This is a lesson that started with Google, way back in 2006. That was the year that Google set aside the motto "don't be evil" for the more pragmatic "don't be shut out of the enormous Chinese market," and willingly provided the Chinese with a censored version of Google. The official rationale was something along the lines of "they're censoring us anyway," but it seemed more likely that the rationale was "do you have any idea how much money there is to be made, because, damn, it's a lot."
Google pulled out in 2010, over a Chinese attempt to hack gmail and other pieces of Google. That response (Google actually called it "retaliation") was remarkable, and it didn't last. Google is set to re-enter the Chinese market.
Businesses looking to operate in countries with repressive, censorship-prone laws face a question-- do they change their basic mission to follow the repressive local laws, or do they pass up the giant piles of money as a matter of principle?
Google, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the tech giants are dealing with that question and while they consider the moral and ethical considerations of modifying their basic mission so-- look, do you have any idea of how much money there is to be made??
The modifications and concessions come in bits and pieces. What attracted my attention today was Apple's decision to remove the New York Times app from the Chinese Apple store. Because the Chinese don't like the NYT, believe it's violating some local law, and Apple wants to stay in China. So the principle of transparency or free speech or access to the press or just the supposedly bedrock internet principle that information should be spread far and wide-- all of that can go out the window if the corporate access to the highly lucrative Chinese market is threatened.
I have said it repeatedly: the business mindset, the profit motive-- these are not inherently evil things. But the business approach has priorities that are not always in tune with larger social principles. And if a business entity is run by people with no scruples or ethical standards of their own, the problem is even worse.
Businesses will put business first, even ahead of supposedly bedrock social and moral principles. That does not make them evil, but it makes them very bad stewards of the public interest. If we turn schools into businesses, business interests will come ahead of student interests, parent interests, and community interests.
And if you imagine that a business approach somehow frees folks from government control-- well, look back at China. There is no such thing as a free market; all markets operate under whatever rules the government sets for them.
If you believe that allowing a bunch of business-run charter schools to open up and compete will somehow give students a more excellent education, you are kidding yourself (and, perhaps, others). The education-flavored businesses will compete to make money under whatever rules the government subjects them to, and actually educating students will be far, far down on their list of priorities.
"There is no such thing as a free market; all markets operate under whatever rules the government sets for them."
ReplyDeleteIf every high school student graduated knowing and understanding, if nothing else, that one sentence, the world would be 1000x better than it is.
Businesses will put business first, even ahead of supposedly bedrock social and moral principles. That does not make them evil, but it makes them very bad stewards of the public interest. If we turn schools into businesses, business interests will come ahead of student interests, parent interests, and community interests.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant.
Or patriotism as far as that goes...read a little history about how many merchant marines died during the first year of our war with Germany when the business leaders & politicians of our coastal cites refused requests to kill the lights which allowed the U-boats to easily prey on the silhouetted freighters within sight of our shores. So, yes, at times business is inadvertently evil.
DeleteUnfortunately, corrupt people don't just hang out in corporations. Blatant corruption was rampant at a state university where I worked for many years. All the heavy hitter administrators would be agreeing with your post emphatically, except that in reality, they play the very same games as the business people you discuss and some even worse. If I hadn't witnessed across it campus in so many ways over so many years, the idea would not have occurred to me that greed and corruption could be so common among "intelligent people" who are supposed to know better. Business people do not have a corner on that market. This also addresses a point in your last post about people caring about their own needs and not society. I found that people who were "officially" responsible for "caring about society" had their own agendas. I saw students deeply hurt and affected by decisions that were based solely on petty political, self-serving machinations. I had students crying, begging, pleading to see things done differently.
ReplyDeleteWhere do ethical people hang out? Nowhere in particular. Ethical people who care about society can be found in any sphere of society, or not. One of the reasons that I love Dickens so much is that his masterpieces don't paint classes of people as inherently good or evil. If we believe in individualism, then it is absolutely true that virtue and vice lie within the individual.
I used to work with college students who wanted to major in the humanities and minor in business. What a beautiful concept: students who want to read Don Quixote in Spanish, and enjoy it, while also trying to be competent in accounting and finance principles. Unfortunately, the students, who were fully majoring in foreign languages, were constantly harassed by their professors in the humanities for also studying business as a minor. These same students volunteered in the community for Migrant Head Start. They went to Latin American countries to work in rural areas, build homes, etc. No matter where there hearts were, as indicated by their life choices, they were branded as greedy jerks for wanting a minor in business. They were routinely scorned in class in front of their peers. They came crying to me.
We all need business to do all the things in life we expect to be able to do (because I don't manufacture anything around here except a lot of hot air) and hopefully we can help students become deep thinkers, compassionate decision makers and sophisticated enough to know that the way things are done here is not the only way things are done in the world.
Greed is an easy vice to live with. Business people are the most obvious sufferers from that illness. But let's not be deceived: a Ph.D. in the humanities, or a teaching degree or a music degree or a science degree does not indicate virtue. Academic degrees reflect academic training.
Who are the policy wonks in DC who make this so easy for businesses to profit off public education? If the DoEd, which is not full of business people, had more heart, more talent, perhaps they could make it more difficult for Joe Fly-by-Night to start up a lousy school and run with the money. Everyone just keeps talking about money. I guess that topic has the most appeal, for the business person or anyone else.
Finally, if you go to the DoEd homepage, the prominent headings which show up in standard format are:
"Student Loans" "Grants" "Laws" "Data"
So with that message on the front page of the DoEd, who wouldn't think that the bottom line is money? And this is how it looks under a progressive president's administration.