On Classical and Egalitarian Principles in Education It has been suggested in recent public dialogues that we might resolve the current crisis in education by privatizing our public schools and allowing free market competition to improve the quality of what our children learn. In response to this suggestion, it was proposed in a preceding section that this route is likely to decrease, rather than increase the actual quality of education, and that, rather, we might reform our method of education toward justice by following the direction of children, rather than by leading them. Further, it seems certain that this interactive moral education would lead to a better functioning democracy, indeed, a new kind of 'politics' altogether, at least new to our age.
The chief objection to such a proposal would likely be that, without extrinsic reinforcers to motivate them, children will not learn, and schools would amount to nothing more than indoor play grounds. It is my view, on the other hand, that the reward of earned respect and positive regard, along with the sheer joy of learning for learning’s sake, is a more effective method of education than any we have yet experimented with. I will herein argue that we deeply underestimate human potential if we do not recognize the driving urge to self-improvement in our young. Those of us who doubt this need only observe the driving concentration of any Nintendo wiz, or the sweating enthusiasm of a whole arcade full of them. Sure, some might say, that’s the easy stuff, kids love it because its fun. To which anyone familiar with the effects of such a method as I’ve proposed would respond, why are we so sure that knowledge isn’t? We are paying only lip service to freedom and democracy until we realize this fundamental drive to growth and the violation of human dignity -- the original sin -- that such methods of education as extrinsic motivation and the lack of reinforcement for intrinsic motivation represent.
In this chapter I hope to show, firstly, how market freedom would deteriorate the quality of education, and secondly, what sort of freedom might ameliorate it. I will argue that “freedom” is a key value where educating the young is concerned, but that some conceptions of freedom, specifically, that of the classical liberal theory behind the free market approach, are little more than a formula for ever more mediocrity, and worse, a reinforcer for the status quo. However, I will also argue that there is a broader conception of freedom, one which follows directly from the classic liberal argument, despite their objections, which would promote quality in education, and would practically insure the conditions that give rise to excellence.
On Equality of Freedom as Justice in Education ‘A free man believes in his own responsibility for his own destiny.’ Who would argue with such a claim as this made by classical liberals? Not most of us, including egalitarian liberals; perhaps not even anarchists. And yet, it could be argued that “freedom” means more than the free-market liberal is willing to allow, and deserves a more honest evaluation than its chief proponent is willing to give it. This is especially true where the life of the mind is concerned. Egalitarian liberals are critically aware that not all in our present day system of free-market capitalism are free enough that they can feel confident that they alone are responsible for the conditions of their lives. There are many whose destiny is restricted by the injustices manifest when the free market runs amuck, and they cannot feel so sure that more freedom is what they need. Thus, as attractive as this principle of freedom is from the view of those who can make the best of it, if one looks at it from the underside, from the point of view of those who end up needing protection because of the few who have such excessive freedom as to actually be able to threaten the freedom of others, we can see that there are limits to this assumed right, which is to say, when it begins to infringe on the rights, and thus the freedoms of others. For instance, despite the theoretical existence of upward mobility in the free-market system, there are differences in advantage with regard to this and other benefits, and these differences are more often a difference in skin color, gender, age, etc., than a difference in intrinsic ability, talent, or willingness to work. The so-called “natural” workings of the market have a strange and decidedly unnatural bias toward the already privileged, who without government overview, would simply continue to make rules, decisions, and policies in the private world that do one thing before all others, i.e. protect privilege, and not so much of those who earn it, as of those who make the rules. At this point the classical liberal’s own claim that enough government is necessary to insure law and order comes into play, albeit in a way that the classical liberal would most likely strongly object to. One doesn’t have to like the current welfare system to admit, just the same, that some form of government assistance is necessary to protect the vulnerable and disadvantage from those privileged few who would indulge their freedom at the expense of the underprivileged. A propensity to “welfare economics” in egalitarian thought seems to reflect a concern for quality of life, not, as the classical liberal claims, an interest in centralization per se. It’s true, as the classical liberal points out, that histories great geniuses did not become so in response to government assistance, but how many of perhaps less genius, perhaps not, have been able to feed their children and get an education thanks to government intervention in the so-called natural market functions that would have restricted this freedom to the few who already have more than their fair share of advantages. Centralization is not a key value of those who care about justice, rather justice is the principle or criteria to which centralization is in some cases a means, and most would prefer another way, if another way would protect the interests of the vulnerable while maintaining the interests of the free. No matter how the classical liberal might object, if he or she believes in freedom, then he or she has to admit that the need and right to freedom has its compliment in security, for they are not free who are not secure. This is necessary, the egalitarian liberal would argue, because the market does not value everything that matters, and more to the point, punishes some things that shouldn’t.
