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Campaign Option: Reclaim Education

Below is the original proposal presented at the Forum 09. Reclaim Education was chosen to be one of the new Corporate Power campaigns.

Working with students, People & Planet support staff are currently working to develop up the new campaign ready to launch in November 2009. For the latest updates, check out the Corporate Power homepage.

Essential Info

The presence of corporations in our educational institutions transforms them from powerhouses of learning and social progress into outlets for corporate recruitment and personal gain. Increased commercialisation of research, the growth in academy schools, and the proliferation of corporate-sponsored educational events and resources show that corporate influence is evident and growing in our schools, colleges and universities.

Aim

The campaign is built around three central aims:

1. Reducing the influence of corporations in the research priorities of universities and redirecting efforts towards research work that is socially beneficial.
2. Increasing positive career choices offered by schools, colleges and universities, and seeking to exclude unethical companies from recruiting on campus.
3. Challenging sponsorship of events and resources in schools, colleges and universities by questionable companies.

Read on below to find out how these aims could be achieved by P&P groups.

Reclaim Education would ensure that from school to university learning remains about creating active, questioning citizens — rather than promoting corporate brands. A central tenant of Reclaim Education is democratic accountability — we want our education system controlled by students, parents, governors and academics not corporations. It is up to us as students to protect our education system and ensure that our schools, colleges and universities exist for public good not corporate gain.

Reclaim Our Universities

The Universities campaign would have three elements: research, careers and sponsorship; tackling corporate influence in Universities by raising awareness of and changing the power of corporations on campus. The elements are flexible with plenty of room for creativity, but rigid enough to ensure that we can set a clear path towards achievable changes.

The first element of the Universities campaign is to consider the Universities involvement with questionable companies via the research it carries out and refocus research priorities towards socially beneficial aims. UK Universities produce world class research, but it is often funded and sold to oil, drugs, food, and weapons corporations who use them improve their profit margins and develop products at the expense of the poorest people and the global environment. Universities should be encouraged away from carrying out research that supports exploitation and towards funding socially beneficial research. This means they must turn away the worst offenders, set new priorities for research, and produce a set of criteria to oversee the aims, methods, and final use of research work. The campaign would also highlight examples of unethical research relationships on campus.

Ideas for Actions

• Put on a speaker about a company involved in the uni. For example, University of York has received research grants from BAE Systems, or a speaker from Campaign Against the Arms Trade could be invited.
• Put on an awareness raising event about some good research the uni has done and its impacts.
• Compile a zine or even a film about a specific piece of research carried out on your campus. For example, it has been alleged that Edinburgh University research has been used by the US govt. in Iraq war planning.
• Organise a debate between academic points of view on contentious research.
• Gather a petition and attempt to pass policy within one department, for example that the
• Geography department will not receive funding from oil companies.
• Get a motion passed at a union meeting to support the wide-scale adoption of research ethics policy in the University.

The second element is to look at increasing the positive career choices available to graduating students. Today, most University careers services claim to be neutral in offering students a wide range of career opportunities for graduates. However, many graduates leave careers fairs disappointed by the rows of oil companies and bankrupt banks vying for their skills. This is because careers services charge companies to visit, sums that only the biggest companies can afford. This is not offering true opportunity, but instead career-choices-by-profit.

Furthermore, companies such as Shell, BAE Systems, and RBS have repeatedly been targets of disruption by activists, often from P&P, angry that they should be allowed to set up shop on campus. This element of the campaign would seek to encourage careers services to open their doors to charities, schools, social enterprises, Government services, positively seeking a range of careers options to cater for all of their students by inviting such organisations to careers events. The campaign could go on to seek to exclude unethical companies such as climate change offenders and weapons manufacturers by introducing an ethical code of conduct to vet companies who want to advertise on campus (which could be similar to criteria used in ethical investment policies).

Ideas for Actions

• Encourage individuals to write to the careers services expressing your concerns, and organise a meeting with them.
• Get a wider support for increased diversity at careers fairs by gathering a petition.
• Run an ethical careers fair to show the uni it can be done!
• Talk to individual departments and run departmental ethical fairs, for example engineering students in Edinburgh recently ran a renewables companies careers fair.
• Get the student union to support you by proposing a motion at a meeting.
• Creatively disrupt careers fairs and speaker tours, for example as many P&P groups did during RBS’ UK tour in Autumn 2008.

The third element of the Universities campaign is the sponsorship of resources and campus events by unethical companies. Companies such as Topshop make students a big focus of their marketing, and Students Unions have allowed them to use their space to sell their products directly to students (for example Edinburgh University Students Association, 2008. This element of the campaign would seek to introduce ethical standards for companies wanting to advertise, and sponsor events and resources on campus by encouraging change within student unions, and eventually applying the same idea to the whole University administration.

