If you’ve been following the headlines over the last few years, you know the name Maxwell. But long before Ghislaine Maxwell became a household name for all the wrong reasons, her father, Robert Maxwell, was quietly pulling the strings of a different empire: The American Public School System.​

As a Master Educator who spent nearly a decade in the classroom, I’ve seen firsthand how “the system” works. We often think of curriculum as something crafted by saintly panels of scholars. But as a teacher, I started asking: Who actually decides what my students learn? And why does it feel like a monopoly?​

The answer led me back to a man who was described as a “rogue baron,” a thief, and a corporate raider.

Who was Robert Maxwell?

Robert Maxwell was a British media mogul and a master of “reputation laundering.” In 1988, he staged a hostile takeover of Macmillan Inc. for $2.6 billion. At the time, Macmillan was one of the “Big Three” textbook publishers in the U.S.

​He didn’t stop there. He formed a joint venture with McGraw-Hill, creating the largest elementary and secondary school publishing company in the nation.

The entire empire was built on a foundation of lies. Known for his explosive temper and a “profit-at-all-costs” mentality, he operated with a level of ruthlessness that felt untouchable. While he was positioning himself as a titan of industry and a gatekeeper of American knowledge, he was secretly a financial predator.

When his empire finally unraveled after his mysterious death in 1991, the world discovered he had systematically looted nearly $800 million from his own employees’ pension funds to hide his mounting debts. But perhaps the most chilling indicator of his reach was his end: despite being a world-class fraudster who betrayed thousands of his own workers, he was buried on the Mount of Olives and given a statesman’s funeral in Israel, attended by top government officials and intelligence leaders. It was the ultimate “reputation laundering”—a final, prestigious curtain closed on a man who had spent his life manipulating the truth and the systems we trusted to teach us.

​If you were a student in the 90s, or if you have kids in school today using McGraw-Hill or Macmillan materials, you are interacting with the legacy of a man who was later found to have stolen hundreds of millions from his own employees’ pension funds. A true master of corruption.

The Master Educator’s Perspective​

During my years in the classroom, I saw the “consolidation” of education. When one or two massive corporations (controlled by men like Maxwell) own the textbooks, the standardized tests, and the digital learning platforms, they own the narrative.

• The Monopoly on “Truth”: If a billionaire publisher decides to omit a certain historical event to make a book more “marketable” to a large state board, that becomes the “truth” for millions of children.
• The Testing Trap: Maxwell also acquired SRA (Science Research Associates)—the people behind those famous reading labs and standardized tests. They weren’t just teaching our kids; they were designing the metrics to tell us if our kids were “failing.”
• Corruption at the Core: Maxwell’s empire eventually collapsed after his mysterious death in 1991, revealing a $1 billion hole in his finances and a legacy of fraud.​

Why This Matters to Us as Mamas​

We trust our schools to be the “safe space” for facts. But the history of the Maxwell empire proves that the American curriculum has often been a commodity bought and sold by the highest (and sometimes most corrupt) bidder.​

As a teacher, I learned to look past the shiny covers of the textbooks. As a Mama, I’m teaching my kids to do the same. We have to be the primary educators in our homes, because the people “in charge” of the books might not have our children’s best interests—or the truth—at heart.

Let’s Chat in the Comments! 💬

​I want to hear from you, Mamas. Does it change the way you look at those old school books knowing the Maxwell name was behind them?

• Did you use SRA or McGraw-Hill books growing up?
• Do you feel like your kids are being taught “how” to think or “what” to think?