I would suggest that such a selective application of principles to fit only those cases that are in his or her own interests is a fundamental flaw in the logic of classical liberalism. Rather than promote a form of freedom which actually only serves the few, we might ask the harder question of the theory we adopt for our system of education, economy, and politics -- what would genuine freedom actually mean?
We might find part of the answer to this query by looking deeper into the classical liberals own argument. For instance, the pure capitalist objects to interfering in the natural workings of the market, claiming that it breaks up the flow in such a way as to throw off the balance necessary for its proper function. To this, a hearty egalitarian might respond, good, because the so-called natural flow is away from the needy and toward the greedy, who already have more than their share. The capitalist might come back that this is as it should be, for it’s people’s choices that cause it to be so. And here the egalitarian might stand the free-market capitalist up against the wall, for here is where freedom finds it’s deeper meaning. How can the classical liberal make such a claim, i.e. that we are free by virtue of uncoerced choices, in a social system poisoned by advertising? It is estimated that we spend something like four full weeks of every year watching, listening to, or reading commercial advertisements of one sort or another. Look to the psychological literature, and one will find that insecurity and neurosis born in large part of advertisings images plagues fifty to seventy percent of our population. Ask your best friend, your parents, or your teachers, and find that no one is immune to the manipulation of self and other regard managed by this grand scale effort -- an effort designed specifically to coerce choice. Thus, the egalitarian would charge that it’s not free choice at all by which our system is generated, for in a system which exercises advertising, choice itself is coerced. Advertising conditions wants that pass as needs, and thus, by the classical liberals own principles, interferes with choice in a way that undermines the natural workings of the market. Thus, an egalitarian who has thought it through to this point would have to argue that the free market actually interferes with freedom itself. It is thus a misnomer to say that government intervention interferes with freedom, as the classical liberal claims, when it is acting to interfere with interference itself. Rather, it only interferes with the right of self indulgence, which is to say, government regulation only interferes with the right of the already overindulgent to further infringe on the freedoms of the vulnerable.
By limiting the freedom of those who make others insecure, the egalitarian liberal would actually be promoting the value of freedom by encouraging the just distribution of it. It is important to remember that the limits of freedom come from natural law, i.e. moral law, not from big government. It is important for the classical liberal to hold to his own values and apply them across the board, for to say that “freedom is a rare and delicate plant,” and that “the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power” is a statement which must also be taken in its broadest meaning if it is to have any meaning at all. He is right to wonder how we can “keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?” Likewise, it is right for his egalitarian partner/opponent to wonder the same thing about big business, for the very problems that earlier centuries had with tyrannical government, we have today with tyrannical big business. Today, corporate power commits the same sins that government is accused of in classical liberal theory -- centralization of power and violation of individual freedom. And, unlike the classical liberal’s vision of decentralized power, today the possibility of simply “moving to another community” to escape these great powers will not be possible, not if the world becomes as the capitalist would have it, one economic community in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Thus, the classical liberal is right to claim that we need enough government to protect our freedom, but this principle, like all others, cannot fairly be selectively applied to fit only the cases that the benefit the classical liberal most. The private sector may indeed be a check on the powers of government, but conversely, government is a check on the powers of the private sector, or more specifically, those parts to which power accrues, i.e. the most aggressive.
