Search

In "The Politics of Inquiry", Benjamin Baez and Deron Boyles critique recent trends in education research to argue against the "culture of science." Using the National Research Council's 2002 report "Scientific Research in Education" as a point of departure, they contend that the entire discourse on education science reflects a number of distinct but mutually constitutive political forces or movements that use science and education to shape what we can "think", and, thus, what we can "become". These forces include the attempts to restrict democracy via scientism; the uses of academic classifications for organizing the world into social groups; the imperatives of the informational society, which seek precision in order to convert the world into "data" for easy governing; and the effects of transnational capitalist exchanges, which convert everything into a cost-benefit analysis, and which make us all complicit in ways we do not fully grasp. Baez and Boyles examine these forces and offer an alternative to the current pushes to make educational inquiry scientific. The table of contents presents the following chapters: (1) On "Education Research"; (2) On Scientism and Positivism: John Dewey and Education Research; (3) Degrees of Distinction: Education Doctoral Study and the "Culture of Science;" (4) "Governing" Science: The Scientific Imaginary and the Creation of People in the Information Age; and (5) Entrepreneurship and the "Grants Culture": Privatization of Research and Academic Freedom. A bibliography and index are also included.

Chapter 8 of the book "The Corporate Assault on Youth: Commercialism, Exploitation and the End of Innocence," edited by Deron Boyles is presented. It analyzes the strategy of some companies from the food industry to market unhealthy foods to young people. The said companies reportedly use textbook covers, which they supply to schools for free, as a medium to market their products.

Chapter 5 of the book "The Corporate Assault on Youth: Commercialism, Exploitation and the End of Innocence," edited by Deron Boyles is presented. It discusses the role of private business in influencing public school curricula as well as the significance of character education among young people. The chapter also features the efforts of Chick-fil-A, a fastfood restaurant with its headquarter in Georgia, in relation to values and character education to students.