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What if Grocery Stores Were Run Like Public Schools?
This is from Stone Street Advisors
Imagine if instead of having the choice to
go to whatever grocery store your heart desires, whether it be Costco,
BJ's, A&P, Kroger, Whole Foods, Safeway, Wegmans, SuperValu, Target
or Walmart, you could only go to one market. Not only would you be
limited to which market you could go to, but you could only get a
certain number/quantity/variety of groceries each week; no spoiling
yourself on a bag of Double-Stuff Oreos or a quart of Haagen-Dazs.
Does
this seem like some sort of dystopian nightmare of epic proportions, of
a totalitarian government concerned not with the inalienable rights and
welfare of its citizens, but with maintaining power and control over
them? Sadly, this is not science fiction. In fact, this is almost
exactly how our government-run education system works. Never thought of
it that way, did you?
Suppose that we were supplied with groceries in same way that we are supplied with K-12 education.
Residents
of each county would pay taxes on their properties. A huge chunk of
these tax receipts would then be spent by government officials on
building and operating supermarkets. County residents, depending upon
their specific residential addresses, would be assigned to a particular
supermarket. Each family could then get its weekly allotment of
groceries for “free.” (Department of Supermarket officials would no
doubt be charged with the responsibility for determining the proper
amounts and kinds of groceries that families of different kinds and
sizes are entitled to receive.)Except in rare circumstances, no family would be allowed to patronize a “public” supermarket outside of its district.
Residents
of wealthier counties – such as Fairfax County, VA and Somerset County,
NJ – would obviously have better-stocked and more attractive
supermarkets than would residents of poorer counties. And, thanks to a long-ago U.S. Supreme Court decision,
families would be free to shop at private supermarkets that charge
directly for the groceries they offer; such private-supermarket
families, though, would get no discount on their property-tax bills.When
the quality of supermarkets is recognized by nearly everyone to be
dismal, calls for “supermarket choice” would be rejected by a coalition
of greedy government-supermarket workers and ideologically benighted
collectivists as attempts to cheat supermarket customers from out of
good supermarket service – indeed, as attempts to deny ordinary families
the food that they need for their very survival. Such ‘choice,’ it
would be alleged, will drain precious resources from the public
supermarkets whose (admittedly) poor performance testifies to the fact
that these supermarkets are underfunded.And the small handful of
people who call for total separation between supermarket and state would
be criticized by nearly everyone as being, at best, delusional and – it
would be thought more realistically – more likely misanthropic devils
who are indifferent to the malnutrion and starvation that would sweep
the land if only private market forces governed the provision and
patronizing of supermarket. (Some indignant observers would even wonder
aloud at the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as
“customers”; surely the relationship between suppliers of life-giving
foods and the people who need these foods is not so crass as to be
properly discussed as being ‘commercial.’)
- advertisements -
Another fine piece by Stoned Street Advisors on a clear and fundmantalist ideological position. Yeah, let's destroy public education. Let's create "free choice" of schools. Nevermind that that system wouldn't be as cost efficient, wouldn't allow for any standards, and quality would be the quality you get from healthcare insurers: huge price, little choices. And all because once you get the state completely out of certain basic social necessities, be it health or education; you then get a collusion of private interests only caring to make it better for the quarter. I live in a country where public education was almost completely destroyed, and most people go to private schools. Those are not as prohibitive, but they're expensive, and they're quite crappy too. And now there isn't much of a choice, except if you're from the 1% and can attend either ultra-elite schools, or you can go to school in another country. Way to go Free Market Taliban! Let's destroy society a little more for fun and ipads...
I'm glad this Stone guy is here, but I almost feel like this has to be a wind-up. The reason there's no hope from the current "mainstream" conservative movements is because they're dominated by people so completely ensnared in the same platitudes that they claim to hate.
The problem with public schools is not that they're run by the gummit. The problem is that they're not really devoted to "education." They are designed to normalize social behaviors within a fairly specific range. If education is the goal, for sure you don't do it like THAT.
So here we get another cute meaningless analogy that's simple enough for the publicly-educated to wrap their heads around, but it has *nothing* to do with the system. Public schools keep most kids locked up for a long enough time every day that their parents can go to their JOBS. Public schools help identify and track the socially-defective students so that we have some hope of getting them onto a stable drug-regimen into some non-harmful life-track before they become really problematic.
More than anything, they lay down certain tracks in the minds of the youth with which they can hopefully assimilate all the contradictory social mores they're going to encounter as they grow up.
