Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Privatzing US Education


The billioinaire push to privatize education is in full swing.

Daily Kos
Walmart heirs pour more than $1 billion into reshaping American education
Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor

CNBC NetNet
Bad schools are 'eating our young': Blackstone CEO
Lawrence Delevingne

6 comments:

Ryan Harris said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ryan Harris said...

Surely the multi-trillion dollar edu-industrial complex system of schools and universities aren't threatened by a billion dollars of private research and lobbying? Unless they have something to hide. Granted Educational attainment accelerated after 1980 and incomes stagnated. Correlation does not equal causation even though it does create grave doubt that at the macro level higher levels of education created higher levels of income for society. Clearly the proposition for society to "invest in education" doesn't make sense if the goal is to "lift all boats." It is more of a zero-sum or possibly even negative sum solution. It doesn't appear that a couple years of college are vastly more important than the mandatory 12 years of education prior. When there is evidence of a race to the bottom, as we see in education, it is governments responsibility to reign in the excesses. The problem of course is that edu-industrial complex has captured the political system and media. To even suggest that further increases in investment in education aren't warranted is almost heretical and causes furor. I don't see why there is resistance to improving on poor performance. Gates, Waltons, and others have good reason to believe the educational system doesn't live up to it's promise and to work to improve the system. They after all stand to benefit the most from incomes rising at the bottom while the university professors do best when... people are unemployed and rushing back to university.

Peter Pan said...

Privatizing education = privatizing job training.

I agree that job training should be the responsibility of private industry. That could be seen as the American Way versus the system in Germany, where government, business and unions cooperate to develop their workforce.

'Education' is the responsibility of the individual. The classroom setting, along with anachronistic teaching methods, are unsuitable for a large segment of the population. Informal methods of learning should be encouraged, and supported by the public.

Tom Hickey said...

"Correlation does not equal causation even though it does create grave doubt that at the macro level higher levels of education created higher levels of income for society."

Is the chief objective of education higher income or higher income for society or is it individual self-actualization, democracy, and a higher level of civilization?

Turning public utilities like education and health care into businesses is to emphasize quantity like income over quality like self-actualization and high civilization.

America may have done very well so far quantitatively as the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation, but has it lived up to its promise qualitatively by unfolding the potential of liberal democracy, which it instituted in its founding documents, or has it created high civilization? I think not.

I am not defending the present educational system, which I view a seriously off-track. However, I don't see the answer coming from privatization. Business people are about the last people to ask about liberal education.

May revisit people like John Dewey and Abraham Maslow?

Ryan Harris said...

Is the chief objective of education higher income or higher income for society or is it individual self-actualization, democracy, and a higher level of civilization?

I know the question was sort of rhetorical, but probably a mix of both objectives. A peacock-feather game is part of the mix -- to better our chances in the herd -- get a good job, good life, good mating prospects over peers.
The idea of mental enlightenment should be the overriding public interest in education, given diminishing economic returns on investment.

Patterns of antisocial behavior and elitism in policy that have emerged from the Educational class are disturbing whereby people tend to view education as an innate advantage and those without are subhuman and less deserving of the benefits of government subsidy and protection. To me, the sense of entitlement and assumption of stupidity of everyone else is sort of the ugly mirror image of the opposite end of the spectrum which is the ignorance of Cliven Bundy sort of mindset. Both are blind to a huge range of possibilities and value of humanity.

Tom Hickey said...

In my experience a great limitation in education is that only the elite and smartest of the rest should get a liberal education, and everyone else should be prepared for a job. It smacks of the day when only the elite had the leisure to educate themselves and then considered themselves to be the only ones educated enough to lead owing to the breadth and depth of their knowledge. That's a bunch of crap.