Thus, the principle of freedom, in and of itself, is not enough to make the classical liberal argument hold, not when the goal of freedom for some creates a threat that actually limits the freedom of others. In the same way that government needs the market to keep it honest, the market needs government to keep it as true. It is not one or the other, but both that we need. Habituated as we are to thinking of them as mutually exclusive, neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism is the answer to our eco-political or educational dilemmas. What we need is a balance of freedom and equality, which is justice. This is a critical lesson to be understood if we are to overcome the problems we face, and their application to education is a good illustration of how this is true.
Classical liberalism was originally founded on a belief in the freedom and sovereign of individual self-determination, but has unfortunately grown into a system in which the freedom of some infringes on the freedom of others, violating the very principle upon which it was grounded, and the principle of justice as well. Likewise, the egalitarian liberal’s argument, which was founded on a belief in the equality of individuals, but has grown into a system in which equality is taken to mean sameness, rather than fairness. Rather, as was concluded in the preceding paper, excellence with regard to these principles means equality of freedom itself, which is equal to justice. Thus, justice will be the criteria for excellence in an interactive moral politico-economy, just as it would need to be in a interactive moral education system. Justice, in this case, means that they make the rules who have to live under them, which is essentially the “You cut, I’ll pick” idea. This idea is fundamentally decentralist, for all those who are affected by the consequences of freely made choices have their fair say in the decision making process. Politics, in this conception, is understood as to be interpersonal, rather than inter-group, meaning the one on one power equilibration between individuals. Likewise, economy is understood in more than material terms, but is rather respectful of the psychological realm which compliments the physical.
These together could prove conducive to a new conception of “human nature,” one which shows human being in their very best light. Recognizing humans to be vulnerable to unjust social conditions, we can admit that we are still and always capable of reaching our highest potentials. The freedom of self-determination by which the right of choices and the responsibility of consequences are equally distributed is the principle underlying a deep conception of eco-politics, as well as education, indeed, of human nature itself. If it helps, call it karma.
Regarding the debate between whether free market or egalitarian principles should rule our schools, we can see, again, that both are necessary for justice to obtain. Consider what would happen if our schools were put on the free market -- they would soon sell out to profit, and as in the case in other privatized markets, would produce the most profitable, rather than the highest quality education. So that Johnny and Jenny would learn skills that promote privilege, rather than skills that would promote character. A free market school system would have every incentive to reinforce the very human characteristics that make for such disparities in privilege, aggression, materialism, etc.. As long as this is what parents are willing to pay for, there’s no reason for schools to promote any mentality but the narrowest kind. Parents, offered more choice over their children’s education, would choose schools that cater to their particular biases, like fitness centers for yuppy kiddies, and bible schools for fundamentalists, and business schools for executives kids, and technical schools for the children of blue collar workers, and athletic auditoriums for wanna-be athletes...etc., etc., etc.. Would the cost of such privatization be broad based education?
Of course, the fear that private schools would end up selling-out for profit relies on a pessimistic view of humans, both reasonable and empirical in our modern world, considering how things actually happen in private industry -- where quality is less profitable than mediocrity. That the high cost of providing quality are foregone in the struggle to survive economically in the competitive world of selling education. What would probably happen, as too often does when these contrasting tensions go to work on a product, is that it is compromised internally while being pumped up externally, postured and advertised as better or more fulfilling or more genuine, all the while actually becoming more artificial, if only for an inability to live up to the image it creates. The truth is, despite advertising, that you won’t really end up on top of the world with this or that form of education, any more than you can see yourself in the shine of a certain dish soap. Creating an image of quality becomes the goal when products are privatized, and here advertising becomes the means of promoting that product, soaking up money that does not go toward higher quality, except in as much as the actual has to approximate the image close enough to not undermine or contradict it. Such is the state of quality control in most products.