Ideas for Actions

• Subvertise dodgy companies advertising on campus.
• Run talks, films and create media about companies that advertise on campus.
• Challenge individual deals by questioning the students union and university about advertising deals, using the freedom of information act if necessary. Get the student union to pass policy vetting companies who want to advertise on campus.

Reclaim Our Schools & Colleges

The campaign in schools and colleges would focus on two elements: careers and sponsorship.

The final years of compulsory education are a pivotal point in everyone’s lives as students are faced with a number of decisions as to where to go next in life. Schools and colleges often provide information to their students in the forms of careers events and assembly speakers, and the first element of the campaign would seek to encourage schools and colleges to invite speakers from socially beneficial careers choices such as working in the public sector, environmental or wildlife work, or healthcare.

Ideas for Actions

• Organise a meeting with your Principal or Head Teacher to explain your idea.
• Write to organisations you’d like to hear from to see if they’d be interested in visiting you.
• Talk to professionals in socially beneficial jobs to find out how they got there, and produce materials publicising this to students.
• Collect a petition from students showing their desire for a series of informational talks from people in socially beneficial careers.
• Organise your own careers events in conjunction with other local schools, in lunch-hours or in evenings.

The second element of the campaign would focus on the presence of corporations in schools through sponsorship and advertising. For example, E-on sponsoring an “Energy Experience” school’s conference, Nestlé producing social responsibility leaflets for UK schools, and the Cadbury “Get Active” scheme where you had to eat 171 chocolate bars to get one basketball!

Unethical companies have found their way into corridors by offering unhealthy vending machines and into classrooms by sponsoring educational materials and even courses. This element of the campaign would encourage students and staff to consider the place of such companies within the institution by investigating specific relationships, raising awareness and generating support for ending such relationships.

Ideas for Actions

• Talk to teachers, such as in the geography department, about running a class project or essay topic about some of the companies present in your school or college, for example comparing the production chain of food sold in vending machines with that of Fairtrade products.
• Produce a magazine explaining the impact of companies who promote at your college or school.
• Organise class, assembly, or lunchtime debates.
• Collect a petition against specific company promotions such as Cadbury’s “Get Active” scheme, and promoting Fairtrade as an alternative.

Going Further

The campaign could take further opportunities for action when they arise, differing from place to place but also including national actions, aimed at halting the pernicious influence of corporations wherever we find it.

It could be extended to campaign for national governments to increase funding for education, to ensure that institutions are not reliant on corporate cash — or we could work with the National Union of Teachers (NUT) to challenge the increase in academy schools. The campaign could also form links with the international student movement to challenge corporate influence in education systems globally.

Outcomes

If People & Planet chooses this campaign at the Forum, in whole or in part, then groups can begin to effectively challenge the presence of corporate criminals who have exploited our campuses for years and been the focus of many campaigns. Progress in any of the three elements would be a truly radical step for Universities, exposing the root causes of a vast swathe of exploitation that is taking place across our world. Whole-scale adoption of any of the demands would make an incredible difference to the power of corporations and their ability to maintain a stranglehold on Schools, Colleges, Universities, and us, as students. Collectively, as People & Planet, we can grasp this opportunity for real change, and make a difference by diminishing exploitation of people and of the environment world-wide.

Pros and cons of the campaign

Cons:

• Some of the goals are very ambitious and long-term.
• Any campaign which is seen to restrict the University’s funding opportunities will be highly controversial.
• Doesn’t address corporate power outside the education sector.
• Understanding why the campaign is needed requires a fairly in-depth analysis, meaning it could be hard to communicate effectively.
• The campaign could be perceived as negative, and not offering real alternatives (although we hope that a future direction of the Corporate Power campaign could address this through national campaigning, see “going further”).

Pros:

• Uses P&P’s strengths as a student network by tackling corporate power in our own communities.
• Is adaptable so that it will be unique to each group that runs it.
• Builds on “DIY” campaigns such as Ethical Investment and Redress Education and is potentially highly compatible with them.
• Builds on the highly successful Go Green strategy of aiming for clear local goals to have a national impact.
• It it truly radical, starting from our own institutions’ involvement with these companies, and driving forward brand new ideals in a realistic way.
• Includes a range of possible actions from putting on events, raising awareness and lobbying through to direct action.
• There are a number of organisations we can work with including Campaign Against the Arms Trade, War on Want, Corporate Watch, Education Not For Sale.
• Has long-term goals as well as exciting steps along the way.
• Gives groups space to focus on issues of their own interest in a strategic way.
• Tackles the root causes but freeing up the education sector and restraining corporate influence.
• Takes a number of issues that groups have been doing bits on in the past (such as careers fair disruption) and gives them a joined up focus.
• There is a great deal of energy for the change this campaign seeks to create, as shown through the waves of occupations this year, and ethical investment campaigns which have been running for years.