Recently, I had one of those brief staff room conversations with a teacher colleague that keeps nagging me. It was the day that a WA State court pronounced unconstitutional the recently approved law allowing charter schools to operate in Washington State. The teacher announced, "Too bad about the charter schools thing, we really could use some competition." My comment to her was "I think what we need is more cooperation not more competition." She then said, "Let me know how that goes for you." To which I replied, "Cooperatives are awesome. I'm a life long customer of PCC (the network of worker self-managed food stores), been a member of Group Health for over 30 years - it is really the model for the entire country, and I don't get ripped off when I'm banking because I use credit unions." She didn't have anything else to say after that.
It is easy to overlook alternative models for social organization in this era of corporate dominance but they continue to exist as they have since the founding of our country. Ben Franklin established the first library, the first fire department and even the first fire insurance company for what used to be called "the common good". Add to that the hundreds of Utopian communities that have been established in the US, among them the Amish and the Mormons. Add also the tradition of barn raising and even rural electrification. All examples of cooperative effort for the common good, a way to provide security and assurance for the group that individuals could never provide for themselves. Schools fall into this same category. There are many other examples. These types of cooperative efforts are actually corrupted by the competitive spirit, not invigorated by it.
I use this anecdote not to disparage the teacher who is in favor of charter schools but to try to understand how a teacher can come to believe that the competitive model could improve public education. We should all know by now that competition and its system of rewards and punishments is good motivational practice for lower level production activities but when it comes to jobs requiring higher level critical thinking for complex problem solving it is the collaborative force of cooperation that is the order of the day. The best motivators for this type of work are purpose, mastery and autonomy, so it can't be motivation that is the issue. Instead, I think competition is being used as a euphemism for corporate structure, wherein every activity is judged by its profitability and no other standard or rationale. By this logic charter schools will challenge public schools in the competition of educating our young by using techniques that get the best results and abandoning those that are less productive; using public funds without public oversite.
This too is a wrong way of thinking but readers will have to wait for my next blog post (yes, I know, it could take weeks) to go deeper with me into the complexities of social organization.
It is easy to overlook alternative models for social organization in this era of corporate dominance but they continue to exist as they have since the founding of our country. Ben Franklin established the first library, the first fire department and even the first fire insurance company for what used to be called "the common good". Add to that the hundreds of Utopian communities that have been established in the US, among them the Amish and the Mormons. Add also the tradition of barn raising and even rural electrification. All examples of cooperative effort for the common good, a way to provide security and assurance for the group that individuals could never provide for themselves. Schools fall into this same category. There are many other examples. These types of cooperative efforts are actually corrupted by the competitive spirit, not invigorated by it.
I use this anecdote not to disparage the teacher who is in favor of charter schools but to try to understand how a teacher can come to believe that the competitive model could improve public education. We should all know by now that competition and its system of rewards and punishments is good motivational practice for lower level production activities but when it comes to jobs requiring higher level critical thinking for complex problem solving it is the collaborative force of cooperation that is the order of the day. The best motivators for this type of work are purpose, mastery and autonomy, so it can't be motivation that is the issue. Instead, I think competition is being used as a euphemism for corporate structure, wherein every activity is judged by its profitability and no other standard or rationale. By this logic charter schools will challenge public schools in the competition of educating our young by using techniques that get the best results and abandoning those that are less productive; using public funds without public oversite.
This too is a wrong way of thinking but readers will have to wait for my next blog post (yes, I know, it could take weeks) to go deeper with me into the complexities of social organization.
