Paul Horton: Will the Market Destroy Public Education?
Guest post by Paul Horton.
The ideology that inspires corporate education reform uses the rhetoric of economic freedom. This rhetoric was developed Austrian economist Frederick Hayek and was translated into a libertarian ideology by Milton Friedman within the University of Chicago Economics Department. This ideology has been used to spearhead attacks on the role of government at every level since the conservative ascendency of the late seventies and early eighties brought Reagan, Thatcher, and Deng Xiaopeng to power
Another core aspect of this ideology that many call neoliberalism, according to critic David Harvey, is that it has led to "the financialization of everything. There is unquestionably a power shift away from production to the world of finance." Historian Daniel Steadman Jones, perhaps the most astute definer of neoliberalism says that it (neoliberalism), is "the free market ideology based on individual liberty and limited government that connect human freedom to the actions of the rational, self-interested actor in the competitive marketplace." (Jones, Masters of the Universe, 2). Moreover, according to Jones, this ideology is defined in opposition to any form of historicized collectivism ranging from the thought of Plato to Marx and any form of collectivized state of which Hilter's Reich, Stalin's Soviet Union, Atlee's Welfare state, and FDR's New Deal represent a continuum running from state control and the absence of freedom to expansive states that should be completely rejected. (Jones, 3-84). The "invisible hand," from this perspective, trumps all forms of centralized government that puts any nation-state "on the road to serfdom."
In effect, "the invisible hand" behind the push to create new education markets is coming from Wall Street investors who are flush with capital for investment. Wall Street bundlers and investment firms are buying up stock in charter school companies and big education vendors. These bundlers not only fund both party's campaigns, they also sell stock, betting on the futures of big education Paul Horton: Will the Market Destroy Public Education? - Living in Dialogue - Education Week Teacher:
