Engaging students requires giving them a say in what they learn and how they will learn it. However, in strictly disciplined, rule-bound schools with test-driven curricula, this cannot happen. Edison Schools, Inc., a for-profit Education Management Organization (EMO), and Confluence Academy, an Edison-run school located in one of the most economically disadvantaged areas in the heart of inner-city St. Louis are logical expressions of the nation's contemporary system of education, especially the way that we educate poor minority children. Edison is profiting--literally and metaphorically--from the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. And Confluence is simply following federal and corporate marching orders. But Confluence and Edison are symptoms of a much larger social disease, a disease that creates the conditions for these companies to exist and thrive and for these schools to be regarded as models for our future. Educational management organizations (EMOs) such as Edison are a growth industry. The 2004 report "Profiles of For-Profit Education Management Companies" from Arizona State University showed that 59 EMOs were managing 535 schools and enrolling approximately 239,766 students in 24 states and D.C., an increase of eight firms and 39,363 students over the previous 12 months. In 2004 Edison--the largest EMO--ran 109 public schools serving over 70,000 students in 20 states and D.C., including two in St. Louis and two in Kansas City. Edison now operates more than 150 schools across the country, including 22 schools in Philadelphia, where it serves approximately 12,500 students. In this article, the author describes his experience visiting six classrooms of varying grades at Confluence Academy. He does this by categorizing his observations from the visit into the following categories: Symptom 1: Disorder, Treatment 1: Discipline; Symptom 2: Unhappy Teachers, Treatment 2: No Unions; Symptom 3: Students Not Learning, Treatment 3: Back to Basics, No Child Left Untested; and Symptom 4: Intellectual Rigor Mortis, Treatment 4: Curricular Rigor Mortis. Among other things, he observed that students seemed utterly unchildlike and were dominated and controlled in ways reminiscent of a trainer working with frightened, caged animals. This degree of control over the students affected the way that teachers taught. The teachers constantly berated the children for the slightest infraction. The author stresses that in a rigid structure, such as that imposed by Edison, there is no room for students or teacher creativity or spontaneity. The only way for students to exercise freedom of expression is to decide whether to do what the teacher tells them to do or to resist. In classrooms such as those he visited at Confluence Academy, there is a deadening effect at work. But the problem, he argues, is larger than one school in St. Louis and even larger than the profit-driven machinations of Edison Schools, Inc. Low-income minority children across the country are being given the lowest of the low when it comes to curriculum. Increasingly, the reading programs these students are taught with are designed, first and foremost, to help kids pass the state standardized tests. The rationale is understandable: because these kids don't get "the basics" at home, they need help in "the basics." But this leads to the creation of a curriculum that is nothing but the basics. The author concludes that Edison and other for-profit EMOs are a sign of a failure of imagination and a lack of will. It is hard to combat the realities of poverty and racism and how they affect education. Past efforts don't have a lot to show for them, so we have to be restless about a solution, we must not stop at Edison. (Contains 3 endnotes.)