Progressive Education

I've been reading far too much literature on the politics and marketisation of education. It seems to me that the political left in the US has come to dominate this discourse so throughly that, despite their dominance of the education sector, many of them can blanket-blame capitalism for the ills of their education system(s) and get away with it in a blaze of self-righteous fury.

The argument seems to go like this: capitalism requires free markets, free markets ensure that only the sort of educational practices that make money will be supported, educational practice is thus constrained, the market ties up innovation eventually because the capital is locked into a narrower range of educational practices, capitalism dies. And is reborn, in some sort of ghastly Marxist historical parody.

So on one hand, they're complaining about the marketisation of education, and on the other hand, they're not telling us why it should be otherwise. Well, not quite. They say that encouraging breadth and innovation in education and other practices which the market doesn't handle so well are essential to make people more competitive and develop human capital. This makes us all better people and unlocks the market. Which thus encourages capitalism to burgeon and... that's a good thing.

Hmm. Seems to me that either way, the leftists have locked themselves into a death-embrace with the capitalist right. Madness. We should all just be Machiavellian and confess to that. Better than some horrible Adam Smith- Karl Marx hybrid, which I have today decided to dub the Groucho Marx Theory of Education.

On second thoughts, Groucho was a much better educator than either of them.