As Junk Bond felon Michael Milken attempts to transform public education
on the model of the HMO, he is hailed in the mainstream press as having
'done more to help mankind than Mother Theresa.' Even as BP Amoco, a
notorious U.S. polluter, is charged with funding and arming
paramilitaries in Colombia, it freely distributes science curricula that
portrays itself as a loving protector of citizens from a dangerous and
'out of control' nature. These as well as many other examples abound as
Professors Robin Truth Goodman and Kenneth J. Saltman take on the
corporate educators, media monopolies, and oil companies in their new
book Strange Love: How We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Market.
Saltman and Goodman show how corporate-produced curricula, films, and
corporate-promoted books often use depictions of family love, childhood
innocence, and compassion in order to sell the public on policies that
ironically put the profit of multinational corporations over the
well-being of people. In doing so Goodman and Saltman reveal the extent
to which globalization depends upon education and also show how battles
over culture, language, and the control of information are matters of
life, death, and democracy.