CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON CHILDREN

In order to understand the corporate influence on children, we should first understand what a corporation is?
Corporations in our economic system exist to provide a financial return to the people who own them. They are in business to make a profit, as individuals, those who work in (or even run) these companies might have other goals, too, when they turn their attention to public policy or education or anything else. But business is concerned principally about its own bottom line.
Thus, when business thinks about schools, its agenda is driven by what will maximize its profitability, not necessarily by what is in the best interest of students. Any overlap between those two goals would be purely accidental – and, in practice, turns out to be minimal. What maximizes corporate profits often does not benefit children, and vice versa. Qualities such as a love of learning for its own sake, a penchant for asking challenging questions, or a commitment to democratic participation in decision making would be seen as nice but irrelevant.
It screens and sorts students for the convenience of industry (and higher education).
It helps to foster acceptance of a corporate-style ideology, which comes to be seen as natural and even desirable, in which assessment is used less to support learning than to evaluate and compare people – and in which the education driven by that testing has a uniform, standardized feel to it.

Some corporations sell educational products, including tests, texts, and other curriculum materials. But many more corporations, peddling all sorts of products, have come to see schools as places to reach an enormous captive market. Advertisements are posted in cafeterias, athletic fields, even on buses. Soft drink companies pay off schools so that their brand, and only their brand, of liquid candy will be sold to kids. (4) Schools are offered free televisions in exchange for compelling students to watch a brief current-events program larded with commercials, a project known as Channel One.

CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT-

Below are some points which show how corporate influences pervade children’s lives- their homes, neighborhoods, communities, schools and entertainment;

• The impact of junk food & fast food on child health & nutritional status.

• The effects of the media (television, hip-hop & heavy metal music, celebrities).

• Fashion (dress related problem behavior such as competition, theft & violence).

• Illicit use of alcohol, tobacco or guns & youth risk behaviors.

• Commercialization of schools.

• Exposure to environmental, industrial & noise pollution.

• Challenging corporate influences on child development.

CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON EDUCATION-

Corporations, with only the profit-motive in mind, many businesses (ranging from regional companies to global behemoths) have infiltrated the public education system. This steady corruption of the education system has its beginnings as old as the system of factories and corporations itself. It continues to this day, with millions of young minds at risk. In order for the public education system to achieve a level of respectability and prowess that it could, corporate influence must be eradicated from it.

The late 19th century saw the public education system, itself still young, being influenced by corporate agents. The factory system was spreading in the United States. Managers needed a constant supply of labor. Specifically, labor that would be complacent and manageable. They descended upon the public school system in search of this labor. Using stopwatches and keeping endless data, a powerful system of indoctrination was devised.

Factory owners realized that young children could be taught how to follow orders, under the guise of becoming a productive member of society. However, very few students actually became deep thinkers or powerful minds. Most were swept away under the wings of corporations, who used and abused them until they were no longer fit to work, at which point they dumped them (without any skills, remember) on the street. It was a concerted effort to keep a steady flow of labor coming year after year, generation after generation.


CONCLUSION-

Corporate influence and the public education system cannot co-exist. One, a powerful profit-driven entity, cares little for the well-being of others.
The second is meant to be an institution that provides each and every citizen the right to be able to analyze the world around them, in order to make conscientious decisions.

You might as well as a lion to sleep in the same den as a gazelle. Soon enough, the lion will begin to use the gazelle for its own gain. Corporations act similar. They devour any hint of free-thinking that would hinder their attempts to gain as much market power as possible. Citizens that can question and think are gazelles with speed. They can run from the lion, preventing it of any power. But corporations prevent that by infiltrating the very systems that have the possibility to create citizens able to evade the clutches of corporations. As long as it continues, we, as a nation, will be paralyzed under the grip of corporations who continue to lock us into the vicious cycle of worker and consumer.


BY-
CHARU MAKKAR
MBA-IA