Peter Greene uses the example of Coke to show how market competition does not produce a better product. When faced with a loss of market share, Coca-Cola decided to put the same product into smaller cans. Maybe the failure of “Néw Coke” in 1985 taught them not to mess with the formula.
Similarly, in education, competition has not produced better education. Vouchers are used to send children to schools that teach creationism, that have no curriculum or certified teachers or to charter schools that push out low-scoring students and spend inordinate time on test prep.
Our slavish devotion to competition is destroying education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Greene says “The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.”.
I don’t think that’s accurate. The free market rewards people who choose products. People choose products for many reasons, including quality, price, etc. Marketing can attempt to influence people’s choices, but if you market a lousy product well, you’re unlikely to be successful.
In the case of coke, they are figuring out how to still make money despite the fact that fewer people want their product. In that way, the Coke example probably applies to district schools where there is competition. If parents choose charters, try to take away their choice by any means possible. Or, try to keep the same amount of money (or more) despite losing lots of students to charters.
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John, you say, “if you market a lousy product well, you’re unlikely to be successful” as if it is self-evident, but I do not accept that as truth.
It is possible, armed with expert psychological insight and with the powerful reach of the media, for marketers to cause people to make decisions that are clearly against their own self-interests and/or the interest of the general public. In my book, that makes their product “lousy”, regardless of how many people feel the choice of that product rewards them.
And we all know it is very possible for such companies to be highly successful. Fast food, big pharma and tobacco are only the most obvious examples. Consumer electronics, the fashion industry and for-profit higher ed are more subtle, but also fit into this category, in my opinion.
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Dave,
I agree with your point, but it’s just that “lousy” was a bad choice of words on my part. I should have said a product that people didn’t want. Marketing can create demand to try a product, but if people don’t like it, it is unlikely that marketing can keep them buying (buying for status is probably the only example I can think of otherwise).
I agree that most fast food is a lousy product, but many people certainly want it, and it isn’t marketing that makes them do it.
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Ms. Ravitch, the innuendo and stereotypes about schools that teach “creationism” is not the most objective comment one can make, and it only fosters ignorance and division. Have you read books and research that shows problems with dating techniques (that differing chronometers giving widely varying ages, that there is no real thing as “absolute dating”), or the impossibility of chemicals “evolving” into living self-replicating cells, or that the fossil record and geologic column give much more evidence for a catastrophic, diluvial, earth history than a slow, gradual, uniformitarian history. Until you have done solid research on both sides of the origin-debate, I believe your comments bias (which we all can suffer from).
After all those “creationists” are such a nasty group that believe in the dignity of the human-life and soul, the value and purpose of each person, the intent of monogamy and evil of divorce and promiscuity, the evil of oppression and value of honest wages, etc. etc. Throw out Genesis 1-11, and the axioms and corollaries of our morals and ethics go out the window too.
I guess one could look at it the other way, “oh, look at the objectivity and blessings of evolutionary humanism” that produces things like eugenics, Naziism, Stalinism, sexism, economic sociobiology, infanticide, mistreatment of abnormal people, racism…and all the other “good fruits” of that paradigm. Yup, that would be some good marketing for a humanism-school.
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Bam, Nazis and Stalinism!
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Also, I am not in favor of tax-payers’ money going to vouchers and private or charter schools. Even as a Christian, I do believe in the “separation” of church and state (though the intent of the 1st amendment is State neutrality in religion, not State inhibition or oppression). I don’t believe even a believing-student should be forced to learn under a curriculum they disagree with, ex. a Baptist student being taught to accept Catholic images). So, while I disagree with your caricature of “creationism” (whatever you intended by that), I do agree with public funds only going to public schools.
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“the innuendo and stereotypes about schools that teach “creationism” is not the most objective comment one can make, and it only fosters ignorance and division.”
Rick, it seems from your post that you are a stout supporter of church/state separation in regards to religion. And obviously you are a devout christian but. . .
“creationism” foster ignorance and division.
