I bumped into an old friend and former colleague a couple of days ago. She’s on loan as acting head to a school converting to Academy status.
Academies are intended to address the problem of entrenched failure within English schools with low academic achievement,[13] or schools situated in communities with few or no academic aspirations. Often these schools have been placed in “special measures“, a term denoting a school that is “failing or likely to fail to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education”.[14]
Academies are established in a way that is intended to be “creative” and “innovative” in order to give them the freedoms considered necessary to deal with the long-term issues they are intended to solve. Each academy has a private sponsor who can be an individual (such as Sir David Garrard, who sponsors Business Academy Bexley) or an organisation (such as the United Learning Trust or Amey plc).
My friend sees that part of the hidden agenda is to tear up teacher’s contracts and save money by employing and bullying dull functionaries.
Before those who think themselves libertarians strop their hard hearts on this, may I ask them to pause and consider the liberty not just of the educational employees, but also of the students, and providers of instructional materials?
The excellent graphic site Cartoon Brew reveals interesting developments in America, where the chain of Art Institutes Colleges is beginning to show the true colours of large “private” enterprise. Last week’s story was about forcing teachers to use certain texts:
Animation artist Mike Tracy claims that his school, the Art Institute of California—Orange County, judges teachers by another criteria: how many e-textbooks each teacher sells to their students.
Tracy, who has taught drawing and digital painting for eleven years at AIC—Orange County, felt that his class didn’t require the textbooks he was suddenly being asked to sell and told the school that he would prefer to teach without them. Tracy’s reward for working in the best interest of his cash-strapped, loan-burdened students was a termination notice from the school.
This week’s is about preventing teachers from using other texts. Popular author Ed Hooks explains:
My book Acting for Animators was published late last year in a revised third edition by Routledge/London. Not too long after it came out, I received an e-mail from an Art Institute animation teacher in Texas. He told me that the headquarter of the AI schools, located in Pittsburgh, had established a new textbook policy. From then going forward, all text books must be e-books. No more hard or soft cover. He was worried that my book might not be available in e-book format, explaining that it was one he recommended to all of his AI students.
As it happened, Routledge was at that moment in between E-Book distributors. They were in the process of vetting a new one and expected to announce E-Book available for all of their titles shortly. I passed this positive message along to the teacher in Texas. [...] In the end, Routledge went with some other e-book distributor, and the man in Pittsburgh said he was sorry but that was that. It was out of his hands. No more Acting for Animators book at any of the Art Institutes.
The Art Institutes chain is owned by the Education Management Corporation (why am I suddenly thinking of Robocop and the Omni Consumer Products corporation?). EMDC (as it likes to term itself) says:
Our schools are dedicated to giving students the skills, tools and confidence they need for a lifetime of success. From preparing graduates for their first, exciting foray into the business world to helping busy professionals broaden their career possibilities…
Who defines success, and how?
Business world… careers… I have this sense of square pegs being banged efficiently (and cost-effectively) into round holes; of the spiritual death of daily life in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Just wait until the British (sorry – Team GB, the nation that dares not speak its name) Government awards a major contract to, say, K12 (which my acting-head friend also mentioned).
There is no greater foe to liberty than the large corporate enterprise.
There should be some other term than “private enterprise” for a business over a certain size, so that lovers of liberty are not driven from Big Brother into the arms of Big Manager. The two work together – look at “Chinese” Murdoch.
When England was a nation of small shopkeepers, it was, perhaps not a free nation, but more nearly free one than today’s. And across the water, we are still fighting the intellectual heirs of Napoleon.
Yet in opposing the tyranny of associations of rich men, I am mischaracterized as illiberal. When, for example, I said that Prohibition was ended by big business, its captive unionised workforce and a big government that wanted more funds, and when Isuggested that “liberalisation” of intoxicants was a money-earner for governments and big business and a trap for individuals, I got not only sharp opposition but even – God knoweth how, as More said – calls for my voice to be banned from a liberal website.
My libertarian friends, think more carefully about liberty.
Otherwise, like the Diggers and Levellers of the English Revolution, like Mao’s Hundred Flowers, like the oppressed peasants that Luther emboldened to revolt and that he then denounced and betrayed, you will be sold a tin with Liberty on the outside and Slavery within.
The modern chains may be encased in velvet, perfumed with heady mind-altering chemicals and (what subtlety and irony) sold to you with honeyed persuasions rather than wrapped round you by diktat, but you will find they are still very functional as chains, even if (particularly if) they are commercial chains.
I have read this a couple of times trying to work out exactly what you are saying.
