12-31-2016, 01:51 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2016, 01:59 AM by Eric the Green.)
(12-30-2016, 07:04 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-30-2016, 06:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(12-30-2016, 05:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:(12-30-2016, 02:32 PM)TeacherinExile Wrote: The ideological support for privatization rests largely on the specious premise that the "market knows best." But we now have much evidence to the contrary when it comes to introducing a profit motive into the delivery of common goods: education, utilities, national defense, and so on. Think of the bankruptcies of not a few for-profit charter schools and universities; think of the tainted water (lead)scandal in Flint, MI.
That bad private schools go bankrupt rather than sticking around and miseducating more kids as bad public schools do is a good thing, not a bad thing, and illustrates exactly why education is an area where the market would work better. The Flint water supply was also publicly run; privatization couldn't have made things worse there, and might have made them better.
The reason the Flint water supply was bad, is that Michigan voters fell for neo-liberalism (as they did on Nov.8), and elected a Republican governor. The Republican Party is the neo-liberal party, which means that public services like water supply is not their priority, and so Snyder and co. made the wrong decisions.
Giving education to the market is to ensure that only rich people get educated. As George Carlin pointed out, that's just what the neo-liberal bosses want.
Public schools worked well when they were valued, before the neo-liberal era.
Public schools worked well when women were shut out of the vast majority of careers, and were expected to accept being underpaid in those that were available, such as teaching in public schools, so those schools could have their pick of smart women that made good school teachers.
That's no longer true today, and I suspect that you don't advocate going back to shutting women back out of other careers any more than I do.
The benefits of having a market in schooling and the benefits of universal schooling could easily be combined by replacing public schools with voucher systems.
As for Flint, I'd argue that it was the result of Progressive governments in Flint and Detroit, but your argument that it was a neoliberalism issue is at least not obviously false. The argument that it's specifically a privatization issue, on the other hand, is just plain bogus.
Neo-liberalism and the trickle-down theory devalues public service as "theft from taxpayers to benefit freeloaders." The water supply was not being privatized, but it was being neglected and underfunded in accordance with Republican philosophy.
The idea that public education is poor now because less women are available now is a new one on me. I think though that with automation and outsourcing, the labor shortage more than makes up for the alleged lack of women.
Neo-liberalism starves public education with the aim of privatizing it, and that's what vouchers are all about. Education is not a business enterprise, so I am dubious about any benefits of free-market approaches to it. Making it into a profit-making enterprise distorts the purpose of education, in my opinion. Being a teacher is a public service, not a corporate ladder opportunity. I would call using taxpayers money to finance for-profit educational institutions through vouchers "crony capitalism" and corporate welfare. Also, in these for-proft schools, there is a lot of emphasis on advertising to kids. That should not happen in our schools. Education is a public enterprise that provides opportunities for children to grow and live and learn how to think, feel and create. Commercializing everything reduces all values to the value of money. But money has no value in itself.
I wouldn't say all private schools are bad. But they are more expensive, operate for a profit rather than service, and are often religion-based, which may keep students in a narrowly-based and outdated worldview. Private schools generally do not cater to poor children. But that's whose education needs to be improved. The progressive view sees education, like health care, as more of a right than a business opportunity-- which is how reactionary, Establishment neo-liberalism sees it.