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from your posts
and
creationism fosters
What happened to my “s” finger???
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Duane, you never gave me your personal email, so that we can dialogue privately about the strengths and failures of evolution. For I don’t believe this blog is the place for that. Yes, I use this blog to defend the value and right to question evolution and mention other viable models, but I only do that as a pedagogue (the value of critical thinking by comparing and contrasting different models/theories), not as a place to debate the full evidence.
Any “ism” can, may, foster division and ignorance, as you state, because when it is taught as an unquestionable dogma, a monologue with no dialectical dialogue, those that disagree maybe castigated as “unbelievers”. So, the sole teaching of materialism and evolutionism are just as prone to foster division and ignorance, too.
We speak about promoting critical thinking, but most of our public school curriculum does little in this area, because facts are preinterpreted and divergent reasoning processes are stifled. My Master’s thesis looked at “science as inquiry, the process of science discovery” objectives: ex. the reality of anomalous data, inferences that go beyond the data, the role of faith in modeling, the limitations of theories, disagreements in interpretation between individuals and research-paradigms, finding a “signal within the noise” (chosen patterns in unclear data). Then I developed a questionnaire based on these objectives (ex. did the author discuss anomalous data?), and gave it to a random sample of students in my biology class. Their responses confirmed my hypothesis, as Thomas Kuhn noted, that during “normal periods” in scientific paradigms (as contrasted with “revolutionary periods”) the curriculum does not mention remaining problems and flaws, but leaves out debate, because its purpose is to indoctrinate adherents into the current paradigm (teaching them what to think, but not how to question). I concluded that the 2 textbooks analyzed were “guilty” of unscientific bias, of no longer seeking to ask the hard, refuting-falsifying, questions; of no longer having a scientific spirit and continued model refinement, but of only indoctrination and propaganda.
This problem of indoctrination can happen with any and all curriculum, not just creationism. We never know what we don’t know, so we may really know very little at all.
All final positions about origins are ultimately metaphysical and religious, requiring some kind of faith to fill in the unknown.
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Rick Lapworth writes “Any “ism” can, may, foster division and ignorance, as you state, because when it is taught as an unquestionable dogma, a monologue with no dialectical dialogue, those that disagree maybe castigated as “unbelievers”.
What’s the relevance of this to evolution? It’s important to distinguish evolution theory (how evolution happened) and evolution itself. That evolution happened is not a dogma, it’s not a matter of belief, it’s a fact—as much of a fact as there are electrons in an atom, or that the Earth is round and circles around the Sun.
Teaching these facts is not a dogma. If the theories explaining how these things happen (Newton’s, Einstein’s or Darwin’s theories) were taught as unquestionable truths, that would be a mistake.
But these theories are pretty darn close to the truth. Darwin’s theory is pretty darn close to the truth. On the other hand, creationism is “not even wrong”, that is, you cannot determine its truth value.
Darwinism needs to be taught in science classes, because it’s the best theory we have for evolution, while creationism doesn’t belong to science classes because it’s not a scientific theory; it’s a belief system..
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Read this article, then if you want reply to me at my email: rlapworth@dadeschools.net
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1551
Cheers,
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Read this article: http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1134
The same “god of the gaps” argument you make is a red-herring, a straw-man, for it can be equally applied to evolution, materialism. Every time facts and evidence show the low probability, low frequency, impossible odds of an evolutionary event occurring the adherent will just state “well, the odds are low but with enough time and chance the impossible becomes probable”. This is equally as much a “magic-wand” as evoking an intelligent designer, but because it relies on the “efficacy” of impersonal forces it keeps the atheist happy.
If you want to continue this dialogue email me: rlapworth@dadeschools.net.
As I stated, I don’t believe this blog is for this kind of dialogue, and your apparent ignorance of the innumerable anomalies and difficulties of the “grand theory” needs an education. So, read the article first, then reply back to me.
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This article at the end of the link is the same kind of reading as VAM: it’s a long winded narrative with a basic flaw which makes it useless.
