[MD] Barfuesserkirche (ZMM & Dewey)

[Arlo Bensinger]

Some thoughts on the commodification of education. This is a bit long, 
blame it on the coffee and the dreary morning here in central PA.

To many (all) of the questions about education I offered as discussion 
points, Platt's reply to them all was "let the market decide". How far does 
this go? Should the market decide who should learn? What math is taught? If 
education caters to the market, I believe education will serve the 
exclusive purpose of "job skills".

Platt also mentions "vouchers", which have been discussed here before. I 
had written this before, a passage on the educational system of Denmark, 
and it bears repeating. "There is no legal obligation to attend school in 
Denmark, only an obligation to have some form of education. If a group of 
parents wish to set up a special school for their children because they 
have their own particular view of man and the world, they are entitled of 
state support for running it. Parents also have a right to educate their 
children at home themselves, so long as they can show that it is actually 
done. There is broad agreement both among the population at large and in 
Parliament that it cannot be left to a monopoly of public authority to lay 
down rules on the true way of life." Is this the model we should be 
considering?

Many eons ago, a former (sadly) participant Mark Heyman wrote "rather than 
privitizing education and playing the vouchers game, why not shift some of 
the tax base from wealthy communities to poorer ones?  Or, why not dip into 
the state and federal tax base in order to bring the public education 
system of poorer communities into line with public schools in the wealthy 
communities?  Why are we asked to be satisfied with great public education 
for kids from wealthy families, while kids from poorer families go 
without?" My stance on vouchers is conditional, being a supporter of 
charter, alternative and schools such as these. But vouchers, as they are 
touted by conservatives, do not move towards the Danish model mentioned, 
but rather towards stratification where wealth plays the significant role 
in determining the quality of education a child/person receives (it is also 
for this reason I find the American university system condemnable). Mati 
Palm-Leis had a novel suggestion for Platt last time "vouchers" were 
offered as a market-solution to education. "Education is charged with 
leaving no child left behind.  Why don't we make the same charge with our 
community and dare say families.  The fact is many schools are working 
harder than before with greater expectations. They should and our kids 
deserve it.  Platt I challenge you as a retiree to the following.  Offer to 
tutor a kid in your local school twice a week for a semester."

Such a charge misses because Mati assumes (I believe), along with Dewey, 
that tending to communal life is an important activity. Getting involved, 
community-supported and situated education is antithetical to both the 
Fordist model of the present day educational system, and the resultant 
stratification vouchers would bring. But it is precisely THIS fix that the 
DFSs (and the others) suggest. Rather than turn over failing schools to 
"the market", turn them over to "the community". Of course, as Dewey 
surmised, such a things works only when "the community" is valued, and the 
individuals understand that community involvement matters. To the 
"atomistic individualist", this is heresy. Which is why its funny to watch 
the very schools and system that evidence free-market education be attacked 
for their audacity to suggest that communal involvement is interwoven with 
the role of education.

In an essay titled "Education for sale! The commodification of everything" 
(http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:dSg6Ac94Wm4J:epsl.asu.edu/ceru/Articles/CERU-0410-253-OWI.pdf+commodification+education&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a), 
Stephen Ball of the University of London writes, "in an attempt to achieve 
some balance, almost exclusively, the costs of various kinds of private 
participation and privatisation. For while I am happy to concede that there 
are benefits to be obtained from some forms of privatisation of public 
services, these benefits are widely rehearsed and sometimes exaggerated, 
while the costs, and I mean primarily social costs, are systematically 
neglected."

This mirrors Dewey's concern that "[b]oth capitalists and socialists are 
wrong in absolutizing solely economic values. Economic factors are genuine 
determinants of experience, but they are not the sole determinants, and by 
themselves they can move society only toward economic ends. It is up to the 
people, to a "public," to determine genuine social ends -- such as freedom, 
equality, communication, democracy, community, etc., as well as to work 
together using social means to bring about these social ends."

