Milton Friedman Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

ABSTRACT: The task of creating a public will is daunting in any political system, but a democracy dedicated to the principles of participation and public deliberation faces specific challenges, including overcoming organized opposition that may not accept democratic tenets. In the sphere of eduction (and social reproduction more generally), business influenced movements to reform public education question many of the established goals and norms of democratic education and thus may be the vanguard of such opposition. In order to interpret and explore these movements, this article enlists Amy Gutmann's work as a heuristic device. In so doing, it looks at both the task of instituting a unified public school system and organized opposition to this task within the context of a democratic polity and its deliberative processes.
Since the 1980s education policy in the US has been increasingly influenced by business interests and ideologies. Examples include accountability regimes based on standardized tests, public asset privatization (such as Charter Schools), performance pay (sometimes referred to as merit pay), the importation of business 'best practices,' changes in labor relations, changing systems of evaluation, an advocacy of administrative autonomy (as opposed to teacher autonomy) and a more away from civics education, physical education, arts education and music education.1 These are intertwined and for the most part have a common political lineage; they are based on market emulation models which promote hierarchical authority structures, lessen professional teacher autonomy and at the same time also provide opportunities for private entities to make profits in the public education sector.
What is striking is that, since the 1980s, the form that influence takes, the positions that business takes and the authority that business wields, can plausibly be interpreted as a direct response to Amy Gutmann's Democratic Education (1987), perhaps as an attempt to refute its premises and principles. Rather than a discourse on the problematic of education in a democratic society, however, there is an emphasis on evaluation systems devised by outside experts, concepts of merit and the promotion of administrative autonomy vis-a-vis teachers.
Specifically, significant aspects of the pro-market education reform movement seem to closely and negatively correlate to the arguments she makes in favor of deliberative democracy and egalitarian social goals. Moreover, two principles that Gutmann says must not be abandoned --non-repression and non-discrimination-- are no longer reasons for revamping the system, but are addressed, if at all, not by core changes, but by programs appendant and appurtenant to the main. Finally –and potentially both more important and most intriguing--, there is an effort to recast the three sources of authority which Gutmann holds are foundational in education: parents, the state and professionals.
Gutmann's analysis of parents, the State, and professional educators as the three sources of authority in education, seems to provide a playbook for political action. This program consists of coopting parents via school choice, narrowing the State's mission, attacking and marginalizing educators; in addition, the profession is divided hierarchically, as tasks such as curriculum development fall to outside educational experts and exclude class room teachers. Accordingly, the article is an exploratory piece, a heuristic exercise that examines this lineage by tracing what might be regarded as an attempt to negate and counter the influence of Gutmann's work.
Thus, what I suggest, half as a conceit, half as a description –and only speculatively as an explanation of how ideological justifications are produced--, is that business influence manifests itself in contemporary education reform as a point by point rejection of Gutmann's central goals and seems determined to be systematic in their rejection of Gutmann's conclusions. One could call identifying this 'seeming' a hunch, but it is a hunch supported by evidence that points to such a pattern. There are different types of decision making. Consumers make decisions which are somewhat different in kind from the decisions a business makes and much different from the process of deliberative decision making in a democracy. A chief example is the set of business logics focused upon marketing products to different population segments; these have to do with the discovery of individual preferences and associated 'profit pools,' including behavioral triggers to get people to buy, not with collective decision making. This runs counter to the ideal of 'conscious social reproduction' in Gutmann and may reveal and clarify a diametric opposition between market based education and democratic education.
Overall, outcomes are based on the aggregation of individual projects. The motivations of business and the interests of investor classes cohere is such a manner as to advance policies that allow for the greatest freedom of action for owners, model the labor market so as to align with business needs and are, as a result, antithetical to liberal Democratic concerns.