ABSTRACT
The banking or transmission theory of school knowledge, which Freire identified more than thirty years ago as the culprit standing in the way of critical consciousness, has returned with a vengeance. The primary purpose of recycling in school is and has remained the production of worker/consumer citizens. Business ideology has been inherent in the recycled programs from social efficiency efforts in the early 1900s to life adjustment programs, to career education, to teacher effectiveness programs, to Madeline Hunter lesson plans, to outcome-based education, to standardization and high-stakes testing. This chapter outlines the history of the recycling of the businessification of schooling ansd focuses on public schooling. There are the zombie consumers that our schooling and the free market ideology of neoliberalism produce; they are not active citizens who engage in the process of democracy and social justice but insatiable buyers who want the latest products.