Ball also mentions what I had said about the institution being more 
concerned with its role as an "exchange institution" (intellectual 
production for social capital) rather than its role nurturing the 
production of intellectual capital in the first place. He writes, 
"'students have been explicitly constituted as "customers", a development 
that further reinforces the idea that a degree is a commodity that 
(hopefully) can be exchanged for a job rather than as a liberal education 
that prepares students for life... Here then we have various aspects of the 
transformation of social relations into a thing. As part of seeking after 
new 'markets' and the re-orientation to the customer, new forms of 
'delivery' and consumption of Higher Education are being created which can 
result in learning becoming increasingly fragmented. The curriculum is 
reorganised as a sequence of knowledge gobbets ...which can be transferred 
as 'credits' and combined in novel ways with no guarantee of internal 
coherence".

In an article on India's educational problem, Sudha Sitarman concludes 
"What is new however, is that the new rhetoric on improving education 
proposes to recast it by cleansing it of its non-competing students and 
incompetent teachers who are unwilling to improve education. It believes 
that the state of affairs could be corrected only through market solutions. 
The key to those market solutions, it says, is through privatisation and by 
turning every aspect of education into a commodity. Myopic policies like 
this take away the benefits of refined education that could emerge though 
higher learning. Non-emphasis on the pursuit of higher learning and 
creativity could only plunge India into the sweatshop model that the new 
economy doggedly pursues."

Of course, the commodification belies the foundational claim of the 
mercantilists, that EVERYTHING is a market commodity. Education, health 
care, people, everything. Everything is reducible to a market object. As 
I've said many times, this can be summed entirely and precisely be 
rewriting "man is the measure of all things" to "money is the measure of 
all things". This base reduction to a world entirely guided by economic 
concerns is challenged by Dewey, and by Pirsig who wrote of the outcome of 
such a foundation in ZMM.

Finally, Platt bemoans an "educator class", dismissing the notion that 
"educators" can possibly know more about education than anyone else. But 
don't mathematicians know more about math than most other people? Should we 
condemn the rise of a "mathematician class" of people who arrogantly 
presume to know more about math than everyone else? Should we dismiss what 
the mathematicians say in determining how and what math is taught? What 
about music? Ham has been vocal in the past on a condemnation of everything 
"rock". On what basis do we teach kids about Mozart, Bach or Handel if not 
that "experts know more about music than we do"? In "The Closing of the 
American Mind", Allan Bloom argues for a return to the classics. On what 
basis is that not an arrogant presumption of someone who thinks they know 
what's best for "my kid"?

E.D. Hirsch, conservative author of "Cultural Literacy" writes, "achieving 
high universal literacy ought to be a primary focus of educational reform 
in this country". Is it the arrogance of an "educator class" that leads him 
to propose "We help people in the underclass rise economically by teaching 
them how to communicate effectively beyond a narrow social sphere, and that 
can only be accomplished by teaching them shared, traditional literate 
culture"?

Just some thoughts....

PS: As I am preparing to send this, a new post from Platt asked "I presume 
(since you agree to vouchers) that you would also allow me to send my kids 
to military school if I so choose." Certainly, no one is forced to attend 
any of the aforementioned schools. But let me clarify, I am not for 
vouchers in the way they are presented in the modern debate. I am all about 
choice, but not about turning education into a market object.

PSS: Platt's latest post also says, "If you want to send your kids to a 
school that doesn't set standards and doesn't measure accomplishment, fine 
with me." If you are against an "educator class", on what basis do we "set 
standards" and "measure accomplishment"? If its the "free market", how can 
we ensure that an "A" in math in Pennsylvania is the same as an "A" in math 
in the Carolinas? Or is grading always subjective? If so, doesn't that make 
Pirsig's dialogue on abolishing grades accurate? But if we do that we are 
not "setting standards" or "measuring accomplishment", are we?