The real control, were it to be exercised, is in individual choice, were it being manifest in the aggregating mechanism. But that choice, I will argue, is undermined and interfered with by the artificialization process that begins in the need to compete with other products, in this case other schools, thus compete for people’s attention, which cannot help but play on their insecurities and fears. Communication in pure images that can be highly emotionally manipulative becomes the real art that sells or does not sell a product, rather than the quality of the product itself. Now, when this occurs in education, it will mean less actual interest in the well-being of children and more actual interest in convincing parents about what’s good for their children. Picture it: “Parents, could this be your child in 20 years? Homeless, alone, unable to handle any but the most rudimentary of functions? Call now! The Savior-faire School of Elementary Business Sense” -- don’t bother poisoning your young with those useless liberal arts courses that will only make them question the value of a dollar! Just do it! Call now! Insure yourselves that this will not be your son or daughter starving from the lack of a good education!”
So what would the egalitarian do to remedy this? They would have this freedom balanced by the right to equal consideration, and thus would have education regulated by government, as it is, which allows far less, but still too much discrimination between individuals, albeit on the basis of some other differences than the differences in parents attitudes about education. The egalitarian would rightly claim that the freedom to choose is guaranteed by there being real choices, and thus, that there be government subsidized forms of education to provide alternatives to these cheesy schools, options which support forms of education that are not as profitable, and yet are of higher quality. The market simply does not value everything that matters, and thus, needs government to keep it honest.
Properly understood, the same education system could please both the classical and the equalitarian liberal, by holding justice as its operating principle, such that everyone has equal freedom. Not equality OR freedom, but both. It’s true that the typical liberal, classical or egalitarian, would be annoyed by this integration, since he wouldn’t get to qualify “freedom” or “equality” to mean only his own conception of it, at the expense of the other. But it would none the less hold true to the values and principles that each uses as support itsekf, so each would have to admit it, the same way that big business would have to admit responsibility for the failures of the market. It would be hard to get the classical liberal to agree to this because the policies that follow from such principles are closer to those an egalitarian would favor, such as regulation, subsidization, and no empty advertising, but while it would be an argument against privatized education that, without these limits, it would be corrupted. It would not mean that these limits would be enough to keep free market schools from degenerating. Rather, it simply shows three of perhaps many ways that a purely lassiez faire approach to education distribution could fail.
However, this does not mean that there is no place for such principles in education at all. Indeed, it may well be that these are exactly the principles that we ought to apply, but at a different level that we have thus far done so. Perhaps it is the child’s freedom of choice that we ought to be considering in earnest?
The chief objection to such a proposal would likely be that, without extrinsic reinforcers to motivate them, children will not learn, and schools would amount to nothing more than indoor play grounds. It is my view, on the other hand, that the reward of earned respect and positive regard, along with the sheer joy of learning for learning’s sake, is a more effective method of education than any we have yet experimented with. I will herein argue that we deeply underestimate human potential if we do not recognize the driving urge to self-improvement in our young. Those of us who doubt this need only observe the driving concentration of any Nintendo wiz, or the sweating enthusiasm of a whole arcade full of them. Sure, some might say, that’s the easy stuff, kids love it because its fun. To which anyone familiar with the effects of such a method as I’ve proposed would respond, why are we so sure that knowledge isn’t? We are paying only lip service to freedom and democracy until we realize this fundamental drive to growth and the violation of human dignity -- the original sin -- that such methods of education as extrinsic motivation and the lack of reinforcement for intrinsic motivation represent.
In this chapter I hope to show, firstly, how market freedom would deteriorate the quality of education, and secondly, what sort of freedom might ameliorate it. I will argue that “freedom” is a key value where educating the young is concerned, but that some conceptions of freedom, specifically, that of the classical liberal theory behind the free market approach, are little more than a formula for ever more mediocrity, and worse, a reinforcer for the status quo. However, I will also argue that there is a broader conception of freedom, one which follows directly from the classic liberal argument, despite their objections, which would promote quality in education, and would practically insure the conditions that give rise to excellence.
