Education as Enforcement: the Militarization and Corporatization of Schools.

Edited by Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard. Routledge Falmer, 2003.

This past school year my eldest daughter, Christine, completed sixth grade and was a recipient of the "President's Award for Educational Excellence." During the awards ceremony at the middle school in Terre Haute, Indiana, the principal obligatorily read to the gathering of students and parents a message from President George W. Bush. Although the presidential certificate was "in recognition of Outstanding Academic Excellence," the message strictly emphasized values and the making of right decisions. Besides the nauseating politicizing aspect of the imposed remarks, very off-putting was what was left out of the President's text. There was no mention of learning, reading, studying, researching, inquiring, analyzing, thinking, discovering. It was yet another reminder that public education is not what it might seem at first glance.

What is the raison d'etre of the school system? In reply, sociologists advance two main theories. The functional perspective, a traditional explanation and very positive and optimistic in outlook, maintains that school is where children learn citizenship and how to become productive members of society. In contrast, the conflict perspective, which is a more deep-structure analysis but at the same time as negative as Karl Marx explaining the textile mills of Manchester, argues that the true purpose of school is to indoctrinate young people to a social system in which most of the benefits are allotted to only a minority of the populace. In Education as Enforcement, the editors Kenneth J. Saltman and David A. Gabbard, along with the other twenty-one essayists, explore different dimensions of how the American education system formally and informally enforces the dominant market ideology, which is augmented with militaristic thinking and practices. Henry A. Giroux, in the book's foreword, calls for educators to avoid the pitfalls of, on one hand, "both neoliberal and orthodox leftist positions, which dismiss the state as a tool of repression" and, on the other, "the [purposeful] reduction of the state to its policing functions, while linking such a struggle to the fight against neoliberalism." The contributors of this volume, probably all liberal or orthodox leftists, are firmly in the camp of the conflict perspective, delivering a scathing critique of the present state of affairs, but not dismissing the state as a tool of repression because they are actively waging dissent.

Education as Enforcement is timely and appropriate, sounding the alarm against the nation's current conservative power grab and exposing how a debilitating military-corporatist ideology has seeped into the nooks and crannies of our educational institutions, mass media, and even popular culture. The processes of education, the writers argue, should be liberating, with a focus on individual and community interests. Unfortunately, they continue, pedagogical approaches often amount to indoctrination, rendering educators sycophants of the corporate and the commercial. Consequently, schools perpetuate social stratification and foster a militaristic mentality, the trend toward standardized testing a case in point because it assigns social rank. Minimum standards are used to marginalize, to keep people in their place, which results in the undermining of democracy. Formal citizenship (legal rights but on paper) is never developed into substantive citizenship (actual democratic participation). Economic and military interests are also literally intertwined, just as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, hardly a radical, had warned a half a century earlier in his Farewell Address about a military-industrial complex on the verge of imposing a "total influence" on society: Today, the significant other of globalization is the United States military, presupposing that what is good for Halliburton is good for not only America but also Iraq and, yes, the world. Similarly, as pointed out by Saltman in his introduction, our national leaders in the days immediately following September 11 equated patriotism with consumerist spending.

The cultural aftermath of September 11 is the common thread of these writings, although the anthology, revealingly, was underway prior to the attacks. With self-reflexivity, the editors could examine their modus operandi to see how different it is from the BushCheney neocons who have exploited the tragedy for promoting preconceived political agendas. Giroux's piece is titled "Democracy, Schooling, and the Culture of Fear after September 11," but his pedagogical insights hardly changed after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Michael W. Apple, in "The Politics of Compulsory Patriotism," views September 11 as a "politics of interruption" on the classroom, affecting pedagogy in "complicated ways." Since he dislikes binary "we/they" thinking, he found it difficult answering the question, "Why do they hate us?" With bare honesty, he wonders, "How could one condemn the murderous events, give one's students an historical and political framework that puts these events into their larger critical context, and provide a serious forum where disagreement and debate could fruitfully go on so that a politics of marginalization didn't occur in the classes--and at the same time not be seen as somehow justifying the attacks?" In this perceptive essay, he muses on the power of hegemony, how the "patriotic fervor" immediately following the attacks caused many educators to contradict themselves by interpreting events in dominant, negotiated, and oppositional ways. A shortcoming in Apple's analysis, however, is that not enough consideration is given to the Cold War, which would provide the context for explaining the current binary thinking and show how the "politics of interruption" is actually the "politics of continuation"--the othering of the Soviet Union has simply been replaced by the othering of Muslims.

Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur, in "Critical Revolutionary Pedagogy at Ground Zero," also consider the appropriate response educators should have post September 11, suggesting teachers "have a moral and ethical obligation to provide a forum in which students can question and critique the right-wing's efforts to rally people around its domestic and foreign U.S. policy initiatives." Many topics for discussion are recommended, including CIA "blowback," unwise American foreign policy, and the "parasitical capitalism" that entrenches global economic disparity. Such a prescription has obvious merit, but the authors are oblivious of classroom realities in which many students lack the attentive qualities and foundational knowledge necessary for carrying out complex geopolitical analysis. As a teacher of history and political science at a small Midwest community college, I do not have the pretension to imagine I could convince and empower the majority of my students, in the words of the essayists, to "defeat U.S. imperialism." I put forth great effort and even throw on the discussion table, for the purpose of silencing critics who might question the instructor's moxie or respect for country, my previous three years of active duty in the Army Rangers, which included participation in the failed Iran rescue attempt. The truth of the matter is that a majority of students are waving flags in support of the U.S. troops in Iraq while unlikely to be able to pinpoint Iraq on a blank world map. In contrast to McLaren and Farahmandpur, I sense real difficulty in winning arguments heavily burdened with quotes from Marx. I am reminded of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who in a song that was "critical revolutionary," advised: "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow."

The only essay of the collection focusing outside of the American context, Haggith Gor's "Education for War in Israel: Preparing Children to Accept War," shows how the Holocaust has been appropriated for ideological purposes to justify Israel's attacks on the Palestinians, which is similar to how September 11 has been used by U.S. political leaders for invading Afghanistan and later Iraq. Although Israeli students hopefully know where Palestine is on the map, they are coping with challenges similar to their American counterparts, meaning that the pedagogical problems in this country are not unique. In fact, we have a moral and ethical obligation to acknowledge that certain Muslim-dominated societies also have serious pedagogical issues in need of critique because, regardless of any justified dispute with American imperialism, at work in those cultures are destructive hegemonic forces.

The militaristic mentality of the American education system can be demonstrated in numerous ways. Although a case study on school inequity, Enora R. Brown, in "Freedom for Some, Discipline for 'Others,'" convincingly shows how "zero tolerance" Chicago school policy in essence amounts to a racialized social discipline because it is primarily aimed at minorities, whereas in great contrast the nearly all-white schools of the affluent suburbs create an atmosphere of freedom representative of the professional class. Such findings are confirmed by Pauline Lipman, in "Cracking Down: Chicago School Policy and the Regulation of Black and Latino Youth." The emphasis on discipline, as opposed to fostering human agency, is interpreted as symptomatic of a militaristic mentality used to control people who are outside of the dominant culture. Accordingly, Don Trent Jacobs, in "Forceful Hegemony: A Warning and a Solution from Indian Country," depicts the Indian reservation as a site of militarization "designed to keep growing Indian populations, with their different views about materialism, spirituality and ecology, in check." More overtly, as explained by Marvin J. Berlowitz and Nathan A. Long, in "The Proliferation of JROTC: Educational Reform or Militarization," schools, especially those of the underclass, are sites of military recruitment, an enterprise that not only collects warm bodies (mostly people of color) but, as it is officially stated, functions to "motivate and develop young people" (a transparent pedagogical function).