Is it that state education = good, private supplied education = bad. Indeed, how does education supply fit in with your last two paragraphs?
No, that is not what I am saying. I am saying that calling a large commercial organisation “private” enterprise, as if it were an expression of freedom, is deeply misleading.
The academy system is being promoted as a solution to failing schools. In my (too) long experience, a good head makes a good school and a bad head makes a bad school. It’s not much to do with whether the school is run by a local authority or a commercial corporation. Often a bad school is one where the problem has been known for years, but been allowed to worsen, often for party political reasons.
I also think that liberty, in the sense that many here would at least feel it if not intellectually define it, may depend on limiting the most powerful, irrespective of whether they are in government or big business.
Thank you for putting your question in a form that can be answered, instead of the usual name-calling.
Thanks for the explanation.
Yes, I agree that the headmaster makes the school but I think that somewhere along the line politics (councils) and unionism needs to be removed from the school as well. I left teaching when things became to politicized and went back to engineering.
The only way I can see to do this with education being mandatory and charged for by taxation is for a voucher system where parents have the choice of where they send their children. The fact that some schools would have to close might, of itself, be a good thing. Also such a system would tend to negate corporatism by virtue of the fact the school population would be mobile and a lot of parents would move their children if standards fell.
“I left teaching when things became to politicized”… Ah, a fellow sufferer! I left in 1989 for much the same reasons, but really it’s been politicized forever, on small and large scale.
Many years ago I began to think what I might achieve if I cherry-picked good teachers out of their management-bully schools and set up my own, so I’ve always like the idea of vouchers.
One aspect I never considered before I became a teacher is that not all parents are particularly bothered about academic standards. There’s quite a few who merely want a school that’s conveniently close so they can park their kids for the day – and I promise you that’s not made up.
Also – and the naivety of this may make you smile – I didn’t know that there were children who didn’t really want to learn. Just as politicians have no idea of what “average” means in terms of educational attainment.
I too have had the idea of selecting excellent teachers to create a school for the very bright children that are ignored in todays education system and then pushing them to see how far they could go – I even wrote a SF story about such a school where they found that the sky was not the limit.
I think the ‘baby sitting service’ and not wanting to learn go hand in hand and have their roots in the middle to late 60s/70s and an upsurge of the welfare state when before that you worked hard if you wanted to get on in life.
“There should be some other term than “private enterprise” for a business over a certain size, so that lovers of liberty are not driven from Big Brother into the arms of Big Manager.”
Great post. There are indeed serious liberty issues when big business aligns itself with big government, especially when big government does the aligning.
I’m not sure what the word should be, but you are spot on with this – we do need one. I like your Big Brother / Big Manager dichotomy too.
Ivan – you and I see eye to eye on much and I know Sackers’ reputation for goading Libertarians but there are two points which struck me here:
1. Sackers:
Obviously those on my side of politics focus on Big Brother and Big State and OWS focus on banks and corporations. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Big corporations are very much in with the CFR/TLC etc. and they run governments. Is there anyone who still tries to maintain that the Club of Rome is not and was not behind the EU or who try to say that the EU is not run by ex-communists [and there's no such thing as an "ex" communist - they just go underground]?
Multinationals don’t have to be bad but they tend to be at the top because resources are power and power must not be allowed to trickle down.
2. On the issue of school texts – talk to me about it! It was always an issue in independent schools and the tendency to change texts every two years was just crazy.
On politics again, I’n not so sure many of us, though “officially” right or left, are not closer than we think on many issues. There are things OWS were on about, or the greens, or the BNP, or many groups, which seem to make sense.
Where do you put Ike in all this? Distinguished military and President, turned on the NWO in no uncertain terms. Is he a raving commie or a rightwingnut? Labels don’t help here. I read him as a man who went along with wrong for a long time and then woke up.
The teaparty are largely good people in the grassroots motivation but they were hijacked. Truthers generally wanted the truth but were infiltrated by nutter trolls. Unions are not necessarily a bad thing – just shop stewards. HR should be exterminated.
And so on.
Surely the central point here is obvious. If you have a state taking vast sums through coercive taxation and then paying large providers to give some kind of education, the end consumer i.e. the kids are again powerless.
This can only work if the kids can choose where to go and up sticks if things are failing. Otherwise its just corporatism.
And your example is just corporatism.
Take your point about corporatism; but, as I said, that appears to be the government’s main alternative to State-funded – and not just in education. I think liberty is in part a scale issue.
Much more interested in voucher-type “free” schools, as long as they don’t get gobbled up by some dreadful managerial chainstore outfit.
