Competing politics behind the education problem

Summary and notes of David Labaree’s Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals (1997) 

Image taken from here

Labaree’s central argument:

There are three opposing goals for American education that are at the root of educational conflicts and that have resulted in a contradictory and ineffective structuring of the education system, and it is especially problematic that one of them is growing in dominance.

The problem of education is a political one

There are an endless and widely varied calls for fundamental reform in education.They appear to be based in an equally varied array of root issues:

• Pedagogical — poor quality and preparation of teachers and inadequate curricula
• Organizational — too much bureaucracy (the absence of market incentives) or too much loose coupling (the absence of administrative control)
• Social — chronic poverty, race discrimination, and the preservation of privilege
• Cultural — a culture of poverty, disintegrating family values, and a growing gap between school and popular culture

However, Labaree believes the central problems with education are none of the above kinds, but instead:

• Political — a disagreement between what goals education should pursue based on the values and interests that different proponents hold.

Labaree says that schools are caught in the intersection of political ideals (what we hope society will become) and economic realities (what we think it really is), shaped by the tension between the political idealism of Thomas Jefferson and the economic realism of Alexander Hamilton.

“Unfettered economic freedom leads to a highly unequal distribution of wealth and power, which in turn undercuts the possibility for democratic control; but at the same time, restricting such economic freedom in the name of equality infringes on individual liberty without which democracy can turn into the dictatorship of the majority.”

In the realm of education, this tension has shaped three distinct educational goals which are also at odds against one another.

The three competing political goals

Democratic equality

• Educational perspective of the citizen
• Expresses the politics of citizenship
• Education is purely a public good
• It is designed to prepare people to take on the full responsibilities of citizenship
• Also to inculcate a sense of shared membership in the community to counteract the increase in social differences and class conflict that arose with capitalism
• And to allow every American an equal opportunity to acquire an education at any educational level

Social efficiency

• Educational perspective of the taxpayer
• Expresses the politics of human capital
• Education is a public good in service to the private sector
• It is designed to prepare workers to fill structurally necessary market roles
• Also bends education to the practical constraints inherent with a market based economy and society
• Seeks to shift curriculum from traditional academic subjects and liberal learning to vocational skills and knowledge to carry out specific job roles based on a fear of becoming socially irrelevant and economically counterproductive
• Increases stratification, distinguishing between those who drop out earlier and those who persist in education and also between the quality of schools at each level, which is good for efficiently allocating individuals to the respectively vertical structure of the job market, but problematic socially and politically
• Still provides strong support for the social value of learning at all levels of the system

Social mobility

• Educational perspective of the consumer
• Expresses the politics of individual opportunity
• Education is a private good for personal consumption
• It is designed to prepare individual students with a competitive advantage for in the struggle for desirable social positions
• While accepting the inequality of the market and desiring to adapt education to it as with the social efficiency goal, the focus is on meeting an individual need instead of the needs of the social system as a whole — benefits are mostly enjoyed by the individual as opposed to by all members of the community
• This results in a graded hierarchy, qualitative differences between institutions at each level, and a stratified structure of opportunity within each institution
• Symbiotic relationship with meritocratic ideology in American life
• Currently the dominant goal which is reshaping education into a commodity for status attainment and a championing of the pursuit of credentials over the acquisition of knowledge, or “surrogate learning” (Sedlak et al. 1986)

Rise and fall in goals’ prominence

One reading: A narrative of shifting priorities

• Common school era (mid 19th century) — Democratic equality (the focus of education was on preserving the commonwealth through the rise of capitalist social and economic relations)
• Progressive era (early 20th century) — Social mobility and social efficiency (due to concerns over how to prepare an increasingly large and heterogeneous group of students for an increasingly differentiated workforce)
• 1960s and 1970s — Democratic equality (national movement for racial equality promoted a socially inclusive education)
• 1980s and 1990s — Social efficiency and social mobility (with a focus on educational standards)

Another reading: Steady growth of social mobility

• Gradual dominance of a consumer conception of education
• The other goals cannot be pushed forward without appealing to the concerns of social mobility
• Emphasis of winning over learning and opportunity over efficiency, or “contest mobility” (Turner 1960)
• Caused by weak state and federal influence, decentralized control, need to attract local political support, absence of general academic standards, relatively free choice in selecting academic programs, among other reasons
• Resulting in a system that emphasizes consumer choice, competition, stratification, and local autonomy

How did this come to be?

Flexibility of the social mobility goal

It is used at times to reinforce democratic equality in opposition to social efficiency and at other times to reinforce social efficiency in opposition to democratic equality.

Social mobility vs. social efficiency

• Social mobility is more optimistic and expansive, while social efficiency suggests restriction and pragmatism
• Shares an interest with the democratic equality goal in expanding access to education and in making schools more meritocratic in the short term — both are progressive and egalitarian, while social efficiency is conservative and reproductive (reinforcing existing social inequality)

Social mobility vs. democratic equality

• Social mobility is opposed to equal treatment and a focus on civic virtue
• Instead it champions “possessive individualism” (Macpherson 1962) which asserts it’s desirable for individuals to pursue competitive success in the market, and use schooling as “cultural currency” (Collins 1979) for social position and worldly success instead of to pursue civic virtue
• Creates exchange value as opposed to use value

“By structuring schooling around the goal of social mobility, Americans have succeeded in producing students who are well schooled and poorly educated. The system teaches them to master the forms and not the content.”

Concluding observations and solutions

• These goals have created a contradictory and counterproductive education system which often fulfills none of them effectively but aims to minimize conflict
• The credentials market espoused by the social mobility goal is established as a state of partial autonomy; the middle ground between school and work
• It undermines the incentives for students to learn, which is further exacerbated by credential inflation
• A solution is to engage in public debate about the desirability of alternative social outcomes of education
• The main threat is still the growing dominance of the social mobility goal due to its favorable position between the other two goals
• There is potential push-back through the intolerance of reducing public education to a private good shared by the other two goals
• The same vulnerabilities to change that have caused the ebbs and flows between goals is also beneficial in reshaping once again, and correcting, the education system

This article is cross posted on Medium and LinkedIn.