The Happy Meal Curriculum: Why Our Kids Deserve More Than Just a Toy
It’s hard to ignore the irony: we insist our children eat fewer Happy Meals, but we’re feeding them education systems that look suspiciously like a drive-thru menu. Quick, cheap, predictable and utterly devoid of nourishment. Welcome to the McDonaldisation of Education. For further reading check out George Ritzer’s "McDonaldization" and what he claims is a sociological concept describing how the principles of the fast-food restaurant - efficiency, calculability, predictability and control - are increasingly dominating sectors of society worldwide - education being one of them. If your child is in school right now, chances are they’re not learning how to think. They’re learning how to perform. Dress right. Sit still. Colour inside the lines. Write the test. Ace the test. Repeat. It’s not education, it’s factory production. The goal? Push out a neat little product that can tick all the boxes on the school’s glossy brochure. "Look, 100% Matric pass rate! Just don’t ask ho...