It is not surprising that a philosophy borrowed from business should see its principal focus within education as the furthering of the connection with business and industry. Moreover, when a philosophy is implemented at governmental level by people, the majority who learnt their understanding of life within this environment, it is not surprising that they should picture education as feeding this goal. In an age when the US is seen as being in desperate, almost cut-throat competition with industrial neighbors, it becomes an article of faith that to maintain present standards of living, education must increasingly focus upon training the youth of the country to compete in such markets. This demand is, of course, nothing new. A number of factors come together to provide the motive force for making education the handmaiden of the job market. For those with economic blinkers, such concentration makes good sense, but for those who take a wider view of the purposes of education, this appears narrow and damaging, even, in the long term, to the economic good health of the country. It is possible to argue for the ultimate purposes of education from different standpoints. The one that appears to be the motive force in much educational decision-making at the present time values knowledge that is conducive to the furtherance of the national economic well-being. It sees the child as a being to be trained to fit into this economic machine. Initiative and activity are encouraged only as far as these dovetail with ultimate occupational destinations. The teacher, therefore, is seen as a trainer, a constructor, a transmitter. However, there are many who value knowledge which is perceived as part of that country's cultural heritage while other child-centered advocates see the curriculum as based on each individual child's experiences and interests, each being active, involved, unique constructors of their own reality. Others see schools as being essentially concerned with pressing social issues which need to be resolved, and therefore the curriculum takes the form. of being topic or problem-based. Such sketches do not begin to do justice to the complexity and richness of argument, which may be contained in differing educational ideologies. However, if they at the very least convey the profound conflicting views, these descriptions suggest that there is truth in each of them, but none must have the stage to itself. According to the text, it is not surprising that ______.