In the name of profit
Published November 25, 2013
by Thomas Mills, Politics North Carolina, November 24, 2013.
The announcement that a group of business leaders has formed an organization to promote public education is probably good news. A similar group of leaders came together under the leadership of then-Governor Jim Hunt to support early childhood education in the form of Smart Start and, later, to commit to raising the teacher salaries to the national average. The current GOP leadership has no such vision or commitment. Maybe pressure from their business benefactors can change that.
We can cheer and applaud this group and give them the kudus they want. However, I’m a cynic. It’s not about helping North Carolinians. It’s about helping businesses. And that’s the only thing the motivates this Governor and General Assembly.
The Machiavellian in me says we should do whatever we need to get the job done. The idealist in me resents that our government will turn its back on the unemployed, refuse people health care, raise taxes on the working poor and attack our teachers and public schools until a group of wealthy business executives speaks up. And those legislators call themselves Christians. Lotta camels threading that needle (Matthew 19:24).
And their language gives me pause, too. Walter McDowell, a retired Wachovia executive who is chairing the group told the N&O, “We do not believe throwing a lot of money at public education is the answer.”
That’s the least of my worries. We have never thrown money at public education. In fact,we have consistently been at the bottom of the pack when it comes to per pupil spending. And we’re surprised and concerned when we get poor outcomes. Maybe if we tried throwing a little money at public schools we would get better results.
Regardless of my cynicism, having a bunch of rich white dudes and a couple of token African-American and white women pushing public education in an effort to help their bottom lines is probably a good thing for everybody. They will get better workers and students who are part of their “targeted investment” strategy will get a better education. It’s just a shame that everything is done in the name of profit instead of just being the right thing to do.
November 25, 2013 at 10:34 am
TP Wohlford says:
Enlighten me. I look at this list of people in this group, and I don't see those who would support the current Gov.
What did I miss?
November 25, 2013 at 10:38 am
Norm Kelly says:
Knowing nothing about Mr. Mills, one can draw 2 conclusions reasonably accurately.
He's a liberal. He does not like Free Enterprise, but would rather have a system that leans more toward socialism. I would not refer to him as a socialist, since I do not know enough about him.
He expresses a concern with the profit motive. It's (almost) the most powerful motivation there is. But one that liberals despise. Why would it be a problem if some group of business people stepped into big education and showed 2 results: 1.) improved learning & test scores & 2.) that private business is better at fixing education than big education is. What a blow it would be to big education if it could be shown that having non-education professionals get involved in the system could improve it. Big education zealots insist that the only people who should run big education are people whose only experience in life has been big education. No one from the outside should ever be in charge of education because they simply do not understand how big education should work and will only screw it up. So one of the problems that Mr. Mills seems to have is that this new business effort could prove big education wrong on this front also.
If the result of profit is that kids are on grade level, can actually do math, can read at an adult level, can identify where the US is on a map, and various other things that kids currently have problems with, what would be wrong with that profit? To most liberals 'profit' is worse than ever using the 'f' word. Profit should be limited wherever, whenever possible. And the one place that profit must NEVER exist is in education. For liberals, 'education' and 'profit' are opposites. Unless, of course, you are a college professor or college administrator. Then you can make gobs & gobs of money, show up in the classroom less than once per week, get paid time off to dig for fossils in central Africa, and expect that you should get an annual raise also.
According to Gov Mike, the lottery was supposed to solve problems with funding of big education. What happened to this utopian plan? What did the prior administration do with all that 'profit' from the lottery that big education didn't get everything it wanted?