Looking at the simplest possible view of the public education system (or any education system) and claiming it's a failure because of this or that is already to have been successfully indoctrinated with the first and most foundational LIE--which is that the goal is primarily to *educate.*
In any event, the USA is run by the wealthy, not by the poor. If you want to affect change, you want to change the agenda of the wealthy. The poor are just along for the ride, and ultimately have the smallest share of power.
Don't like public schools? send your kids to private school.
Can't afford that? run for school board, join the PTA.
Don't have kids, and don't want to pay for schools? work for tax reform.
Or just sit around feeling sorry for yourself.
Actually, been there done all that. Not easy trying to change institutionalized bias though. Hope you are more successful.
Public education has obviously been extremely successful, how could you say something like this?
We probably just need to spend more money on it, that'll fix it.
Yeah I hear ya. Look at all the smashingly successful countries that don't have public education. Afganistan and the Congo come to mind.
Without public education there is no social mobility, because poor children start at an overwhelming disadvantage. Without social mobility there is no capitalism, because there is no incentive to be more productive than absolutely necessary for survival.
All you self-styled anarchists can send your kids to catholic school and get the hell off my roads. And don't come crying to my army when mexican drug lords conquer your shithole Texas village
Close, but social mobility for all is not required. Capitalism can flourish within fuedal and slaveholding societies, albeit only for the bourgeois and above.
Remember the old joke about "all men are created equal"? Remember who it applied to?
Also, only the appearance of social mobility is required for incentive - keep trotting out the Horatio Alger story for the peaons, it'll keep 'em working. Look at the trends of social American social class movement of the last 30 years; it is all downward, with the exception of the top few %. Goverments like to trot out statistics like http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1928 - and to the statistically naive it appears that median Brits are doing better. And yes, when you average my income and Bill Gates' it makes for a great trend line.
You have it somewhat Bass-Ackwards ... you wouldn't have roads or an army if there weren't more than a few of us trying to engage in the free and fair exchange of goods and services that unlocks the wealth.
You seem to think that nothing will happen unless a benevolent force creates the infrastructure to make it all possible. This flies in the face of human history.
If roads are needed, the producers build them so they can trade. If protection is needed, the producers hire it so they can trade. The public provision of these services only becomes a necessity after a larger protection racket representing the parasite classes comes on the scene to offer its services in exchange for a not-so-free-and-fair exchange of goods and servcies.
Wierd. I did not expect to get junked for this comment. ;->
Vouchers are a terrible idea. It is government interference which caused the massive failure, and vouchers are more of the same. All government money comes with strings attached. Vouchers will not only not fix anything, they will totally destroy what's left of private schools. Stop listening to the RedTeam-BlueTeam cheerleaders, both teams are led by fools and thieves without an original idea in their heads.
You will shop where we tell you to shop, comrade. Or else.
First of all, please don't give TPTB any more bright ideas ... publicly run supermarkets might strike them as another great way to level life's uneven playing fields. Thank heaven for SNAP or they might have already siezed upon this one.
Second of all, this is only the first tier of a education racket that claims to be egalitarian in nature but is in the end structured to shake down parents and students at all levels for every cent they are worth and more to shackle them into indentured servitude to line the pockets of liberals who would otherwise be unemployable in a market economy. Any surprise that the interested parties would fight to the death to ensure their sacred cow is not slain?
It goes back to the Greek philosophers. Nothing fundamental about the human condition has changed and core MAN has not changed. Considering any basic value added service in society like education, fundamental research or citizen ethics, as a pure merchandised product, takes away the timeless nature of basic human values which cannot be formulated/pre-formatted...as they are the essence of creative man. By "canning" them in algorithm form one stultifies human creativity into a predetermined value constrained field. This in itself is self defeating as it turns off the main creative engine in civilization. Keeping a non formatted, value added field, which is not 'merchandised' like a Macdo hamburger is vital to cultural evolution of man and his ability to reposition himself in space time with all his faculties alive. Not just those of economic man...as per the current prevalent paradigm.
Exactly.
And why have public libraries?
If people want to read, they can buy the books.
Right?
It is so much more efficient to just buy the book and read it, right?
And then throw it away......
gh
why stop there? lets force everyone into public libraries, and then have someone take them around in groups of 10 or less, give them 'selected' readings, and then a quiz. anyone who fails is tortured.
at least its already been tried with some 'success'
/sarc
Let's just ditch public education and leave it to the parents take responsibility for keeping their demon-spawn out of trouble for 8 hours a day.
Those big savings on school taxes will enable you to buy your own piece of paradise.
If schools were run like private enterprise (like they used to) they wouldn't have succeeded in their mission to churn out circus-watching, clock-punching factory workers.
