Let Education Go Commercial; T. Johnson

Silberman, author of Crisis in the Classroom. This damning view of the role of schools in society is echoed by many thousands of con cerned Americans who also recog nize the many tragic circum stances that exist in schools. Some of them are attempting to offer solutions to the myriad problems. Unfortunately, one rarely if ever Dr. Johnson is Professor of Biology at Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the author of The Declaration of Edu cational Independence. hears the suggestion that the an swer to the educational dilemma or "crisis" might well be found if the schools were to be dissolved and replaced by educational busi nesses, that is, businesses that op erate like other enterprises in a competitive and open manner with the intention of satisfying custom ers. Most people, even staunch capitalists, consider education to be some special endeavor not to be perverted by the business world and thus pooh-pooh any suggestion of educational enterprises.

"It is time for our schools to get themselves, or us to get them, out of the jail business," wrote John Holt in The Underachieving School. The fact that schools are operated as "jails," \vhich do not function to please customers but to satisfy those in charge, is very 655 656 THE FREEMAN November likely the explanation of the vast number of problems that permeate all levels of education, both private and public. But how will the elimination of schools and their replacement with businesses of education solve all those problems that one is always hearing about? What of the in evitable question of discipline, of truancy, of cheating, of grades and degrees? How would such problems as teacher and student boredom and apathy be alleviated? And then there's the dropout problem. What could happen in educa tional businesses to remove the always present conflict between teachers and students which re sults in little or no learning? How could one eliminate the unnatural competition among students (who compete for grades and pleasing the teachers, and rarely for knowl edge), the rigid and outdated cur riculum, the physical mistreatment of students by teachers and ad ministrators (where corporal pun ishment is permitted) , or the whole concept and practice of hav ing to fulfill specific requirements in order to even enter certain schools?

What of the question of in competent teachers, or the matter of the physical damage to schools carried out by frustrated and an gered students (millions of dollars are spent each year by school sys tems in major American cities to pay for the replacement of broken school windows)? Or what of the need to eliminate a negative ap proach to learning which now ex ists in schools and the introduc tion of techniques allowing for individualized instruction? And then there is the vastly important matter of economics, of the financ ing of education, which has pro voked much concern and heated debate in numerous communities across the nation. (According to a recently published Copley News Service release, "the yearly bill for education in America is now running at around $85 billion. Al lowing for inflation, that is double what it was a decade ago.") Could educational businesses solve these and many other con cerns which have caused such a flood of outrage from students, teachers, (particularly new young teachers who really want to teach, but find most of their time occu pied with paper work and disci plining students), parents, poli ticians, and many other thoughtful individuals? Let us examine this question and see.

Discipline The chronic, all-pervading, and seemingly insoluble problem that besets mainly primary and second ary schools is that of discipline1973 LET EDUCATION GO COMMERCIAL 657 how to keep order in the class rooms, hallways, cafeteria, and the like. One might even say that the matter of discipline is the bane of all administrators and teachers, as well as students. But then how could it be otherwise, considering the way in which schools operate? Just suppose that we adults were required, by law, to attend an institution five or six hours a day and to perform certain tasks or learn specific information for which we might have little or no interest. Suppose that we had to follow unquestioningly the com mands of those in charge, and knew that if we should decide to complain too vigorously about any thing that we would probably be punished physically or penalized scholastically - that our very fu ture might be placed in jeopardy if we should speak out too often.

And how would we like it if in this institution we had to keep silent most of the time, move from one place to another only when bells rang, and receive written permission to go almost anywhere in the building if this varied the slightest from our regular sched ule? And how would we feel if we knew that almost all of our actions were being watched, not only in the classroom, but by hall moni tors (guards), and that if we tried to escape from this institution we could be picked up by the police and returned, or if we refused to go back or continued to escape, we could be sent to prison (another type of prison, that is) ? Not only would we adults, realiz ing that our very rights were at stake, create a constant discipline problem under these circum stances; we probably would be en raged enough to engage in a full fledged revolution. Well, students have to put up with precisely these conditions in schools, and it is amazing that they have not done more than just attempt to assert their rights occasionally and there by create discipline problems.

Now what would happen to dis cipline if schools were abandoned and we instead turned to busi nesses of education? The problem of maintaining order and obedi ence would, for all intents and purposes, vanish. Since a business cannot force customers to use its services and cannot require its cli entele to buy specific items, it can not usurp the basic right of each individual: the right of free choice. Educational enterprises would only be able to offer certain courses of instruction and hope that the prospective customers, mainly young people, would find these of sufficient value to volun tarily purchase them. Students would only sign up for those classes that they really desired, 658 THE FREEMAN November and could drop out of any they found not to be of value. In such circumstances, classes would contain mainly students who desire instruction in a particular subject - who, out of interest (which is the only valid motivation for learning), really want to learn what is being taught. In such a class, the likelihood that anyone would cause disruption is slim; if someone did, it probably would be the other customers, the students, who would demand that the culprit pipe down or leave. The interested students would not wish to lose even a bit of the instruc tion for which they, or their par ents, had paid and which they desired to learn.

