[Debate] (Fwd) Resisting education-commodification (Chomsky)

[Patrick Bond]

*http://truth-out.org/news/item/8305-the-assault-on-public-education

*
*Truthout | Op-Ed                                           04 April 2012

The Assault on Public Education

By Noam Chomsky*

Public education is under attack around the world, and in response, 
student protests have recently been held in Britain, Canada, Chile, 
Taiwan and elsewhere.

California is also a battleground. The Los Angeles Times reports on 
another chapter in the campaign to destroy what had been the greatest 
public higher education system in the world: "California State 
University officials announced plans to freeze enrollment next spring at 
most campuses and to wait-list all applicants the following fall pending 
the outcome of a proposed tax initiative on the November ballot."

Similar defunding is under way nationwide. "In most states," The New 
York Times reports, "it is now tuition payments, not state 
appropriations, that cover most of the budget," so that "the era of 
affordable four-year public universities, heavily subsidized by the 
state, may be over."

Community colleges increasingly face similar prospects – and the 
shortfalls extend to grades K-12.

"There has been a shift from the belief that we as a nation benefit from 
higher education, to a belief that it's the people receiving the 
education who primarily benefit and so they should foot the bill," 
concludes Ronald G. Ehrenberg, a trustee of the State University system 
of New York and director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.

A more accurate description, I think, is "Failure by Design," the title 
of a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, which has long been 
a major source of reliable information and analysis on the state of the 
economy.

The EPI study reviews the consequences of the transformation of the 
economy a generation ago from domestic production to financialization 
and offshoring. By design; there have always been alternatives.

One primary justification for the design is what Nobel laureate Joseph 
Stiglitz called the "religion" that "markets lead to efficient 
outcomes," which was recently dealt yet another crushing blow by the 
collapse of the housing bubble that was ignored on doctrinal grounds, 
triggering the current financial crisis.

Claims are also made about the alleged benefits of the radical expansion 
of financial institutions since the 1970s. A more convincing description 
was provided by Martin Wolf, senior economic correspondent for The 
Financial Times: "An out-of-control financial sector is eating out the 
modern market economy from inside, just as the larva of the spider wasp 
eats out the host in which it has been laid."

The EPI study observes that the "Failure of Design" is class-based. For 
the designers, it has been a stunning success, as revealed by the 
astonishing concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent, in fact the 
top 0.1 percent, while the majority has been reduced to virtual 
stagnation or decline.

In short, when they have the opportunity, "the Masters of Mankind" 
pursue their "vile maxim" [ all for ourselves and nothing for other 
people," as Adam Smith explained long ago.

Mass public education is one of the great achievements of American 
society. It has had many dimensions. One purpose was to prepare 
independent farmers for life as wage laborers who would tolerate what 
they regarded as virtual slavery.

The coercive element did not pass without notice. Ralph Waldo Emerson 
observed that political leaders call for popular education because they 
fear that "This country is filling up with thousands and millions of 
voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats." But 
educated the right way: Limit their perspectives and understanding, 
discourage free and independent thought, and train them for obedience.

The "vile maxim" and its implementation have regularly called forth 
resistance, which in turn evokes the same fears among the elite. Forty 
years ago there was deep concern that the population was breaking free 
of apathy and obedience.

At the liberal internationalist extreme, the Trilateral Commission – the 
nongovernmental policy group from which the Carter Administration was 
largely drawn – issued stern warnings in 1975 that there is too much 
democracy, in part due to the failures of the institutions responsible 
for "the indoctrination of the young." On the right, an important 1971 
memorandum by Lewis Powell, directed to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 
the main business lobby, wailed that radicals were taking over 
everything – universities, media, government, etc. – and called on the 
business community to use its economic power to reverse the attack on 
our prized way of life – which he knew well. As a lobbyist for the 
tobacco industry, he was quite familiar with the workings of the nanny 
state for the rich that he called "the free market."

Since then, many measures have been taken to restore discipline. One is 
the crusade for privatization – placing control in reliable hands.

Another is sharp increases in tuition, up nearly 600 percent since 1980. 
These produce a higher education system with "far more economic 
stratification than is true of any other country," according to Jane 
Wellman, former director of the Delta Cost Project, which monitors these 
issues. Tuition increases trap students into long-term debt and hence 
subordination to private power.

Justifications are offered on economic grounds, but are singularly 
unconvincing. In countries rich to poor, including Mexico next-door, 
tuition remains free or nominal. That was true as well in the United 
States itself when it was a much poorer country after World War II and 
huge numbers of students were able to enter college under the GI bill – 
a factor in uniquely high economic growth, even putting aside the 
significance in improving lives.

Another device is the corporatization of the universities. That has led 
to a dramatic increase in layers of administration, often professional 
instead of drawn from the faculty as before; and to imposition of a 
business culture of "efficiency" – an ideological notion, not just an 
economic one.

One illustration is the decision of state colleges to eliminate programs 
in nursing, engineering and computer science, because they are costly – 
and happen to be the professions where there is a labor shortage, as The 
New York Times reports. The decision harms the society but conforms to 
the business ideology of short-term gain without regard for human 
consequences, in accord with the vile maxim.

Some of the most insidious effects are on teaching and monitoring. The 
Enlightenment ideal of education was captured in the image of education 
as laying down a string that students follow in their own ways, 
developing their creativity and independence of mind.

The alternative, to be rejected, is the image of pouring water into a 
vessel – and a very leaky one, as all of us know from experience. The 
latter approach includes teaching to test and other mechanisms that 
destroy students' interest and seek to fit them into a mold, easily 
controlled. All too familiar today.

© 2012 Noam Chomsky
Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate
Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky's new book is "Making the Future: Occupations, 
Interventions, Empire and Resistance,'' a collection of his columns for 
The New York Times Syndicate. Chomsky is emeritus professor of 
linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
in Cambridge, Mass.
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