And if schools were run like Wal-Mart, kids would all learn about China and be taught by part-time retirees and handicapped people, none of whom know where anything is, while dressing kids like freaks and giving them whatever crap they want (to learn) for the least amount of investment and marginal cost. Of course the result would actually be the same circus-watching factory workers and coal miners, they just wouldn't be as good at their jobs.
And yes, the upper-middle incomes would shop at the healthy "Whole Wallet" School (and many currently do - Montessori etc.). The wealthy wouldn't change from Laguna Blanca and Brown, of course. This whole debate is about what to do with/allow/offer the lower class, and to who's real benefit?
When Dewey, Ford et al first tried to institute public schooling in the NY Jewish ghetto, the Jews rioted. The radical idea of mind-numbing ritual was then intruduced in Gary Indiana, success!, it produced generations of steel mill workers.
If you don't have the book, it is online > John Taylor Gatto - an ex-NY school teacher:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the nineteenth century. Nearly one hundred years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, “the control of human behavior.”
Abundant data exist to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent, wherever such a thing mattered.
Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp saved thousands of coalminers from gruesome death, but it wasted many more lives than it rescued. That lamp alone allowed the coal industry to grow rapidly, exposing miners to mortal danger for which there is no protection. What Davy did for coal producers, forced schooling has done for the corporate economy.
Exactly
Most awesomest post of all times.
There are scads of other questions we could ask.
Like:
What if grocery stores were run like embassies?
What if stock markets were run like prisons?
What if financial blogs were run like yahoo message boards?
Fun!
♠The number of ignorant to the bone replies to this post is astonishing, especially on ZH,
My 2 cents
I was born in a poor country and in an even poorer family, without the public education system I would be .. un-educated ?
NO, no, and No, I would be self educated, from 8th grade I absolutely hated going to that place called school, why 8th
because it took me this long to realize what crap I was being taught there the past 8 years, and that I could have learned
it on my own in 2 or 3 years, and I became aware of the 5 more years of crap I will have to endure,
so between public education and 'no' (read self) education I would take the 2nd option any day,
at that I had no1 to teach me at home, most kids have at least 1 parent who will take care of them,
I say to hell with the public school system just torch it!
+1
had to wait for a common sense comment to reply, cause this subject brings out the statists in force.
all i can say is none of these people have had the benefit of our experience, which is to say, watching the public school system as it (attempts) to cripple my kids in real time.
this problem in the NE is acute, which is to say, the social engineers really have taken the upper hand here. i could go on for hours, but basically:
if parents have a choice, they have a stake in that choice. but more importantly, parents bear the long term consequences whether they make choices or not.
how about having faith that we can all 'reserve the right to get smarter' and that some bureaucrat or NEA asshole with an agenda and their own self interest first will inevitably make choices no interested involved parent ever would.
trader joes or whole foods? this kind of straw man is an insult to anyone's intelligence.
continue to build institutions that accomodate foolishness, and we'll continue to get greater fools.
when are you socialists going to get it? real people don't need to be told how to think, and would prefer to see their children learn how to think, not what. a**holes!
and yes, i junked all you statist social engineers.
Have yourself a junk, buttfuck.
thanks weinerdogturd - a profound compliment from one such as you. please junk this one too - that's the only opportunity you'll have to show your superiority here.
azannoth - glad you saw fit to tell them to go to hell. we had enough and finally were able (and appreciate our good fortune) to send our kids to private school. school choice is not perfect, but those people listen to our concerns, cause they know if we don't get what we're paying for, we go elsewhere.
Azannoth,
I completely agree with you. Seems like the ZH crowd on this takes everything 100% literally. It's a great way to summarize our problem with education so that the gen pub can get a grasp of the underlying fundamental probelm with education. Instead, my whole life I've been hearing about the ultimate solution from all the unions and politicians. Smaller class size, higher paid teachers, more money for admins, more admins, longer better and guaranteed retirments, etc etc. Never have I heard anything about creating better teachers. 30 yrs later and the argument remains the same. I ask my parent's who were immagrants to this country and they say it's been the same story since they immigrated here in the 60s. Same reason they decided to skip on all the cosumerism and send myself and my brother to a private school.
How unbelievably stupid -- comparing grocery stores to public schools! The author should thank his or her lucky stars that critical thinking skills are not taught in America.
I completely understand why corporate America looks at public schools as a multi-trillion dollar market opportunity. But really, grocery stores? Why should any government service be run like a grocery store? In fact, what private service is run like a grocery store? Furthermore, other than retail establishments, what other private businesses are run like grocery stores?
