That’s why we have a bill of rights in America :D (no seriously: it is precisely because the act of trying to solve problems leads us to want to jam entire societies into our favorite metaphors – in this case, “society is a machine”).

The problem (as I understand it) involves questions like
“what is education?”
“why is it valuable?”
“how does it function within our society (system)”
“is it an economic commodity or something outside of economics?”
“who are the stakeholders and what are their interests?”

…all of which I guess could sound awfully machine-like, but I tend to think any resemblance to communism is superficial, because I am going to the system level only in an attempt to gather information and analyze a particular issue.

I guess you could say that, for me, the problem with communism isn’t that people looked at society as being like a machine – which is actually a common metaphor – but rather that they were so enamored of this image that they failed to realize it isn’t always the best metaphor, or even an appropriate metaphor.

(IMO they were especially scary when they were repairing broken parts…)

Don’t know if you intend it or not, but the undertones of your post remind me of some Communist tracts. To think of the human person as a “cog in the machine” of the State is something John Paul II and many others warned against. It is also a mentality that has insidiously ingrained itself in modern thinking. It must be rooted out like the cancer it is.

To reduce an individual to what he or she can contribute/produce or to what one consumes ultimately denies the Judeo-Christian view that all are created with worth, “in the image and likeness of God”, and have value regardless of any equations of production or consumption.

A view of the person as a being of transcendant worth and destiny has the potential to ennoble education, viewing us not just as packets of information or bundles of skills. Education’s true value is its capacity for transformation, invention, and redemption. We can create what is not and achieve what is only dreamt. But only when one can receive all those things of God and in turn direct all efforts to Him.

Ponder for a moment the very name of this Journal: First Things.

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and righteousness, and all other things will be added to you.” Matthew 6: 33

What if we could discover how to impart the same educational benefit through the use of a technological device (let’s say it downloads the information directly into your brain).

Yeah – I know – sounds unpleasant to me, too. But never mind that.

The point is, there are two ‘stakeholders’ here. Society does have an interest in what is taught – in particular, it wants all its citizens to have a certain basic level of education. But the actual economic thing here is a packet of information, and the beneficiary is the student. He is not the product, but the value that is added to him is the product.

But who exactly is the consumer? The state would have an interest in regulating what packets of information were for sale, and might demand certain levels of education from its citizens, but ultimately I think it is the student and/or his family that are the consumers (the student if he acts as an individual; the family if they are acting jointly as an economic unit).

That’s assuming that a “consumer’s” motivation can only be economic. But as a consumer of anything, there will be many things I want to get out of it, not always economic value. Even when I shop for food, I don’t always want the most nutrition for the least money — a lot of other factors motivate by “consumer” decision.

Maybe Mr. Knippenberg means what you suggest, in which case I don’t have an argument with that. But that doesn’t quite equate to having a consumer approach — a consumer can be motivated to get good value for what he is contracting to receive, without that value being limited to economic value. It can include things like trustworthy teachers (so you don’t *have* to be second-guessing them all the time), educational quality, a moral component to the process as you describe, or a lot of other things. That doesn’t make the person choosing his options in order to get what he values any less of a “consumer.”

As the product of private education my entire life (never even having attended public grade school), I remember my parents frustration when my Catholic elementary school tolerated some very extreme misbehavior. They ended up moving us to another because the first was not living up to their requirements for a Catholic school.

The motivation was not economic, but moral and spiritual. My take on Mr. Knippenberg’s argument is that he’s essentially implying our culture–even private/religious school culture–has in many ways come to worship at the idol of Mammon. The almighty dollar wags the dog. If that is all an education is about, we shouldn’t be surprised by the cheating scandals rocking school after school.

The more fundamental question is “What is an education for?”

Which of course leads to the most basic and fundamental human questions…

1) What is the purpose of human existence?
2) How does a human being achieve that purpose?

In a culture increasingly edging God out of the picture, should it be any surprise those fundamental human needs and goals (and therefore education itself) go unnoticed, and droves are left unsatisfied, depressed, and rudderless?

Grade and high-school education is essentially socialist, with its government monopoly at the beck and call of a powerful teachers’ union. To paraphrase what they used to say about the Soviet Union, teachers pretend to teach, and students pretend to learn.

The government monopoly is broken, to a limited degree, by private schools and now homeschooling. Here we have the beginnings of a market system, where consumers have a choice. Pays your money, you takes your choice.

College education is much more nearly a market system. Choices are more or less open, there’s fierce competition for customers, and there’s lots of money changing hands. Within this market system we have master-student relationships. The “master” status is conferred not by bureaucratic fiat (this is your teacher, and as such he’s your master), but in general only to the extent that the teacher maintains his own credibility as a master. Competition.

It’s not perfect–there’s tenure, after all. But it’s kinda sorta a free-market system. The key point is that consumers have a choice, and they vote with their feet and with their bucks.

I think you are making it too all or nothing. If there is NO consumer/provider relationship, how do we decide where to obtain and education, or if it is failing us and we need to go somewhere else? Or does one just stick with a certain kind of education (whether it’s a form of education for our kids, or some higher education for ourselves) come Hell or high water no matter what’s going on with it? I’m sure you don’t think that, so you must admit some degree of consumer judgment.

I think there is a balance — we are consumers who need to judge if we are being well served, but that does not make us consumers in precisely the same way we are consumers of oatmeal.