On Equality of Freedom as Justice in Education ‘A free man believes in his own responsibility for his own destiny.’ Who would argue with such a claim as this made by classical liberals? Not most of us, including egalitarian liberals; perhaps not even anarchists. And yet, it could be argued that “freedom” means more than the free-market liberal is willing to allow, and deserves a more honest evaluation than its chief proponent is willing to give it. This is especially true where the life of the mind is concerned. Egalitarian liberals are critically aware that not all in our present day system of free-market capitalism are free enough that they can feel confident that they alone are responsible for the conditions of their lives. There are many whose destiny is restricted by the injustices manifest when the free market runs amuck, and they cannot feel so sure that more freedom is what they need. Thus, as attractive as this principle of freedom is from the view of those who can make the best of it, if one looks at it from the underside, from the point of view of those who end up needing protection because of the few who have such excessive freedom as to actually be able to threaten the freedom of others, we can see that there are limits to this assumed right, which is to say, when it begins to infringe on the rights, and thus the freedoms of others. For instance, despite the theoretical existence of upward mobility in the free-market system, there are differences in advantage with regard to this and other benefits, and these differences are more often a difference in skin color, gender, age, etc., than a difference in intrinsic ability, talent, or willingness to work. The so-called “natural” workings of the market have a strange and decidedly unnatural bias toward the already privileged, who without government overview, would simply continue to make rules, decisions, and policies in the private world that do one thing before all others, i.e. protect privilege, and not so much of those who earn it, as of those who make the rules. At this point the classical liberal’s own claim that enough government is necessary to insure law and order comes into play, albeit in a way that the classical liberal would most likely strongly object to. One doesn’t have to like the current welfare system to admit, just the same, that some form of government assistance is necessary to protect the vulnerable and disadvantage from those privileged few who would indulge their freedom at the expense of the underprivileged. A propensity to “welfare economics” in egalitarian thought seems to reflect a concern for quality of life, not, as the classical liberal claims, an interest in centralization per se. It’s true, as the classical liberal points out, that histories great geniuses did not become so in response to government assistance, but how many of perhaps less genius, perhaps not, have been able to feed their children and get an education thanks to government intervention in the so-called natural market functions that would have restricted this freedom to the few who already have more than their fair share of advantages. Centralization is not a key value of those who care about justice, rather justice is the principle or criteria to which centralization is in some cases a means, and most would prefer another way, if another way would protect the interests of the vulnerable while maintaining the interests of the free. No matter how the classical liberal might object, if he or she believes in freedom, then he or she has to admit that the need and right to freedom has its compliment in security, for they are not free who are not secure. This is necessary, the egalitarian liberal would argue, because the market does not value everything that matters, and more to the point, punishes some things that shouldn’t.
I would suggest that such a selective application of principles to fit only those cases that are in his or her own interests is a fundamental flaw in the logic of classical liberalism. Rather than promote a form of freedom which actually only serves the few, we might ask the harder question of the theory we adopt for our system of education, economy, and politics -- what would genuine freedom actually mean?
We might find part of the answer to this query by looking deeper into the classical liberals own argument. For instance, the pure capitalist objects to interfering in the natural workings of the market, claiming that it breaks up the flow in such a way as to throw off the balance necessary for its proper function. To this, a hearty egalitarian might respond, good, because the so-called natural flow is away from the needy and toward the greedy, who already have more than their share. The capitalist might come back that this is as it should be, for it’s people’s choices that cause it to be so. And here the egalitarian might stand the free-market capitalist up against the wall, for here is where freedom finds it’s deeper meaning. How can the classical liberal make such a claim, i.e. that we are free by virtue of uncoerced choices, in a social system poisoned by advertising? It is estimated that we spend something like four full weeks of every year watching, listening to, or reading commercial advertisements of one sort or another. Look to the psychological literature, and one will find that insecurity and neurosis born in large part of advertisings images plagues fifty to seventy percent of our population. Ask your best friend, your parents, or your teachers, and find that no one is immune to the manipulation of self and other regard managed by this grand scale effort -- an effort designed specifically to coerce choice. Thus, the egalitarian would charge that it’s not free choice at all by which our system is generated, for in a system which exercises advertising, choice itself is coerced. Advertising conditions wants that pass as needs, and thus, by the classical liberals own principles, interferes with choice in a way that undermines the natural workings of the market. Thus, an egalitarian who has thought it through to this point would have to argue that the free market actually interferes with freedom itself. It is thus a misnomer to say that government intervention interferes with freedom, as the classical liberal claims, when it is acting to interfere with interference itself. Rather, it only interferes with the right of self indulgence, which is to say, government regulation only interferes with the right of the already overindulgent to further infringe on the freedoms of the vulnerable.
