Education as a Commodity

I teach a course on adolescence at a nearby university, exploring the various challenges and rewards that new teachers will encounter in the middle and high school classrooms. In addition to the university's computerized evaluations, I always hand out my own feedback and evaluation form near the end of the semester. Amidst the many positive comments and suggestions, one negative evaluation stood out. Of course I wondered who wrote this and I imagined it was the class grump. One tries to be professional, to reflect on what was learned from the overall feedback. But, of course, it is easy to obsess, to keep coming back to the negative one.

What the student had to say was interesting. "I was looking back at my expenses this semester and I calculated that I pay $150 for each class session I have. Sometimes I wonder. . . . was it worth $150 for me to attend a movie (The Class) with you and chat about it afterwards? Did I get my $150 worth when we did that artifact share activity?"

Talk about pressure. I worried that I would have to toss out lots of things: community building activities, student sharing, open-ended exploration, field trips -- even jokes, for God's sake. I had to come up with $150 worth of knowledge for each 2 ½ hour class! This worried me further because I felt that some of the knowledge came from the experiences we went through, not just from some random facts about teens that I could download.

One day as I continued to be troubled by this feedback it dawned on me: I should do my own calculation. Let's see: I get paid approximately $200 for each class I conduct (which must include class time and lots of preparation, reading, responding to journals, etc.). Hmm, let's see...with 20 students, I'm actually getting only $10 from each student for each class session I deliver. Ten stinking dollars! Hey, a field trip or a group discussion would be cheap at half the price. But then I'm thinking: who got the other $140 that the student ponied up? The university, obviously. Surely they need it to maintain the buildings, to pay the president a "competitive" salary, to...well, whatever they do with it. But now I'm mad at the student. "Hey, buddy," I'm thinking, "Don't lay that on me. Talk to your university. They're screwing us both over."

Of course, when I was in college, it was only $200 in fees for a whole semester. We had plenty of things to be angry about but $150 a class was not one of them. There has always been a problem with the idea of education as a thing, an object that gets passed over to the student. It's embedded in the language, even in terms like "to teach" and "to deliver" a lesson -- it's all transmission, all downloading. But all the best educational experiences go outside this box, make something really happen, including deep, complex, and critical thinking, exploration, and reflection.

In the hands of the neo-liberals, the schools are less about learning and more about certification, the blessing of those who can afford it with a piece of paper that says they are qualified to hold the more privileged positions in society. Education is not seen as a public good -- it is a private benefit that can be purchased in the marketplace. It's a system for handing down privileges to the next generation while masking as a meritocracy. Them what has, gets.

The idealist in me says we should not just try to reform this mess. Perhaps we should step outside the wall in order to let the good stuff, the real education, happen. This will take some imagination and courage but what do we have to lose? I'll collect that $10 from each of you at the door.

Comments

[mainemichael]

Go deeper.

Any industry can be analyzed as follows: Who is Labor? Who is Management? What is the






















Go Deepter.

Any industry can be analyzed by using a simple system: who is labor, who is management, what is the product?

This system is clear and simple. Except when applied to institutionalized education.

Students think they are labor, Faculty is management, and a Diploma is the product.

Faculty think they are labor, Administration is management, and Educated Students are the product.

Administration thinks they are labor, the hierarchical system (Chancello­r/Presiden­t/Vice Presidents/etc)is management, and a bigger/richer/more prestigious school is the product.

You see the difficulties. A wise man once poinnted out to me that any great idea comes from a great individual (say Clara Barton, founder of the nursing corps during the civil war) and quickly gathers support and volunteers. After a while the volunteers want to formalize things so that the work will continue after the death of the founder. So they institutionalize. And immediately the #1 concern of that institution is its own survival, not the founder's original idea.

I have no solution, just an inclination to keep things small, flexible, decentralized, and with a lot of variety available.

[Kurt Xyst]

Rick's on to something. Most people have subscribed to the "education as service" model without really thinking it through. Contemporary educational theory, pedagogy, psychology, etc. established a few decades ago that the "banking" model of learning (i.e. student opens head, prof pours in knowledge, student exchanges said deposit on the job market for a salary) is incorrect. This can be quickly realized by trying to cash out Rick's comment from above: what does "$150 worth of knowledge" even mean?

Evaluation in education is critical but it when it's allowed to drop down to the lowest common denominator (economic), it quickly loses it's value.

[iridium53]

Aren't you a little long in the tooth to finally come to the realization that service providers - and that's what educators are - are evaluated just like others?

Every consultant, lawyer, doctor, accountant, engineer, plumber - you name it - that you've taught over the years is evaluated by their customers that way.

Perhaps more "educators" should come to the realization that they may be perceived as wasting a lot of their students' time. Providing very little value for that investment of time and money.

[gaja]

Evaluated, yes, but trying to "quantify" everything is what gets us into trouble in this country... Evaluating a teacher's utility this way is like saying I'm going to evaluate a psychologist based on the number and % of students that he cures... Sounds good in theory, but then, there are different definitions of "curing someone" just like there are different ways to define whether a child has been "educated" or not. In other words, t's not all about test scores... And what if a psychologist or a teacher is doing his best work when he works with the "hopeless cases" --the ones that are the most difficult to handle... Should he be downgraded or discouraged from doing this because it ruins his "stats?" This is what is happening to a lot of good teachers today who are working in terrible conditions... So, yes, teachers always need to re-evaluate whether they are meeting the needs of their students, but in this case --there's no simple calculation that can be made to determine that...