The book's foreword and introduction emphasize the importance of examining popular culture texts for ideological and pedagogical content. A number of essays do this kind of analysis, including Robin Truth Goodman, "Dick Lit: Corporatism, Militarism, and the Detective Novel"; Eugene E Provenzo, Jr., "Virtuous War: Simulation and the Militarization of Play"; and William M. Reynolds and Gabbard, "We Were Soldiers: The Rewriting of Memory and the Corporate Order." Goodman suggests that popular detective fiction such as Sara Paretsky's Tunnel Vision (1994) promotes the world cop figure, with its unilateralism (i.e., counterterrorism and counterinsurgency) and its promotion of corporate global power. The Terror War, Goodman notes, is in many respects being conducted like a global criminal investigation. And, as in Paretsky's novel, surveillance and information gathering is often conducted outside the bounds of legal restraints, such as in the flaunting of international law in the handling of war prisoners. Provenzo focuses on violent video games, which are used to train military recruits as well as entertain civilians. The blurring of war and entertainment suggests ominous ramifications. War as a video game, Provenzo asserts, alters the meaning of war and makes it personally easier to kill others. One of the Columbine assailants is known to have created his own version of the video shooting game Doom, some time after the U.S. Marine Corps adapted a version of it for training purposes. Reynolds and Gabbard, in their analysis of the film We Were Soldiers, show how Hollywood, with direct enlisting from Washington, is helping Americans get over the Vietnam syndrome. Long gone are images of dope-smoking, half-crazed warriors on a mission-unspoken-destination-unknown horror adventure, such as in Apocalypse Now. Instead, the new fighter in Vietnam, like the one Bush-Cheney sent to Gulf War II (or at least prior to the disclosed POW abuses at Abu Gharaib), is "the good soldier, a family man, and an everyday hero, who will fight for his country." All of these popular culture treatments are important because they serve as case studies on cultural hegemony, revealing how all members of a society are subject to being manipulated to work against their better interests.

Perhaps the best essay of the volume is "Rivers of Fire" by Saltman and Goodman, a deep-structure analysis of the PR shenanigans of certain oil and chemical companies, which portray themselves as environmentally conscious in curriculum materials (videos, posters, and teachers' guides) freely provided to middle school science classes. Even the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History has been exploited for purposes of corporate spin in a commercially sponsored exhibit. Here Saltman and Goodman provide what Clifford Geertz classifies as "thick description." Perceptively, the essayists show how companies, like Amoco and Monsanto, are part of the military-industrial complex, even "remaking public schooling itself as the training ground for consumer armies." In their PR/pedagogical materials they naturalize the unnatural by making their exploitation of the environment seem benevolent and in harmony with the ecosystem. On the other hand, nature is made to seem dangerous, a threat to civilization, necessitating action by scientists working on behalf of corporate interests. In general, despite any inherent tensions to the contrary, global free-market capitalism is portrayed as a part of nature. Not mentioned in the PR video voiceovers is the fact that while companies such as Amoco distribute their curriculum materials for free, they fight in court to avoid paying compensation for environmental damages they cause. The PR pieces are also silent about corporate welfare, how American taxpayers finance the protection of oil pipelines. Nor is there mention about Monsanto's "drug war" contracts for spraying toxic herbicides on coca and opium plants in Columbia, another example of the military-industrial complex.

The least useful essay of the volume is clearly Noam Chomsky's "The Function of Schools," a recycled abstract of an interview of the author from an earlier published work. Quite stale, the piece argues against the "great books," the literary canon, and takes to task Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (1987). In this era of the Patriot Act, the debate about the canon seems like the good old days. Actually, someone needs to revisit this discussion and retrieve the context, which arose long before Bloom got hired at the University of Chicago. Bloom, now deceased, apparently took some progressive ideas from Robert Maynard Hutchins, the long-time president of the University of Chicago, and used them for a conservative agenda. Prior to founding the Center for Study of Democratic Institutions, Hutchins was the driving force behind the introduction by Encyclopedia Britannica of its Great Books series. No conservative, he simply wanted the reading fare of the elites to be made accessible to the masses, a liberal impulse. Probably if he were living today he would be highly supportive of opening the canon to include the marginalized voices. Ironically, the inclusion of the big name of Chomsky in this volume, especially since it is an out-of-date offering, betrays the canonical mentality.

Education as Enforcement was put together in haste, judging by the sloppy editing evidenced by the many distracting typos throughout the work. Is this not a book about education written by educators? (My favorite typo is found on page 33 in the Chomsky essay, where it reads, "In fat, you go nowhere. ..." Since the context has nothing to do with obesity or fast-food consumption, the word "fat" should read "fact.") Pickiness aside, the thoughts and observations featured in this work are certainly worthy of a wide audience. A book to be studied more than read, it is laden with many profound observations about pedagogy, warning that America is presently faced with a possible corporate/military takeover of its education system.

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