Boredom Boredom is the inevitable car dinal element present in any en vironment where individual in terest and choice are either limited or absent, and where everyone is trying to force someone else to do something that he doesn't want to do - where everything is done by permission ("Teacher, may I ...") and not by right, and where much of the time is spent doing busy or make-work just to fill the num ber of minutes in a class period. But businesses cannot afford to bore their customers; if they do, they go out of business. Boredom would become a thing of the past in education if students were free to choose only those subjects which they wished to study, when they wished to study them, and were free to drop out of a class if they found it to be of no value or of no interest at that particular time. It is the trapping of students in classrooms that results in bore dom, unrest, frustration and anger (that leads to drug-taking and the destruction of property). Educa tional businesses, wishing to please both customers and em ployees (teachers), would have no desire to create circumstances that would be damaging to all parties concerned - no desire to bore anyone.

Grades and Degrees One hears a great deal about these outmoded tools of the educa tional institution, and some schools have even tried to eliminate them, without success. No matter what variation on a theme is utilized - whether it be written teacher evaluations, or pass and fail grades or the full scale of number or letter grades, or whether the in stitution grants diplomas, certifi cates, degrees or just overall evalu ations of students - it is the edu cational institutions and teachers that are evaluating the customers, and not vice versa. Therein lies the problem, and the reason why schools can operate as prisons.

1973 LET EDUCATION GO COMMERCIAL 659 How many students would con tinue to attend schools as they are now operated (unless forced to do so by either their parents or by compulsory education laws) if grades and degrees were eliminat ed? How many parents would con tinue to put up with the tragic circumstances which they know their children are exposed to in schools if they did not think that it was an absolute necessity for their offspring to have a diploma or degree in order to survive at a decent level in society? But the grades and degrees that hold the entire operation of the schools in tact would· be absent from educa tional businesses. A business cannot certificate an indi vid ual to a particular place in society. It cannot act as a screen ing agency, allowing some to pro gress and others to stand still, fall back, or fail. A true business only has the right to sell goods or serv ices for which there is a demand, and to prosper or fail according to how well it is able to satisfy its customers.

Businesses of education would not offer to sell degrees, diplomas, or certificates, but only instruc tion, and any evaluation of the cus tomer (student) that might trans pire would be at the request of the customer, without fear of punish ment or failure. After all, busi nesses must please customers, not intimidate them. True businesses of education would be ones in which the customers evaluated the teachers and the overall operation of the institution, to determine if customers are getting their mon ey's worth for the service, instruc tion, they are purchasing - not the other way around, as is now the case. And when individuals went job-hunting, it would be the em ployers who would, at that time, evaluate prospective employees rather than accept a scholastic certification as to what an individ ual knows. Other Problems But what about all of the other problems that beset the realm of education? Would they also disap pear if schools were displaced by businesses of education?

Cheating certainly would. If a student is not working for a grade or a degree, or does not have to please the teacher, but is only striving for knowledge of interest to him, what possible reason would he have for cheating? And what possible type of competition could exist in such a setting except that of a healthy and natural competi tion; a competition among stu dents for knowledge, for under standing, for truth. The conflict that now exists be tween student and teacher (as al ways exists between prisoner and 660 THE FREEMAN November guard) would also disappear, for in a business situation the teacher would attempt to please the cus tomer by offering valuable instruc tion, and the student would coop erate with the instructor in order to learn. Instead of being in con flict, they would be working to gether to achieve mutually desir able goals, as is always the case in a free enterprise setting.

Certainly, the outdated and rigid curriculums that now are forced upon students by schools, via state and local boards of education, would have to be set aside if schools were replaced by educa tional businesses. After all, cus tomers will only purchase that which they desire. In a business environment, course offerings would be constantly changing and would be continually updated. And there would be no holding back on the use of technological advances to offer individualized instruction whenever this seemed appropriate to the course. Innovation is the hallmark of a free market, and stagnation a main feature of an authoritarian, bureaucratic sys tem. And what of all those entrance requirements? Does one find spe cial requirements for shopping at the supermarket, department store or laundry? Of course not. These businesses are out to attract cus tomers, not to limit their buying the goods and services that are for sale. Educational businesses would surely operate in like manner.