By limiting the freedom of those who make others insecure, the egalitarian liberal would actually be promoting the value of freedom by encouraging the just distribution of it. It is important to remember that the limits of freedom come from natural law, i.e. moral law, not from big government. It is important for the classical liberal to hold to his own values and apply them across the board, for to say that “freedom is a rare and delicate plant,” and that “the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power” is a statement which must also be taken in its broadest meaning if it is to have any meaning at all. He is right to wonder how we can “keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?” Likewise, it is right for his egalitarian partner/opponent to wonder the same thing about big business, for the very problems that earlier centuries had with tyrannical government, we have today with tyrannical big business. Today, corporate power commits the same sins that government is accused of in classical liberal theory -- centralization of power and violation of individual freedom. And, unlike the classical liberal’s vision of decentralized power, today the possibility of simply “moving to another community” to escape these great powers will not be possible, not if the world becomes as the capitalist would have it, one economic community in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Thus, the classical liberal is right to claim that we need enough government to protect our freedom, but this principle, like all others, cannot fairly be selectively applied to fit only the cases that the benefit the classical liberal most. The private sector may indeed be a check on the powers of government, but conversely, government is a check on the powers of the private sector, or more specifically, those parts to which power accrues, i.e. the most aggressive.
Thus, the principle of freedom, in and of itself, is not enough to make the classical liberal argument hold, not when the goal of freedom for some creates a threat that actually limits the freedom of others. In the same way that government needs the market to keep it honest, the market needs government to keep it as true. It is not one or the other, but both that we need. Habituated as we are to thinking of them as mutually exclusive, neither pure capitalism nor pure socialism is the answer to our eco-political or educational dilemmas. What we need is a balance of freedom and equality, which is justice. This is a critical lesson to be understood if we are to overcome the problems we face, and their application to education is a good illustration of how this is true.
Classical liberalism was originally founded on a belief in the freedom and sovereign of individual self-determination, but has unfortunately grown into a system in which the freedom of some infringes on the freedom of others, violating the very principle upon which it was grounded, and the principle of justice as well. Likewise, the egalitarian liberal’s argument, which was founded on a belief in the equality of individuals, but has grown into a system in which equality is taken to mean sameness, rather than fairness. Rather, as was concluded in the preceding paper, excellence with regard to these principles means equality of freedom itself, which is equal to justice. Thus, justice will be the criteria for excellence in an interactive moral politico-economy, just as it would need to be in a interactive moral education system. Justice, in this case, means that they make the rules who have to live under them, which is essentially the “You cut, I’ll pick” idea. This idea is fundamentally decentralist, for all those who are affected by the consequences of freely made choices have their fair say in the decision making process. Politics, in this conception, is understood as to be interpersonal, rather than inter-group, meaning the one on one power equilibration between individuals. Likewise, economy is understood in more than material terms, but is rather respectful of the psychological realm which compliments the physical.
These together could prove conducive to a new conception of “human nature,” one which shows human being in their very best light. Recognizing humans to be vulnerable to unjust social conditions, we can admit that we are still and always capable of reaching our highest potentials. The freedom of self-determination by which the right of choices and the responsibility of consequences are equally distributed is the principle underlying a deep conception of eco-politics, as well as education, indeed, of human nature itself. If it helps, call it karma.
