Ed Weick said:
> I have no problem with the state being in the welfare business, the
> education business, the health business, etc., etc. In fact, I
> believe these things are its business, and should be paid for by a
> fair, progressive tax system.
What he said.
> I personally deplore the current ideologically based campaign to
> weaken, erode and destroy many of the good services that the modern
> state has come to operate over the past two centuries.
So do I.
> It's almost as though educating children has been placed in the same
> category as selling junk at Walmart.
Just so. You might find this interesting:
http://eserver.org/clogic/4-1/levidow.html
Prospective students are represented as customers/markets in order
to justify commodifying [1] educational services. Knowledge becomes a
product for individual students to consume, rather than a
collaborative process for students and teachers. Individualized
learning both promotes and naturalizes life-long re-skilling for a
flexibilized, fragmented, insecure labour market. By standardizing
course materials, moreover, administrators can reduce teachers to
software-writers or even replace them with subcontractors. Through
ICT, neoliberal agendas take the apparently neutral form of
greater access and flexible delivery. In all these ways,
student-teacher relations are reified as relations between things,
e.g. between consumers and providers of software.
The author (Les Levidow) is writing about postsecondary education but
the people whose university education is situated in a context of
commoditized edu-product will be the next generation of teachers,
curriculum developers and school adminitrators for earlier education.
And the management superstructure, embodying an ex-cathedra philosophy
which has (as far as I can tell) emanated from Columbia Teacher's
College over the last 50 years, is already in place almost everywhere.
- Mike
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[1] OT, cranky whine: I detest the construct "commodification". It
should be "commoditization". [2]
[2] It has been said that footnotes in email are pretentious. :-)
---
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/