In VAM, the basic flaw is the assumption that tests results have relevance to teachers’ performance.
The basic flaw in the narrative is that it implicitly advocates that biology cannot be explained by the scientific method (which uses simple, basic laws and logic to derive more complicated ones), and instead, we have to assume the most complicated of all assumptions: a Creator.
When people cannot yet explain something, they like to declare the existence of a supernatural being that provides jolly-joker explanations.
Scientists don’t give in to such temptations. They are nerdy but pretty fearless people.
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The average fan of creationism doesn’t waste time reading Darwin. Instead, he listens to Sunday school teachers who talk about social Darwinism, the religion of free marketers, and not real evolution theory. It’s then natural to sign up for the idea that we are born without morals and we need the Bible to set us straight.
The first key is that “fittest” in “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean the “best athlete” will survive. It means the “best fit for the environment” as Darwin explains in detail.
Here’s a real quote from Darwin on evolution theory as it relates to empathy (which he calls sympathy)
“In however complex a manner this feeling [sympathy] may have originated, as it is one of high importance to all those animals which aid and defend one another, it will have been increased through natural selection; for those communities, which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members, would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
As for evolution itself (*not* the theory): with its dismissal, the basic laws of physics are dismissed, hence we find ourselves in fantasy land hosting flat Earth, not in science.
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Your example of sympathy is good, but also speculative and falsifiable, because you and Darwin assume that selection works at the level of the population, when it may only work at the level of the individual. I believe “Carson’s?” theory of social selection uses the idea “I’ll give up my selfishness, if it benefits 2 sisters or 8 cousins”. So, how does the individual act in a way of “altruism”, when all the really matters in nature “red in tooth and claw” is that I leave more offspring than the other individual, even if they are of the same specie? When this theory is used to explain human altruism, like the sacrifice of Mother Teresa, the “life is eating and reproducing” theorists evaluates her actions as folly, but the theorist who believes in humans as divine-image bearers that are morally accountable to the Creator interprets her actions as completely logically (“They are not fools who give up that which they cannot keep, in order to gain that which they cannot lose” Jim Elliot)
The evolutionary explanation for meiosis and sex also suffers the same possible dilemma (we are told it increases genetic diversity and variability, the raw products for future selection). In mitosis every possible beneficial mutation has 100% frequency, chance, of going to the daughter cell. In sex, it is only a 50% chance of passing to the offspring. So, the argument can be equally made that sex would’ve never evolved, or that it is the result of a divine act in creation.
Just where does one’s faith rest?
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Rick Lapworth writes “Just where does one’s faith rest?”
Wherever, but not in science. According to Ken Miller’s book “Only a theory”, the only question that doesn’t yield to the scientific method is “Why?”. Why is there matter, universe, life? “How”, and “What” belong to science, and will be explained by it, no doubt.
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With regard to marketing and advertising in education. I do not feel it is a responsible use of taxpayer funds to be spent for this purpose. I would rather see public money go directly into resources that will enhance instruction such as staffing and materials. This is another wasteful expense that charter schools have to make to entice students to attend their school.
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Interestingly, there was a study supported by, of all the possibilities out there, the Lumina foundation that suggested to use the metaphor of a symphonic orchestra to explain why competition and corporate values are not useful in education.
Indeed, not many would think that competition between, say, the strings and winds would produce more beautiful music.
Similarly, trying to evaluate the performance of the players via some objective metric will fail since there is no way to measure the “outcome”, which is beautiful music. The audience and the other players are the judges of performance. It’s hard to accept this for a corporate executive or politician, who are used to evaluating work they have no idea about, but this is a fact of life outside business, economy and politics.
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Yes, applying the same metric to all students assumes the same skill set is needed by all occupations, and this is false. The database input career does not need the skills of essay writing, and the journalist does not need mastery of Excel. We practice the belief “a broad, solid, liberal arts curriculum for all students”, but is this really necessary in creating a workforce?
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