Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling

"All of this is connected to the system’s growing need for a laboring population that is highly regimented, with only a relatively few students being tracked into more quality schooling. Traditionally, capitalist societies have seen education largely in functionalist terms, as meant to fit students for future occupations. Today this has to do with fitting many of them (particularly in the case of inner-city kids) not for work as such, but for a life of military-style discipline or incarceration."

Chart 1. National Defense as a Percentage of Education (K-12), 1999–2009

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts, Table 3.15.5 (Government Consumption Expenditures and Gross Investment by Function).