“When England was a nation of small shopkeepers, it was, perhaps not a free nation, but more nearly free one than today’s. And across the water, we are still fighting the intellectual heirs of Napoleon.”
Damn “big business” for passing law after law, for trying to regulate and control every aspect of the economy, and then, when things don’t go to plan, blaming everyone but themselves.
What we need is a strong government that can stand up to these greedy vultures before they completely destroy our freedom.
And I’m glad you used the education sector for your examples as it’s a bugbear of mine. I absolutely fucking loathe what those big business pieces of sub-human maggot shit have done to it. They keep the children for longer and longer while not so much lowering, but destroying standards. Schools are becoming less places of education, and more places of propaganda to enslave pliable minds into the cult of consumerism. This attack on the minds of the young makes my blood boil.
Again, we need a strong government that can stand up to these money-hungry, power-hungry, completely unaccountable, utter bastards.
Restoring balance to the discussion, I see. Personally, if I had children I’d keep them away from both the public and private sector; a friend did and it worked brilliantly.
SAOT sums it up nicely.
Education is so far from a free market that using it to ask your libertarian friends to “think more carefully about liberty” is at best comical, at worst disingenuous.
Soryy, don’t get your acronym (not even via Google).
The education thing is because it’s a topical hook (and found in a surprising place, i.e. Cartoon Brew); I have raised the business of corporatism many times.
I do think libertarians need to consider their position more carefully, not least in the way they conduct discussions. The main point of this post – one that has not escaped James, I see – is that lovers of liberty have more than one front to fight on. And I suspect you agree, even if I sometimes make my points provocatively.
SAOT – The commenter Single Acts of Tyranny, my apologies, I thought he was commonly referred to as such.
“I have raised the business of corporatism many times.”
To me, your post came off as an attack on business in general.
To get rid of corporatism, get rid of the state (or at least shrink it to the point it can’t interfere in private business). Corporations may still survive as big businesses but they’ll no longer have a legal shield and preferential treatment, they’ll have to compete on a more even playing field.
Mrs SAOT commonly refers to me as much, much worse!
On a more serious note, why is this site featuring lefty propaganda 101?
[EDIT - actually this is nowhere near as serious as what the government has done to education]
And here come the sticky labels.
Attacking big business is a staple of leftism, and that’s what you’ve done here.
So only lefties think there’s anything wrong with big business? Do your Venn diagram.
And the appeal to censorship: very libertarian.
A big business is simply a small one that’s grown through its success at providing the market with what it wants.
Problems arise when the government interferes by granting monopolies, giving subsidies, regulating, etc.
“And the appeal to censorship: very libertarian.”
I’m against any form of censorship. Believing that this type of post isn’t suited to Orphans is not censorship.
I fully support your right to voice your opinion, whatever that opinion may be.
Not necessarily. Corporates can be as damaging to liberty as the state – they are frequently working hand in had. Who lobbies government after all, eh?
But they can only be as damaging to liberty as the government by using the government.
So getting rid of the government (my preference) or shrinking it to the point where it can no longer interfere with private business solves the problem.
Well, it depends, doesn’t it? Corporations are just as happy with monopolies as governments are. A monopoly is damaging whoever is running it and you don’t necessarily need a government to have one in place. So, yeah, government is the bigger problem, but we should never forget that corporates are the other cheek of the same arse.
Any business would be happy with a monopoly. But in a free market it wouldn’t last for long.
The V for Voluntary Library on YouTube has got plenty of info on this sort of thing:
link to youtube.com
[BTW, the comments on this site aren't displaying properly on Chrome on my PC, it said there were only 4 of them, and when I clicked through it didn't show any. On Firefox on both my PC and my iMac the comments show up fine.]
I like the cheeks!
YES!
YES!
This is a greater danger than the so-called “socialism” that many rant on about (sometimes correctly, sometimes not)
This corporate, corrupt tie-up is characteristic of fascist regimes, like Franco’s Spain, Musso’s Italy, Chaing’s China.
And, once established, it is appallingly difficult to get out from under it
Andrew, I don’t know why you aren’t seeing the comments. I am using Chrome and it is working fine for me.
Back to your substantive point, though. There are a couple of flaws. Firstly, the people who rise to power are much the same whether they do it in the board room or on the green benches. Sure, corporates don’t pass laws and it is true that reducing the size of government will limit some of that power, but it would be naive to assume that the market would simply sort it all out.
Google and Facebook are just two examples of big businesses that dominate their market and both play fast and loose with our privacy given half the chance (and remember, Phorm was born of the private sector)and selling data is lucrative business. Taking away the dead hand of the state won’t cure this.