Also, anyone, regardless of age, could purchase instruction in a course and not have to worry about first having gotten a grade school, high school, or college education in order to be qualified for en trance. Thus, real equality of op portunity in education would fin ally come into existence. Eliminated would be the dropout problem that now plagues so many school systems. A free enterprise approach calls for dropping in, not out. It also calls for the treating of customers with respect and courtesy. It would be difficult in deed to imagine a businessman inflicting corporal punishment on his customers; it simply would not occur. "We aim to please" is, and must be, the businessman's motto. As for incompetent teachers, they would soon be weeded out of the business of education; as their lack of ability became known, few if any customers would voluntarily sign up for their classes. Only the best would survive in educational businesses, the same as in any business setting.

Financing Finally, what about the matter of money? What of the economics of the educational world? Schools, 1973 LET EDUCATION GO COMMERCIAL 661 which operate like giant bureauc racies with their administrators increasing like rabbits - with as sistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, coordinators of this or that, along with scores of secretaries and clerks, all at handsome salaries - and whose customers must attend under force of the law, have little or no inter est in economy. The only concern is to determine how much more the school board dare ask of taxpayers for next year's budget. But businesses of education could not operate in this manner. They would have to obtain their funds from individual willing cus tomers, just as other businesses do. And because it has been dem onstrated that the rate of learning increases tremendously when in terest is the driving factor, rather than coercion, only a fraction (probably less than half) of the time now devoted to studies in schools would be needed to learn an equivalent amount in a busi ness situation - thus, a tremen dous saving in energy and money.

Also, competition is extensive in a business environment, and costs are inevitably lowered as a result of open competition, thereby al lowing even the poorest families to afford the costs involved in giving their children an education in basic subjects. With educational businesses, customers would only be purchas ing just what they want - what they are interested in-rather than being forced to sit in class rooms throughout the day. Thus, many of the current costs of edu cation would disappear. Only in a free market setting does one find economic efficiency. There are those who would argue that all of the problems which are associated with educa tion cannot really be, resolved be cause of the nature of the circum stances; because, they claim, the child is simply not able to make sound judgments and therefore cannot be allowed freedom of choice in matters mental. But any one who has carefully observed the child will have discovered that a youth of 5 or 6 years of age has a keen sense of judgment - he knows when his teacher is help ful or not, when he is learning or not, and he most definitely is aware of what he is interested in knowing at that particular time.

Judgment is not only his capa bility, but his right, and if this be denied the child, by placing him in an authoritarian school where he is obliged not to judge and choose, but obey, he must experi ence serious harm. As Maria Mon tessori points out: "It is easy to substitute our will for that of the child by means of suggestion or coercion; but when we have done 662 THE FREEMAN November this we have robbed him of his greatest right, the right to con struct his own personality. If the child is constantly acting at the command of the teacher, or at her suggestion, his own psychic ac tivity may fade away and disap pear under the stronger will of another; the personality may be come broken and depressed; and abnormal developments will begin to appear." (Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work by E. M. Standing) Perhaps the most succinct and revealing indictment of schools was expressed by Charles E. Sil berman in his extensively re searched book, Crisis in the Class r'oom: It is not possible to spend any prolonged period visiting public school classrooms without being ap palled by the mutilation visible every where - mutilation of spontaneity, of joy in learning, of pleasure in crea t ing, of sense of self.' The public schools - those "killers of the dream,"

to appropriate a phrase of Lillian Smith's - are the kind of institution one cannot really dislike until one gets to know them well. Because adults take the schools so much for granted, they fail to appreciate what grim, joyless places most American schools are, how oppressive and petty are the rules by which they are gov erned, how intellectually sterile and esthetically barren the atmosphere, what an appalling lack of civility obtains on the part of teachers and principals, what contempt they un consciously display for children as children. Must we continue this mutila tion, or could we perhaps find a solution to this dilemma by trying something new? No matter how much money is pumped into the educational system, or how many new programs are devised and tried out on the students, the prob lems that are centuries old con tinue to exist. Would it be taking too much of a chance to try a new approach, one which involves free dom and mutual respect rather than force and the obliteration of rights?

Why not let education go com mercial? Why not try the free enterprise approach which has made this nation the greatest in the world? If the business environ ment could sustain our rights as free citizens and give us a bounty of goods and services undreamed of by most people of the world, just imagine what this. same en vironment could do for the child and the development of his mind. We might yet achieve that much sought, but always elusive goal the American Dream - if we would only displace the scholastic pris ons, the schools (those "killers of the dream"); if we would only free the children.