None!
If some Gaultian genius thinks that running a school like a grocery store is such a great idea, why don't they start a private school/grocery store, and let the market decide?
lishment
I see you've missed the ENTIRE point of this article. Well done. Try reading it before drinking the rageraid, maybe you'll get it them.
"Imagine if instead of having the choice to go to whatever grocery store your heart desires"
Once again Stone Street prevails in the avoidance of all things reality outside the motherfucking Hamptons.
Let me revise this above statement for you to reflect the reality of this country and world:
"Imagine if instead of having the choice to go to whatever grocery store your WALLET ALLOWS".
Yes Stoned Street...not everybody in Amerika can afford to shop at Whole Foods or Trader Joes. And this same reality applies to education since very few people are realistically pondering their option between Yale or a Community College.
I see this response all the time, that any alternative to our current dismally broken system, would result in only the rich get any kind of decent education. Well I really think you have it backwards. The rich can already afford private schools. The poor are the ones getting screwed as we shovel more and move money into the bureaucratic wasteland of public schools. Vouchers would lead to choice which always leads to a superior product/service.Vouchers would be a hell of a lot less risky than continuing the pathetic joke we have now.
Why is everyone so brainwashed that the only answer to everything is government, and when they inevitably screw it up, the immediate response is not that government turns everything they touch into shit, but that they just need more money then it will all be a utopia.
If you think turning everything over to private interests and making everything about profit is the answer, then we can have a very lengthy debate about brainwashing.
And regarding this: "any alternative to our current dismally broken system, would result in only the rich get any kind of decent education"...Well I hate to break the news to you cowboy...but it already is like that.
There is a tremendous amount of money that goes to teachers. Depending on state, that number varies from about 70% to 80% - mostly an inverse function to class size - of ALL education dollars spent. What is 75% of 400 billion?
All education reform is designed for the purpose of gaining access to that money.
End the department of education, reduce regulation, reduce funding spent on educational bureaucrats and other non-instructional activities, and return policy control and accountability to local school boards -- that might help.
This is my favorite ZH post. Ever.
Americans love crap. No matter how bad the programming, people still give thousand$/yr for cable. And now matter how awful the public school system gets, parents continue sending their children into it. No matter how many trillion$ the banksters and Congress steal, Americans do nothing about it.
Americans totally love smelly crap, they eat it up!
Conversely, what if public schools were run like grocery stores? The first problem that occurs to me is that the vast majority of people (especially the poor) would be buying unhealthy, crappy educations because they're cheaper and look more fun. Kinda like how our university system works right now . . .
glad at least you know better for folks done growed up poor like me...
from the bottom of my heart - thanks
i think education is more important that supermarkets... the government took the reigns cuz it was the best that could be done years ago... now im not no ideological teacher union buster
.
but we live in a society where being productive is a reletively high bar for humanity... and i do belive mandatory participation in education for all citizens is the only way
.
as far as corruption in government overtaking national and community identity... yea sure babe thats the rub
good one! personal responsibility! high bar! i wonder what people did before they had the gov't to take care of them! too funny!
They didn't go to school, only the elites had any education. And as for the rest, well, children have lots of jobs in coal mining operations, as it was in GB during the industrial revolution. What? Lost Generation? Watcha talking about you statist commie?!
Yes, that's right. You have to learn the revisionist history whether you like it or not. If you don't, you are giving willing authorization for the Government to imprison you and confiscate your children to be raised by state ran foster care.
Let me guess, you grew up outside the state influence.
Eugene Lawson vs. Midas Mulligan
"I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit!" - Eugene Lawson
if you search for jamie's american food revolution for programmes, then it is a real eye opener on how much junk goes into US childrens school food
Good food with the right balance of nutrients is extremely important for proper brain function for growing children.
The government is breeding a dumbed down population that will be willing debt slaves.
dont like our poison? tuff sheet!
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/18/2173232/chicago-school-bans-packed...
The teachers unions won't allow the reforms.
Stupid in America :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw
Yes, by all means let's run schools like a grocery store.
Since the 'consumers' here are children, I'm sure they'll select physics and trig, and take a pass on pottery. Right? That's your premise. Cater to the consumer's desires. Who cares whether kids actually learn anything. Let's not ask the ones actually doing the work. What do they know. Let's degregulate like financial services since that has worked so well.
i'm sure you and your ilk know better, since you're all the only adults that can make informed choices for all the poor children. might as well banish parenthood for your (brave new) ideal world. asshole
Umm, the consumers aren't the children, they're the _parents_.. Nice try, but you fail.