Capitalism and Public Education

Both public education and capitalism are enshrined in the history of the United States.  Although one is private and the other is public, they both claim to operate in the name of public welfare.   In Book V of his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith seems to indicate that education is necessary and affordable at public expense (see "Adam Smith on Education" and Book V, Part I, Chapter III, Article II).  

As much as I would not favor unregulated capitalism or unregulated charters, I still admire Adam Smith.  In high-school Economics IB, I read Richard Heilbroner's essay on Smith.  It described how he might walk along so absorbed in his ideas that he might fall into a ditch and hardly realize it.  (Sometimes, I think some of the Common-Cored people may be a bit like this!)  And, all this before the age of cellphones!

Here, instead of focusing upon Smith's Book V, Part I, Chapter III, Article II, I would like to focus upon how some sacred tenets of capitalism might kill the sacred institution of public education.

1.  If schools are privately owned, they may not operate in the public's welfare.  They may be run primarily to generate profits.  Poor-performing students may be excluded.

2.  Supply and demand have little value in education.  If students generate demand, I can tell you they will rarely opt for the more challenging teachers.  If principals generate demand, many may look for the cheapest work force. 

3.  The principle of economies of scale are crushing schools.  Many schools today are overcrowded.  It places severe obstacles in the way of academic achievement as well as overall safety.  Schools do not benefit when classrooms and hallways are packed like sardines or when students are banished to backfields to learn in trailer parks.

4.  Schools will not function well when primarily moved by the profit motive.  Students are not products or commodities.  Their interests should not be sold.  Education should not be market-driven.  Schools should never put profits above people.

5.  Schools should not have to spend needed resources for advertisements to generate demand.  Some charters spend a great deal of money advertising their schools with glossy pamphlets and door-to-door activity.  If valuable financial resources are being redirected towards artificially creating demand for a school, students will suffer.

6.  As educational reformers attack labor unions as being in restraint of "trade," they threaten the livelihood of teachers.  Given the necessity of academic freedom and due-process rights, teachers need unions to guarantee them a living wage and the respect due their profession.

7.  Pearson should not grow into a monopoly.  

Pearson began to corner the market when it became clear that Common Core could generate enormous profits.  They make the tests and sell review books to prep for their tests.  In the past, the review books contained passages from the tests. 

8.  Standardization of education is not desirable. 

Eli Whitney was praised for standardizing firearms.  Standardizing education does not work so well.  Students are diverse.  They have vastly different interests and vastly different types of intelligence.  Standardized test measures fail to capture the complexity of individuals.  They often operate by using the lowest common denominator.

9.  A school is not an assembly line.  We do not need to stamp and package all students as Common-Core aligned.  With the emphasis on standardized tests, it threatens creativity.   It threatens the arts.  It threatens individuality.

10.  Competition is necessary in life, but sometimes cooperation must take precedence.   We need to teach students to work side-by-side with students of diverse backgrounds.  We need to teach students to view themselves as citizens of the world and to look for solutions to the problems confronting our planet.  Furthermore, some students may fall by the wayside.  We must not trample or turn a blind eye to those who do not "succeed."  They are not discardable parts of some production process. 

Unregulated capitalism has failed in ways that Adam Smith could not have foreseen.  Now, the corporate agenda for education is failing as well.  The frequent stories about student attrition rates and widespread corruption at charter schools only confirm my worst fears.   Just as a family should not be run as a business, a school is first and foremost a community, not a capitalist venture.