FROM STUDY HALL TO HIRING HALL

...it indoctrinates teachers, too...

...These hardly constituted ringing endorsements of broad liberal arts education...

...Underlying this latest business thrust into the public schools is a shrinking supply of qualified candidates for entry-level jobs...

...The Federal Government enthusiastically supports the new business push into the schools...

...Influencing the content of public education is no new interest for business, but today's methods are more sophisticated, the purposes more carefully defined, and the effects more far-reaching...

...The group sets up advisory committees for so-called magnet schools—alternative institutions offering special programs designed to attract students of all races...

...Increasingly, local and national companies are sponsoring high school programs designed to instill the work ethic in students and prepare predominantly poor teen-agers for unskilled occupations...

...In their senior year, students are handed a "career passport" showing test scores, attendance records, academic and vocation courses, and actual job experience...

...If only to keep and improve on the slim competitive edge we still retain in world markets, we must rededicate ourselves to the reform of our education system for the benefit of all," the report warned...

...But whether the presence in the classroom is transparently self-serving or apparently philanthropic, the object is to introduce the student not to learning but to business...

...In 1982, Congress passed the Job Training Partnership Act "to establish programs to prepare youth and unskilled adults for entry into the labor force...

...Under "Basic Employment," the report stressed "the ability and willingness to assume the responsibility of a good citizen," "the ability to engage in interpersonal relationships," and "the ability to cope with requirements concerning attendance and punctuality...

...For four weeks every summer, teachers work at entry level jobs in restaurants, banks, factories, wholesale houses, hotels, hospitals, and department stores...

...Today, they proudly tell the audience about their job experiences and career plans...

...Another way of clearing the smoke is through the increasingly popular Adopt-a-School program, in which a business links up with a particular school...

...profits, revenues, basic law of supply and demand, etc...

...Between the summer of the tenth grade and graduation, each student must hold a part-time job to acquire "the performance and attitudinal requirements of the workplace," states a Boston Compact booklet distributed by the public schools...

...The Task Force issued specific proposals for curriculum reform...

...Businesses, of course, profit from the experience, too," the report states...

...Business can help clear the smoke in the career decision-making process...

...Represented on the task force were the chief executive officers of such blue-chip corporations as Texas Instruments, RCA, Ford, Xerox, Dow, Control Data, and Time...

...for entry-level positions," says Michael Timpane, dean of the Teachers College at Columbia University...

...Illinois Bell's Center for Urban Communication "links the classroom with the business world" by means that include identifying the "appropriate behavior and dress demanded" in the work world, according to an article entitled "Chicago: 404 Businesses Support Career Education Drive in Schools" in You and Youth, a publication of the Vocational Foundation...

...For all students who have qualified, support services would be available for nine months after graduation," the Compact states...

...And the students, who have been issued a career passport, see their futures determined at least to some extent by whether or not they exhibit the proper attitudinal requirements...

...The Commission published a report last year alarmingly entitled, A Nation at Risk...

...The committees provide "continual counsel so that the curriculum and its delivery stay attuned to developments within the industry," according to the Partnership's second anniversary report, entitled A Community of Believers...

...Heading the Task Force was Frank Cary, chairman of IBM's executive committee, and Pierre S. DuPont IV, governor of Delaware and an heir to the DuPont family fortune...

...Students take a career education course and go on field trips to local businesses...

...A few months before graduation, students begin interviewing for jobs in the Boston area...

...And Sears, Roebuck in Atlanta provides printing services for all special events at one magnet school...

...To ensure an adequate and docile supply of unskilled labor, businesses have hooked up with the public high school systems...

...And as they struggle with the hazards of economic life, they will not even have the spiritual and intellectual comforts that a humane education might have provided...

...Even the U.S...

...The Compact seems designed primarily to prepare students for fast-food chains and other service industries...

...In Dallas, Fidelity Insurance Company employees give violin lessons and art instruction for two hours at the end of each school week...

...For the first time in a generation there will probably be, in several urban locations, an absolute shortage of labor supply Joel Spring is a professor of education at the University of Cincinnati...

...it is Free Enterprise Day at Atlanta's George Washington Carver High School...

...The Partnership sponsors a program called Career Orientation for Public Educators which prepares teachers, in essence, to be trainers and employee counselors for local businesses...

...A monthly schedule lists such activities as on-site tours of businesses, mock job interviews, economic education lectures, and career days...

...Thus the school system functions not only as a training ground but also as an employment agency for businesses...

...the way it did when I was in school," Charles Bell, president of Illinois Bell, told You and Youth...

...During the next decade, the military, the colleges, and business and industry will all be competing for the same limited supply of people," says Colonel George Bailey, former Army director of continuing education...

...Most of the students at Carver, for instance, come from a nearby housing project, and 80 per cent of their families are headed by single parents on welfare...

...Atlanta is by no means the only city in which business interests exert significant influence over the content of high school education...

...But the resulting distortions of education condemn many to a life of low wages and limited career advancement...

...There has to be a systematic way to get information to students...

...The chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers also was a member...

...Some Adopt-a-School programs are not so narrowly self-serving...

...Boston has had an even tighter alliance since 1982, when the business community and the public schools signed the Boston Compact...

...General Mills in Minneapolis uses its research lab to help train advanced math and science students...

...When education becomes subservient to market considerations, it makes perfect sense to assign businessmen the role of teachers...

...The rationale for granting business a larger role in the public schools was developed by the Department of Education's National Commission on Excellence in Education...

...And it is indeed a model, though not of education but of business-style socialization...

...In Chicago, such companies as Continental Bank, Harris Bank, Holiday Inn, and Montgomery Ward have opened their own alternative educational centers for students during regular school hours...

...Another report, Action for Excellence, issued by the Task Force on Education for Economic Growth of the Education Commission of the States, spelled out this change in plain English: "We believe especially that businesses, in their role as employers, should be much more deeply DAVID SUTER involved in the process of setting goals for education in America and in helping our schools to reach those goals...

...One magnet school, the Harper Center for Financial Services, has eight banks, including the Atlanta Federal Reserve, on its advisory board...

...The link between the needs of the local business sector and the curricula of the high schools is spelled out by the Atlanta Partnership of Business & Education, Inc...

...In practice, the Partnership pursues much narrower purposes...

...The banks have contributed as much as $ 150,000 in direct or in-kind contributions to the school system...

...The law mandates the formation of local administrative councils, with majority membership and chairmanship going to "representatives of the private sector...

...In Denver, for instance, twenty-nine organizations—including the Central Bank of Denver, the Samsonite Corporation, the Lions Club, and the Denver Broncos—have adopted schools...

...and "to understand personal economics and its relationship to skills required for employment and promotabil-ity...

...But the Partnership does not train only youngsters...

...But this is not a graduation ceremony...

...Fewer youths are entering the labor market because of the declining birth rate...

...The goal, the Partnership says, is to acquaint teachers with "work places and jobs, nonacademic working factors, employer manpower needs, and other on-the-job career data...

...Career education can't just happen by accident...

...Army is concerned about this demographic shift...

...They are training youngsters to be valuable employees for their own business...

...For the past two years, these students have been splitting their time between studying in the classroom and working at a local business...

...Carver boasts a reputation as one of Atlanta's model high schools...

...Under economics, for instance, it recommended that the schools enable students to "understand our basic economic system (e.g...

...Chartered by the Georgia legislature in 1981, this group sets a lofty and admirable goal: "to enhance the economic development potential of Atlanta and to improve the standard of living of its people by raising the educational achievement of its citizenry...