Perhaps you're confusing markets with "corporate capitalism" or some
other ideology. Markets are a more basic social creature; most societies
have long had them. Markets begin by noting people are inherently
unequal in complementary ways (farmers have lettuce but no cash; city
folks have cash but no lettuce). By going to the market, you tend to get
the same deal everyone else does. But markets can have both egalitarian
and inegalitarian effects.
Don't mistake "markets" as a synonym for "private profit". All sorts of
entities are in a marketplace. There is a gigantic market for colleges
and universities, very few of which are for profit. Governments compete
with each other too. Philadelphia competes with Lower Merion, and the
two of them together compete with Metropolitan Atlanta.
Complaining about the market is like complaining about the weather (aka
"the atmosphere"). Everybody does it, but nobody wants to try living
entirely without it.
Applying markets to mass education is complicated, but it too has a long
history. Still, schooling has long been seen as a public good. In that
sense, it must be egalitarian: each citizen deserves an equal stake from
society as he or she sets off as a young adult.
Yet the job of schools is also to sort and grade: measuring inequality.
How can they stop doing so? At the very least, there is passing and
failing. Since schools grade pupils, presumably for their own good, then
it's hard to understand why schools should be harmed by a taste of their
own medicine.
-- Tony
in general, the idea behind markets is that not everyone is equal, and
in fact not everyone is supposed to be equal. the idea of markets is
to cast citizens into the role of unequal competitors; the aim of
markets is to preserve that inequality.
that's the mud being thrown at public education.
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
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