EduShyster reports here about a charter school in Utah where the goal of schooling is commerce.
Starting in kindergarten, the curriculum is all about buying and selling:
“HighMark administrators are quick to point out that the school is not a pint-sized business school. Instead, key business concepts and principles are integrated into every aspect of the K-8 charter. For example, “a student wanting to become a dentist will learn about the marketing aspect of dentistry, the pros and cons of opening their own office, entrepreneurship, and what leadership qualities are necessary to hire and supervise a staff.””
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Can k-5 teach kids how to be environmental activists or community advocates or labor organizers? Where are the civic-democratic curricula to balance the business ethos orientation?
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About two years ago the LA Times did a long article on LA charters and featured one from K – 12 on entrepreneurship. It seemed not as focused as the one Edshyster reports on today. The focus as I remember was purely on free market belief system. Maybe some LA educators have info on how this is going and post more about this particular charter..
Although, as an educator, I think it is imperative to start teaching the reality of money management in early grades, such as what is money and how do we use it, and also the banking/saving/investing of money, I do not think that the essence of monetarist (e.g. Chicago/Austrian School and Milton Friedman) philosophy should be the goal of turning out plutocrats. High School economics courses, if any still exist, can do an introduction to capitalism by studying Marx, Keynes, and the schools of conservative opinion arising from Von Mises, as with capitalist v. socialist.
But brainwashing 5 and 6 year olds to become capitalists is so inappropriate and damaging to society. It will usher in an even greater buy me/screw others generation. With the advent of the artificial world of popular economics since the 1960s, this being of major advertising for instantly disposable goods (sneakers, games, cars, etc.) and the concurrent rise of plastic cards pushed by banksters to all comers, the least informed want it all and then put it on credit cards. This mentality has led us to the greatest number of bankruptcies since the Reagan era.
I personally would prefer a curriculum based on humanities, and how economic systems grew historically as the need for all societies to develop money managing for the greater good.
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Creepy.
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These themed charter schools are mostly just marketing ploys. It doesn’t really mean anything educationally, other than cute branding and superficial differentiation from the public schools they compete for students with. Ive studied STEM, Health and Environmental/Green themed charter schools and with some notable exceptions they are not really doing anything substantially different from run of the mill schools with no themes. Once the game is defined by ela and math test scores everything is in any case oriented to that goal (and out goes the themed aspects of the curriculum, if they ever even had any). I once consulted with a health themed charter school whose only health related activity of any kind was that the kids wore surgeons uniforms (im not kidding!). Not one member of the staff knew anything or had any relevant training in health related subject, not even the science teacher. Themed schools have potential to offer alternative focus curricula to students with specific interests but these should be at the secondary level when kids actually know enough to develop particular interest and career aspirations – at the primary level this just makes no sense, other than to appease the parent’s own narrow interests and conceptions of education (or expectations of career paths for their children!).
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Yeah, they are just a business trying to “sell” a product. When you look close there usually is no substance to their claims.
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Satire is dead.
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Lolita…satire could never measure up to the reality of today and the greed that drives our world.
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The corporations like this! Duncan likes this. As as Schneider commented. “CREEPY!”
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I teach at one of the schools that lost students to High Mark. We lost two teachers because the district figured we would lose that many students to the charter. The funny thing is, that the number of students at this school is greatly exaggerated in the article that Edushyster links. I think there are less than 300 students in at High Mark. The school almost didn’t have enough students to open. Many of the parents have been sending their children to our public school for years and know of the quality of our school. Over the year, we’ve received several students back, usually who are academically behind and after the funding was given to the charter. Same as everywhere, I know, but it’s kind of weird have a national article about something in my backyard.
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Do you mean the funding for the returning student stays with the charter??? Doesn’t your funding ADA follow the student??
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Nope. Wherever the student is at the count on October 1, ALL of the student’s Weighted Pupil Unit from the state stays at that school, no matter where they move later in the year. Not that the WPU in Utah is all that great: about $6500 per student per year, over $1000 per student lower than the next lowest state–we’re number 51!!!!!!
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