{ EDUCATION FOR ECONOMIC SURVIVAL, by Phillip Brown and Hugh Lauder
policy towards free market solutions, given an implicit recognition that bureaucratic education is inappropriate for the social and economic context of the 1990s. Consequently, the ‘new right` (Gamble l988) have initiated fundamental changes under the rubric of promoting greater freedom and choice for parent and making the educational system at all levels more responsive
to market forces as a means of improving educational standards and maximizing the economic returns accruing from educational investments. Briefly stated, the right have argued that the ideology of meritocracy and its manifestation in the move towards comprehensive state systems of education have not only generated a schooling which is inappropriate to the needs of most students but has generated a state-sponsored professional regime which has been designed to further the interests of the provider – teachers rather than those of the consumers.…
… The essence of the new right response to the educational crisis can be characterized in terms of the ideology of parentocracy where the education a child receives must conform to the wealth and wishes of parents rather than the abilities and efforts of pupils (Brown 1990).
Despite the rhetoric of freedom and choice, free market solutions to educational and training problems are low-trust and low-skill solutions (see also Finegold and Sockice 1988). When the proponents of the free market talk about educational freedom and choice they are talking about consumer freedom, and in relation to educational decision-making it is not the individual child but his or her parents who will do the deciding….
Another reason why systems of free market education will fail to create a high-ability society is because in such a system one may have formal equality before the law but not substantive equality. The problem with this approach can be illustrated in terms of a game of ‘Monopoly’. In this game everyone begins with the same amount of money and chance to win. Depending on a combination of choice, skill, and luck. Life chances in capitalist societies do not begin with this kind of substantive equality, but begin close to the end of the game with a few players owning hotels on expensive streets such as 5th Avenue in New York or Mayfair in london. The rest of the players may have a few houses but they may not hope to compete because the logic of this free market game does not lead to an equalization of resources, but a winner who ends up with a monopoly! Of course Monopoly is not like real life in another sense, because when the game is over you can start again on equal terms. ln real life those who own property and the accruing advantages are able to pass these advantages on to future family members.
Therefore when education is treated as a commodity the economic power of parents, or lack of it, becomes an increasingly important determinant of educational and life chances. In educational terms schools, credentials, and the status attached to them are likely to become more sharply differentiated, creating elite schools for the rich and a gradation of less prestigious and less successful schools beneath them. A major consequence of these developments is that the economic problem of wastage of talent will become even more acute than it is now.
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