This piece on economic thinking in education was originally published on the EduResearchMatters blog of the AARE under the title Economic Thinking is Corrupting Education in Australia where it is freely available.
Introduction
There is a growing trend in education of proposing and enacting policy ideas that are based primarily upon economic thinking. I believe there are hidden impacts of applying economic thinking (typified by price signals, market mechanisms and market-oriented ideas) to education. In this post I want to unpack some of that thinking and look at what is happening to education because of it.
Corruption of the concept of education
The philosopher Michael Sandel proposes that there are two main arguments against policy based on economic thinking. These arguments are made on the basis of fairness and corruption, and both are significant for education researchers and policy makers. While it is typical in policy formation for much attention to be given to the concept of fairness – with steps taken to ensure that policy is as fair as possible – the concept of corruption is rarely given consideration. In the case of education policy, this relates to questions about how policy can change (or corrupt) society’s conception of the role and purpose of education, and about how the moral value of education can be crowded out by economic values.
If you want to read more about this notion of economic thinking in education you should read Hidden Privatisation in Public Education and (released in July this year) Commercialisation in Australian Public Schooling. This latter study provides data confirming that teachers in Australia are indeed concerned about the influence of commercialism in schools, characterised by “top-down, test-based accountability, the introduction of market competition between schools, the use of private sector managerial practices, and an increasingly standardised curriculum that focuses on literacy and numeracy” .
In this climate of economic thinking there is a great need to attend to the moral value of education – its role and its purpose in society.
Read the rest of the article on the AARE EduResearch Matters blog.
A commenter on this article recommended a related link to this eloquent talk by Professor Alan Reid about the value of public education:
The article follows on from previous discussions on educational economics by talking bout economic thinking in education.