Regarding the debate between whether free market or egalitarian principles should rule our schools, we can see, again, that both are necessary for justice to obtain. Consider what would happen if our schools were put on the free market -- they would soon sell out to profit, and as in the case in other privatized markets, would produce the most profitable, rather than the highest quality education. So that Johnny and Jenny would learn skills that promote privilege, rather than skills that would promote character. A free market school system would have every incentive to reinforce the very human characteristics that make for such disparities in privilege, aggression, materialism, etc.. As long as this is what parents are willing to pay for, there’s no reason for schools to promote any mentality but the narrowest kind. Parents, offered more choice over their children’s education, would choose schools that cater to their particular biases, like fitness centers for yuppy kiddies, and bible schools for fundamentalists, and business schools for executives kids, and technical schools for the children of blue collar workers, and athletic auditoriums for wanna-be athletes...etc., etc., etc.. Would the cost of such privatization be broad based education?
Of course, the fear that private schools would end up selling-out for profit relies on a pessimistic view of humans, both reasonable and empirical in our modern world, considering how things actually happen in private industry -- where quality is less profitable than mediocrity. That the high cost of providing quality are foregone in the struggle to survive economically in the competitive world of selling education. What would probably happen, as too often does when these contrasting tensions go to work on a product, is that it is compromised internally while being pumped up externally, postured and advertised as better or more fulfilling or more genuine, all the while actually becoming more artificial, if only for an inability to live up to the image it creates. The truth is, despite advertising, that you won’t really end up on top of the world with this or that form of education, any more than you can see yourself in the shine of a certain dish soap. Creating an image of quality becomes the goal when products are privatized, and here advertising becomes the means of promoting that product, soaking up money that does not go toward higher quality, except in as much as the actual has to approximate the image close enough to not undermine or contradict it. Such is the state of quality control in most products.
The real control, were it to be exercised, is in individual choice, were it being manifest in the aggregating mechanism. But that choice, I will argue, is undermined and interfered with by the artificialization process that begins in the need to compete with other products, in this case other schools, thus compete for people’s attention, which cannot help but play on their insecurities and fears. Communication in pure images that can be highly emotionally manipulative becomes the real art that sells or does not sell a product, rather than the quality of the product itself. Now, when this occurs in education, it will mean less actual interest in the well-being of children and more actual interest in convincing parents about what’s good for their children. Picture it: “Parents, could this be your child in 20 years? Homeless, alone, unable to handle any but the most rudimentary of functions? Call now! The Savior-faire School of Elementary Business Sense” -- don’t bother poisoning your young with those useless liberal arts courses that will only make them question the value of a dollar! Just do it! Call now! Insure yourselves that this will not be your son or daughter starving from the lack of a good education!”
So what would the egalitarian do to remedy this? They would have this freedom balanced by the right to equal consideration, and thus would have education regulated by government, as it is, which allows far less, but still too much discrimination between individuals, albeit on the basis of some other differences than the differences in parents attitudes about education. The egalitarian would rightly claim that the freedom to choose is guaranteed by there being real choices, and thus, that there be government subsidized forms of education to provide alternatives to these cheesy schools, options which support forms of education that are not as profitable, and yet are of higher quality. The market simply does not value everything that matters, and thus, needs government to keep it honest.
Properly understood, the same education system could please both the classical and the equalitarian liberal, by holding justice as its operating principle, such that everyone has equal freedom. Not equality OR freedom, but both. It’s true that the typical liberal, classical or egalitarian, would be annoyed by this integration, since he wouldn’t get to qualify “freedom” or “equality” to mean only his own conception of it, at the expense of the other. But it would none the less hold true to the values and principles that each uses as support itsekf, so each would have to admit it, the same way that big business would have to admit responsibility for the failures of the market. It would be hard to get the classical liberal to agree to this because the policies that follow from such principles are closer to those an egalitarian would favor, such as regulation, subsidization, and no empty advertising, but while it would be an argument against privatized education that, without these limits, it would be corrupted. It would not mean that these limits would be enough to keep free market schools from degenerating. Rather, it simply shows three of perhaps many ways that a purely lassiez faire approach to education distribution could fail.
However, this does not mean that there is no place for such principles in education at all. Indeed, it may well be that these are exactly the principles that we ought to apply, but at a different level that we have thus far done so. Perhaps it is the child’s freedom of choice that we ought to be considering in earnest?