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Bryan Caplan over at EconLog, in addition to giving this rookie a lovely welcome into the world of blogging, has raised a good point about the arguments that I made in my earlier post. The state of play right now is as follows. We start from the highly oversimplified premise that kids are either going to be influenced by commercial advertisers or by public school teachers. Our positions are:
Me: To a first approximation, the harm done by unregulated advertisers is fixed at the level that arises from profit-maximizing advertising practices; any advertiser who refrains on principle from a bit of profitable but socially harmful advertising will be replaced by someone who has no such qualms. In contrast, the amount of harm that teachers will do depends much more on the characteristics of the people who select into the teaching profession, as well as on the professional ethos in which they are trained and supported. This raises the possibility that people with a natural affection for kids will be the ones doing the teaching, supported by an institutional infrastructure and set of professional norms that are themselves set by pro-kid people.
Bryan: The very same things that make it possible that teachers will be better for kids than are commercial advertisers also makes it possible that they will be worse. They might end up being ideologues who are committed to passing along dangerous nonsense or ex-jock gym teachers who have nothing but contempt for the unathletic (in fairness to gym teachers, I think there has been some progress on this front in recent years) or just jerks who like to make themselves feel big by pushing little kids around.
Bryan’s is a very powerful objection. The more-or-less fixed level of damage done by commercial advertising is not the worst possible outcome. A world dominated by vapid consumerism is a lot worse than the Enlightenment utopia I dream about, but it is a lot better than some other things. So one might argue against public education on insurance grounds: there is always some chance that the really bad guys will get to be in charge of’ public education, and to insure against that we need to keep power out of the hands of teachers. But I don’t think that’s Bryan’s claim. I think he is saying some combination of (i) the damage done by commercial advertisers is not that bad; and (ii) the influences of public education are really bad as things stand right now. And this seems wrong to me.
I also enjoyed that lunch at GMU. We hadn’t know each other five minutes before we were all hollering at each other. What’s not to like?
Advertisers vs. Teachers II
This is not a reasonable comparison between the teachers and advertisers.Both have same responsibility to deliver their ideas and message but the working style of both parties is entirely different.
David: Judging by your comments here and your remarks elsewhere that 'the harm here is obvious' and 'I could go on', you apparently think that your opinion is obviously true, easily proven and that no reasonable person could possibly disagree with you. I have found that people who advance similar propositions assume the same, indeed, they frequently think that anyone who disagrees with them is either stupid or immoral.
You speak as there is a significant distinction between the sales pitches of commercial enterprises and educational enterprises, but a sales pitch in high-falutin language is still just a sales pitch. You speculate about the goodness of teachers but why should you think the people in commerce are less noble, and why think that teachers are not equally motivated by the pursuit of self interest. After all, they don't do it for nothing.
Just like the nurses' unions, the teachers' unions put out propaganda about the greater nobility of their public service compared to the world of commerce. They consider schools superior to commercial organisations, think that pupils are not customers because 'children are much more important than that' and believe therefore that education lies outside the grubby world of commerce. Likewise, as I'm sure you'll agree, my own work is of *far too elevated* a kind to be properly regarded as a 'job' in the 'market place'; not only should you all be taxed to pay me so I can do what I want to do, but you should all be grateful to me for doing it as well.
The advertisers have to compete on price, variety and quality for my custom. The teachers coerce me on pain of prison into paying for very poor quality education whether I want it or not, and give me no choice where to send my child. The advertisers don't consider themselves morally superior and want to do nothing more than to sell me something. Teachers believe they have a superior view of what my child needs, go on and on about how dedicated they are as if they are moral heroes doing us a favour, and indoctrinate my children with whichever fashionable political ideas they think that only the stupid or immoral could disagree with.
Teachers get away with this only because many people buy the propaganda. But if the schools managed to satisfy their customers wants as successfully as the businesses that you complain about did, education would be in a much better state than it is.