With a sweeping school law, India secures its future: The superpower-in-waiting makes childhood education compulsory for the first time.” But while there can be no denial that the recent laws for education reforms of India are desirable (ie. […]
By Guest Blogger George Thomson, The vanishing of a conflict of interest case in Ontario’s education system is a sign of the extent to which the province has committed to importing the public-private partnership model and the extent to which such conflicts are now accepted as the natural side-effect of the new way of doing […]
By guest blogger George Thompson The Canadian Council on Learning (CCL) has provided precisely the kind of alignment desired by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a globalization think-tank which is responsible for the “raise the bar” and “close the gap” propaganda used to pressure governments into the public-private “partnership” model in most of […]
In fact, the use of the term ‘partnership’ is the real key to understanding the way EMOs have framed the issue for the public, insofar as the term implies a mutual playing ground between parties in the contract. According to Jonathan Kozol, educational writer and best selling author: One of the early strategies employed by private corporations to soften resistance to their presence in our public schools was the creation of so-called business partnerships between the poorest inner-city schools and large companies. The financial side of the partnership usually turned out to be inconsequential. Kerr-McGee, the multinational petrochemical giant, gave one impoverished public school in Oklahoma City the trivial annual sum of $36 for each pupil. In return, one of the company’s executives was appointed to direct a “governance committee” to oversee the school operations, and the school consented to be known not simply as a public elementary school but as an “Enterprise School”.