Private Interests or Public Goods?: Dewey, Rugg, and their Contemporary Allies on Corporate Involvement in Educational Reform Initiatives

In some ways, John Dewey lived through a time similar to what we now experience: the rise of corporate power in a historical moment of unsurpassed national wealth and consumer materialism, and the accompanying substantial influence of business interests in the structure, politics, and agendas of public school systems. Dewey’s writings in the first three decades of this century mark a kind of “wisdom of the elders,” offered by a public intellectual who experienced, at least in some form, the kind of tumultuous relationships we are currently witnessing between the economy and education