O_O

[oyceter]

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education... Being largely protected from consumer choice, almost all public supermarkets would be worse than private ones. In poor counties the quality of public supermarkets would be downright abysmal. Poor people—entitled in principle to excellent supermarkets—would in fact suffer unusually poor supermarket quality.

via WSJ editorial, via owlectomy

I just. Sometimes I feel like a snot for assuming people know things, because god knows my learning curve has been very steep and is still going, but other times, all I can say is O_O. WHUT.

(Okay, this is where I admit having a Tumblr might be useful, since that was too long for Twitter and feels too short for a single blog post. But I Luddite-ly cling to my blog, because I like typing! A lot! My opinions, I show you them!)

Comments

[nojojojo]

What gets me, beside the utter batshittery of what he thinks the free market does for poor people's supermarkets -- good grief, that crap alone gave me flashbacks on the A&P near my grandma's house, which offered half an aisle of sodas, cheap Kool-Aid ripoffs that contained oil as one of the top ingredients, and Sunny Delight, but NO ACTUAL FUCKING JUICE --

-- I'm boggled by the utter stupidity of his comparison from a business standpoint. I know it's the same "let's apply business principles to education!" schtick that the wealthy so often want to impose on the poor (never their own kids, note; they spare no expense for them), but there's such a glaring problem with this logic that I'm amazed it continues to get traction. In the product development lifecycle, research and development is a necessary investment. If you consider the product that might result worthy and potentially lucrative, you put money into R&D. It's usually a good investment as long as the outcome is reasonably assured -- tax deductable, even. Skimp on R&D and you usually get a shitty product, and the company dies.

Education is not the product in America; education is the R&D. The product, if you want to get all businessy, isn't even the students; it's what those students will later produce. And what well-educated students produce IS A THRIVING COUNTRY. All these assholes applying business models to education aren't just doin' education rong, they're doin' business and democracy rong too.

...But I am increasingly convinced that democracy isn't what they want, at the end of the day. So I suppose that from their perspective, they're doing it exactly right.

[natlyn]

Education is not the product in America; education is the R&D. The product, if you want to get all businessy, isn't even the students; it's what those students will later produce. And what well-educated students produce IS A THRIVING COUNTRY.

Word.

[bibliofile]

Yes, this. So much.

[yeloson]

This, so much this.

I keep remembering a story about Toyota considering opening a plant in South Carolina or Toronto- S. Carolina offered them FIVE YEARS WITHOUT TAXES, if they opened the plant.

They did the math and realized the tax offset wouldn't be worth the cost it would take to train the workers in the US- they were comparing high school grads from the US to high school grads in Canada, and the quality difference was so great, they realized it wouldn't just cost them now, but continually as they replaced workers.