Mercedes Schneider has put together the pieces and figured out what lies behind “reform.”

It is not about better education. It is about converting our schools into an assembly-line to produce workers for the economy. It is not about helping schools meet the needs and develop the interests of students. It is about fitting children into the slots where the economy needs them. Their purposes, interests, and personal goals don’t matter.

To make her case, she looks at three representative documents. One comes from Indiana Governor Mike Pence, who created a “Department of Workforce Development” to compete with and supplant the state’s Department of Education. Of course, we know that Pence will do anything to cut down State Commissioner of Education Glenda Ritz. But it is revealing that he sees the noble profession of education solely as “workforce development.”

Then she looks at a 1992 document by Marc Tucker, who envisioned “labor market boards” to align curriculum and jobs. Of course, that was more than two decades ago. Does he still see education solely in economic terms? I for one would not want to be held strictly accountable for things I wrote in 1992.

Schneider then considers an article written by a South Korean teacher who described the cruel and inhumane pressures endured by South Korean students in pursuit of high test scores. Yet, harsh as it is, Arne Duncan looks longingly at this system because of its results.

Schneider has anephany:

“After reading and meditating on these three articles today, I had an epiphany of sorts regarding privatizing utility of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

“Now, I know a lot about CCSS. This summer I wrote a book on its history, development, and promotion. However, what occurred to me this afternoon is the reason for the business push for CCSS particularly and the spectrum of privatizing reforms in general.

“It has nothing to do with “competing in the global economy.” That’s just a distractor.

“The goal of business in aggressively promoting CCSS while bashing the teaching profession into false, test-score-riddled “accountability” is to reshape the purpose of education into streamlined, assembly-line-to-market service.

“Yes, CCSS is about corporate profits, but it is about more than companies like Pearson making potential billions off of selling CCSS products and services.

“The true business goal behind CCSS and other market-driven “reforms” is to make American education completely economic — which means completely dehumanized in its purpose.

“It is about corporate America funneling the nation’s youth into predetermined, objectified service of the corporate, gluttonous market needs. And a crucial component of that goal is to break the spirit of teachers and make us nothing more than the trainers of What the Market Requires.”

She concludes:

“There is certainly money to be made in promoting “reforms” that, ahem, “benefit the economy.” But we must recognize this “cradle to grave” shaping of the American education system for what it is: A purposed effort to separate America into two groups, the privileged and the serfs. Indeed, the privileged are trying to finesse the message of serfdom as one that “concerned citizens” seemingly cannot say no to: a falsified image of national economic health that, if ingested by the American consciousness, will prove to be nothing more than caustic gluttony that dehumanizes most members of our society and corrodes our democratic foundation.”