Buyer Beware!

The way to tell if a for-profit enterprise is successful is to look to see if it's turning a profit. And just so we're clear, we're talking about money. 

For instance, the way to know if a television manufacturer is successful is whether or not it makes money. The quality of the actual TV set is immaterial: if they can persuade enough people to buy one, even if they break down a week after the warranty expires, they are a successful for-profit company. The argument, of course, is that this company won't stay in business very long if they gain a reputation for defective merchandise, and I suppose that's true, but that doesn't mean that they can't enjoy years of profit in the meantime. Success!

Or how about that for-profit hospital? The quality of health care is immaterial: if they can persuade enough sick or injured people to check themselves in, even if most of them never get better, or even die, they are a successful for-profit company. Again, a reputation for dead patients will ultimately hurt the bottom line, but in the meantime . . . Woo hoo! 

That's how the so-called invisible hand is supposed to protect us all in the fantasy world of free market capitalism. Eventually, if the "product" is bad, customers will just take their business elsewhere. Meanwhile, "buyer beware!" Blame yourself for those TV programs you missed. Blame yourself for the death of that loved one. You should have done better research before trusting those for-profit businesses. These neo-Calvinist evangelists say, Blame yourself! because if you blame the holy capitalist system you are a sinner-communist. 

I am not a communist. Nor, at least, am I the kind of sinner that kills people for money: that requires a particularly horrific brand of sociopathy. Neither will I label myself a capitalist, at least as long as it requires, as it does today, a blind faith in this deeply flawed economic model.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. ~Abraham Maslow

Capitalism may well serve some of our lower level needs, like building televisions, but when it comes to things that matter like health care or food or education, it can only result in tragedy. What they're banking on is that the tragedy is so slow-motion that no one notices until they've extracted their profits: success!

I was inspired today by Gail Collins' recent New York Times op-ed piece entitled A Very Pricey Pineapple, in which she discusses the rush to privatize public education.

It's not just the (standardized) tests. No Child Left Behind has created a system of pubic-funded charter schools, a growing number of which are run by for-profit companies. Some of them are completely online, with kids getting their lessons at home via computer. The academic results can be abysmal, but on the plus side -- definitely no classroom crowding issues.

The "leader" (i.e., the corporation that has been the most successful in profiting from our tax-payer funded schools) in this drive toward corporatizing education is a company call Pearson Education.

Its lobbyists include the guy who served as the top White House liaison with Congress on drafting the No Child law. It has its own nonprofit foundation that sends state education commissioners on free trips overseas to contemplate school reform . . . An American child could go to a public school run by Pearson, study from books produced by Pearson, while his or her progress is evaluated by Pearson standardized tests. The only public participant in the show would be the taxpayer. 

Lest you doubt the size and power of these guys, they make nearly $100 million per year off just one testing contract with the state of Texas. And this is an international company. I spent some time going through their website this morning and found myself clicking through the "Careers" section. It doesn't appear that they hire teachers: most of the job offerings seemed to be for sales people and testing experts, jobs being "sold" to prospects with the line: 

Pearson has one defining goal: the help people progress in their lives through learning.

This is either a lie or their stockholders have cause to sue. Pearson is a for-profit corporation. By definition their "one defining goal" is to make as big a profit as possible. And that profit must come at the expense of our public schools. Buyer beware!

What the corporation called Pearson is selling is an unproven batch of "education products," products designed to turn a tidy profit, while education is, at best, a secondary concern. If education were really the "defining goal" (and it simply can't be so long as we're talking about a for-profit enterprise) there would be no standardized tests, no standardized curricula, no for-profit charter schools, no online schools, and a minimal use of technology in the classroom, at least in the early years. If Pearson was really selling education it would be advocating for things like "portfolio-based" student assessment, a project/inquiry based curricula, increased funding for public schools (to be used, among other things, for advanced teacher training and smaller class sizes), and stronger partnerships with the parents of their students. This is what Pearson would be selling if education really were their "defining goal," because these are the things that actual research, performed over the past century, has shown leads to the best educated children. What they are actually selling, like all for-profit corporations, is stuff that is profitable. Period.

I know we've spent the last 30 or so years deregulating business, but certainly we still have child labor laws. It's hard not to see companies like Pearson as amoral enterprises set up specifically to make money off the labor of our children. You think that's hyperbole?  Most public schools, their administrators, and teachers are now rewarded and punished based upon the performance of students on standardized tests which are created, administered, graded, and evaluated by private for-profit corporations. How do all the adults in this system benefit? By working the kids harder, making them memorize more, drilling them, focusing them not on what they want or need to know, but on what will appear on these computer-graded tests. This is not education, this is labor, and the defining goal of this labor is profit for Pearson's stockholders. And the children's pay: a degraded education hardly worthy of the name.

Now I realize that by publishing this post, I've guaranteed I'll never work for a for-profit education company and if they, as is apparently the current plan coming out of state houses around the country, wind up taking over our educational system, I'll be looking for a new profession. You see, I'm attempting to speak the truth as I see it, and there is little room for that in corporations, which are, after all, privately run dictatorships allowed to operate here in the midst of our democracy. And perhaps more than anything else, this is what convinces me that for-profit companies should never be entrusted with education: the bottom line of education is truth, even if it undermines profit. Corporate education cannot allow that.

If we are going to stop the slow-motion tragedy of the privatization of public education, we must find a way to step back from these free-market fantasies, and re-embrace the promises of democracy, people working together toward a better world, rather than fighting amongst ourselves for a greasy buck. And we better do it soon or it will be too late. Already, large portions of our public education system are in the hands of profiteers, and what we see now is just the tip of the iceberg. Billions are being diverted away from our schools every year and into these corporations, who are answerable only to their stockholders. Buyer beware!  Already the only recourse many of us have is to whine, because we are in no position to take our business elsewhere.

With all its imperfections, public education -- owned, operated, and answerable to we the people -- is still the best way to educate our children. For-profit corporations have no role here. If we will keep it, it's going to take teachers and parents working together, in the great tradition of our democracy, to fight back against corporate education, to advocate for our children, the citizens of tomorrow. 

This way lies the only real success, the kind that is measured in the coin meaningful, productive lives which is the bottom line of a democratic education. 

Talk to your friends and neighbors! Share this post! Share Ms. Collins op-ed piece! Call and write your state and federal representatives! Attend your next school board meeting! Get active in the PTA! These are the things we do to make a democracy work.

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