Continuously throughout the semester, we have read articles
that demonstrate how public education is being turned into a business. What
Kovacs, Christie, and Saltman demonstrate is that through things such as
venture philanthropy and business terms such as “choice, competition,
efficiency, accountability, monopoly, turnaround, and failure” (55) are the
ideas that are beginning to define education. Money gives the private sector
power to persuade schools to agree with their ideas. There will always be a
need for money and that provides the perfect leverage to force changes. The
idea of turning schools into investments and franchises is a direct result of
neoliberal policies. As Saltman discusses, foundations such as the Eli and
Edythe Broad Foundation describe their policies on the surface as being beneficial,
but in reality use manipulative tactics that are grounded in already failing
ideas. This foundation claims that problems are administrative and result from
bad management. In addition, the only beneficial reform is top-down with
quality understood through standardized scores and achievement. However these
foundations have policies that are problematic from the beginning.
Broad
proposes a leadership agenda, which makes leadership military based, implying
that the natural discipline for all children should be modeled by the military.
However symbolic social conditions inside and outside the school that are the
real reasons for making schooling difficult are being ignored. (61) The problem
becomes racial as it claims that those who are struggling are struggling
because of a lack of discipline. What is needed instead is critical dialogue
that does not force everyone into capitalistic conversations that turn
everything into terms of money and business. The public sector almost becomes
the private sector’s puppet as the ideal becomes centered on “if only the
public sector can be made to look and act like the private sector.” (63)
However, the public is fundamentally different from the private sector with
different goals. Private represents private, which by definition excludes,
while the public represents the community, and essentially or ideally everybody
within it. You cannot assume that public teachers, and therefore part of the
leadership in education, function the same way as private teachers. From the
beginning they operate on different curriculums and training.
In
addition, these neoliberal foundations turn knowledge into a standardized
product that ignores conversation in schooling and exactly whose knowledge and
values should be taught and learned. In this manner, everyone strives for the
exact same knowledge, despite cultural, familial, intellectual etc. background,
and then you are judged on it. In addition, conversations continuously fall back
on who gets to decide and what gives them that power. The Broad foundation
really emphasizes the importance of money by actually giving prizes to schools that
achieve the best test scores and therefore “achievement”. I had a conversation
with someone the other day about how people who are not “that intelligent” can
do better than someone “very intelligent” just because of knowing how to take
the test. With this idea in mind, how can we declare that a school is bettering
their achievement in education if the tests themselves do not actually measure
intelligence. Isn’t intelligence a key factor in education? In addition,
Saltman states, “how children see the world informs how they act on the world.”
(70) We are teaching our children that the only thing that is important is to
test well and memorize specific techniques. All they need to do to succeed in
our world is follow a specific script. This idea assumes that a test is a
universal value, undermines public aspects of public education by suggesting
private businesses have the power to determine what is valuable knowledge, and
that schools are teaching conformity while ignoring the rising cost of college
tuition and a student’s ability to afford it.
We
are constantly seeing money from powerful people such as Bill Gates being
funneled into the school system, which looks all well and good. However, who is
actually receiving it, and what is the value of that money where it is placed? Is
it actually bettering education? Public education needs to be public and stop
ignoring the children that actually need it most. The private sector has
individual ideals, goals, morals, and motives that do not always reflect the
collective, common good. It is the foundations like Broad and powerful,
individual people who funnel money into public education that mask the real
issues that are at hand: education is now a business that can be traded and
taken away from those who are not in a powerful position.
I think Eliza makes a strong point when she says that “what is needed is critical dialogue that doesn’t force everyone into capitalistic conversations that turn everything into terms of money and business”. The readings for today demonstrate how people with money have the power to control our education system. Private businesspeople, such as Bill Gates and Eli Broad, are pouring money into schools in order to reform them. They are now the ones organizing schools into business models and determining the success of children. As Saltman discusses, the goals of the private sector differ greatly from those of the public sector when considering education. On the one hand, the private sector is concerned with maximizing profit. On the other hand, educational leaders in public schools focus on serving the needs of the general public. They are responsible for the community, parents, students and teachers who make up the public schools. As Saltman says, “the end of public school administration is not profit maximization but public service” (64). The money being put into public schools by the private sector is not benefitting the children in our schools. It is not bettering our overall education system. These businessmen are not focused on the children who could use financial assistance the most. Broad sees a “deficit” in poor and minority children who perform poorly in school. These wealthy individuals could look to aid children outside of schools rather than placing the burden solely on schools. As Eliza says, the private sector doesn’t always act in ways that reflect the common good. People are self-interested and serve their own desires in our world today. People who have power and money are able to reach their own goals. Poor and minority students in schools are now trapped under the control of those with power in the private sector.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Eliza that money allows the private sectors to control the types of ideas discussed about education and in recent years has even persuaded the public to agree with them. Kovacs and Saltman both argue that neoliberalism ideology has taken control over educational policy and creating a powerful discourse for deregulation and privatization. Kovacs argues, that large corporations and the ruling elite “deliberately mislead voters and their representatives with narratives that are some “times convincing,” but “not necessarily valid” (6). In a market base culture charters schools use a notion of choice in order to create misrecognition and the people in power use misrecognition as an opportunity. This misrecognition can connect to how cultural capital functions in terms of education. As we have discussed in class this process creates imperial education where by schools reproduce certain white middle class values and behaviors that are already acceptable in society. Instead of teaching poor children why they are poor they teach them to behave to a certain social “norm”. Broad’s agenda for schools to run similarly to the military is a perfect example of changing the ways in which we discipline students to fit into a certain mold. Eliza is correct in that this type of leadership in schools becomes racial allowing these ideas to become reproduced and justified. We need to control the ways in which powerful individuals and corporations “donate” money because they are only reaffirming their ideas rather than looking out for the public and the collective good.
ReplyDeleteAs Eliza mentions the biggest issues that are completely ignored by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation are the social factors that contribute to students failing in schools. It seems that every other potential issue imaginable will be addressed in an effort to avoid confronting the issue of social inequality. In our most recent readings about KIPP and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation the new reason children seem to be failing is a lack of discipline. These schools have the goal of producing successful students through the implementation of a military based education system. In doing so these schools will help these students who "lack discipline."
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion this military approach is just another rhetorical tool in an effort to push for privatization. Unfortunately, the idea of black failing students "lacking discipline" is something that people will actually buy into and support. Further aiding the push for privatization. If you pair this ideal with words like "monopoly" when talking about the public school system it will be very easy to sway people towards the side of privatization. Add a few inspirational movies by a guy like Bill Gates, who has notoriously donated a lot of money towards charity , and the public school system never stood a chance.