Another potential problem is that some industries give rise to natural monopolies – my own, rail, for example. It is very difficult to have true competition in such an environment. So, too with utilities. Are you absolutely sure that business can be trusted to behave? Really? I don’t share that faith.
Sure, I can choose not to buy from a business I disapprove of and they don’t force me to buy their products. However, some are so ubiquitous it is difficult to avoid them. Libertarians should treat corporatism with the same disdain they reserve for the state, frankly.
“Firstly, the people who rise to power are much the same whether they do it in the board room or on the green benches.”
Then surely the worst place for them is with a group of like-minded others dictating what everyone else should do.
“Google and Facebook are just two examples of big businesses that dominate their market and both play fast and loose with our privacy given half the chance (and remember, Phorm was born of the private sector)and selling data is lucrative business. Taking away the dead hand of the state won’t cure this.”
They’re big businesses because people have voluntarily chosen to use their services. They tell you they intend to use your data. And they’re both constantly striving to improve because they know it only takes one person with a good idea to knock them off the top (as they did respectively to Yahoo and MySpace).
If concern over data privacy becomes a real problem, that is they start losing users over it, not an artificial who-ha whipped up by the media at the behest of their political masters, then they’ll either act or watch someone else take their users.
Phorm was born of the private sector, a fuss was kicked up about it, several big sites announced they didn’t want it to scan them to protect their customers and now no UK ISP uses it. No state needed.
“Another potential problem is that some industries give rise to natural monopolies – my own, rail, for example. It is very difficult to have true competition in such an environment. So, too with utilities. Are you absolutely sure that business can be trusted to behave? Really? I don’t share that faith.”
This is a good read on natural monopolies: link to mises.org
Regarding your own industry, it only has monopoly over its own tracks. For example, if I wanted to go down to London I could take the train, but then I could also drive, go by bus, or fly.
“Sure, I can choose not to buy from a business I disapprove of and they don’t force me to buy their products. However, some are so ubiquitous it is difficult to avoid them. Libertarians should treat corporatism with the same disdain they reserve for the state, frankly.”
As I said in an earlier comment, the “unfair” advantages large corporations have come from the state. One reason, as you yourself said, they can lobby it. It’s infinitely harder to lobby prospects into doing business with you than getting some thoroughly corrupt, probably traitorous, money-grabbing politician to favour you.
Corporations are only playing the game governments set up for them. If any of them didn’t, they’d lose. To put them at the same level of disdain as the state – an organisation based purely on theft and violence with no real difference to the mafia – is astonishing.
Yes, all of those points are perfectly valid. However, removal of the state will not ensure that large organisations suddenly start behaving themselves. And legislation is not the only form of coercion available. Market share can be used to manipulate that market, force others out, use espionage to undermine competitors and so on. It’s human nature.
While businesses will respond to the market – and Facebook/Google is a fine example – the majority may not care about their privacy, so that’s all good, then. This means that the minority who do care find that they are coerced in other ways. See recently the idea that is taking root in some employers that people without Facebook accounts are a potential problem. Follow this on to its logical conclusion and having an account is necessary for employment. Facebook then has control over one’s information whether we like it or not. As I said, legislation is not the only means of exerting control. Employers; private businesses, have used social pressure to do it without any state at all. Wonderful.
I’m mildly surprised you are prepared to give a free pass to organisations that behave in exactly the same way as governments do when the opportunity arises.
There comes a point when a business become so big it loses sight of its customers and being big – and even bigger – becomes its priority, swallowing up the competition and reducing customer choice in the process. Sure, it may fall eventually, but in the meantime, the damage is being done. And all of this is quite apart from those that will sell sub-standard goods, ripping off their customers and endangerign them. Yes, yes, we can go elsewhere and hopefully they will go out of business. Excuse me while I take off my rose tinted spectacles. Get rid of one such rogue and others will pop up to fill the void. It has always been thus and it always will.
This does not make me anti-business as I would still prefer to deal with them rather than government. However, my view of them is realistic and tinged with suspicion regarding their motives – given an inch, the bastards would take and sell a parsec of our private information, whether we have given them consent or not (look up the Trading Floor as well as Phorm already mentioned). And some, like Facebook, I avoid like the plague. At the moment, I don’t have to have it to get employed or a date, which is just as well, but give it a few years.
I would not give any organisation that behaved exactly the same as government a free pass and I’m not aware of any that do.
I’m not automatically pro-business. I’m pro-NAP.
I believe the world would be a better place without groups of people having a monopoly of violence over the rest of us.
But I’m certainly not naive enough to believe it would be perfect.