EDUCATION, MARKETS, and an AUDIT CULTURE Michael W. Apple

International Journal of Educational Policies Vol.1. (1), 2007, 4-19. ISSN:1307-3842 EDUCATION, MARKETS, AND AN AUDIT CULTURE Michael W. Apple University of Wisconsin Changing Commonsense through concerted efforts in some of the most iv In a number of volumes over the past difficult settings to be threatened. decade, I have critically analyzed the Unfortunately, all too many of the actual processes of ‘conservative effects of this assemblage of reforms have either been negligible or negative, or they modernization’—the complicated alliance v behind the wave after wave of educational have been largely rhetorical. This is reforms that have centered around neo- unfortunate, especially given all of the work liberal commitments to the market and a that well-intentioned educators have devoted supposedly weak state, neo-conservative to some of these efforts. But reality must be emphases on stronger control over faced if we are to go beyond what is currently curricula and values, and ‘new fashionable. managerial’ proposals to install rigorous The odd combination of marketization on the forms of accountability in schooling at all one hand and centralization of control on the levels. i The first set of reforms has not other is not only occurring in education; nor is demonstrated much improvement in it only going on in the United States. This is education and has marked a dangerous a world-wide phenomenon. And while there shift in our very idea of democracy— are very real, and often successful, efforts to always a contested concept ii --from ‘thick’ counter it, vi this has not meant that the basic collective forms to ‘thin’ consumer driven assumptions that lie behind neo-liberal, neo- and overly individualistic forms. The conservative, and new managerial forms have second misconstrues and then basically not had a major impact on our institutions ignores the intense debates over whose throughout society and even on our knowledge should be taught in schools commonsense. and universities and establishes a false In many nations there have been attempts, consensus on what is supposedly common iii often more than a little successful, to in US and British culture. The third vii restructure state institutions. Among the takes the position that ‘only that which is major aims of such restructuring were: to measurable is important’ and has caused ensure that the state served business interests; some of the most creative and critical to have the state’s internal operations model practices that have been developed Education, Markets, and an Audit Culture - M. Apple 5 those used in business; and to ‘take 1. The services or goods that are to be focused politics out of public institutions’, that is upon must be reconfigured so that they can to reduce the possibility that government indeed be bought and sold. institutions would be subject to political 2. People who received these things from the pressure from the electorate and from state must be convinced to want to buy them. progressive social movements. viii Chubb and Moe’s arguments about voucher plans 3. The working conditions and outlook of the that place educational institutions on a employees who work in this sector must be market mirror this latter point, for transformed from a model based on collective example. ix understandings and providing service to ‘the public’ on the one hand to working to produce This last point, removing politics from profits for owners and investors and subject to government institutions, is based on a less market discipline on the other. than accurate understanding not only of the state but of the market as well. While 4. When business moves into what were most economics textbooks may give the previously non-market fields, as much as impression that markets are impersonal possible their risks must be underwritten by and impartial, they are instead highly the state. political as well as inherently unstable. Under these kinds of pressures, To this, other points need to be added. To standardized and competitive labor processes guarantee their survival, firms must seek begin to dominate the lives of the newly ways of breaking out of the boundaries marketized workers. But this is not all. A that are set by state regulation. good deal of labor is shifted to the consumer. Increasingly, this has meant that the She or he now must do much of the work of boundaries established to divide non- getting information, sorting through the market parts of our lives must be pushed advertising and claims, and making sense of so that these spheres can be opened to what is often a thoroughly confusing welter of commodification and profit-making. As data and ‘products’. xii In the process as well, Leys reminds us, this is a crucially there is a very strong tendency for needs and important issue. ‘It threatens the values that were originally generated out of destruction of non-market spheres of life collective deliberations, struggles, and on which social solidarity and active x compromises, and which led to the creation of democracy have always depended’. state services, to be marginalized and xiii ultimately abandoned. Once again, in Leys’ words, ‘The facts suggest that market- It is not an easy process to transform parts driven politics can lead to a remarkably rapid of our lives and institutions that were not erosion of democratically-determined totally integrated into market relations so xiv collective values and institutions’. that they are part of a market. To do this, at least four significant things must be These arguments may seem abstract, worked on. xi but they speak to significant and concrete Education, Markets, and an Audit Culture - M. Apple 6 changes in our daily lives in and out of and central sanctions-- becomes a good education. For more than two decades, example of this at the level of elementary and we have witnessed coordinated and secondary schools.) This has been determined efforts not only to reconstruct accompanied by a loss of local democracy. a ‘liberal’ market economy, but a ‘liberal’ At the same time, the role of the state in market society and culture. This dealing with the destructive rapaciousness distinction is important. In Habermas’ produced by ‘economically rational’ decisions words, the attempt is to have ‘system’ has been sharply reduced. xviii totally colonize the ‘life-world’. xv As As many people have recognized, behind all many aspects of our lives as possible, educational proposals are visions of a just including the state and civil society, must society and a good student. The neo-liberal be merged into the economy and reforms I have been discussing construct this economic logics. Although there will in a particular way. While the defining always be counter-hegemonic characteristic of neo-liberalism is largely tendencies xvi our daily interactions–and based on the central tenets of classical even our dreams and desires–must liberalism, in particular classic economic ultimately be governed by market liberalism, there are crucial differences ‘realities’ and relations. In this scenario– between classical liberalism and neo- and it is increasingly not only a scenario, liberalism. These differences are absolutely but also a reality--a society and a culture essential in understanding the politics of is not to be based on trust and shared education and the transformations education values. Rather, all aspects of that society is currently undergoing. Mark Olssen clearly are to be grounded in and face ‘the most details these differences in the following extreme possible exposure to market passage. It is worth quoting in its entirety. forces, with internal markets, profit centers, audits, and “bottom lines” Whereas classical liberalism represents a penetrating the whole of life from negative conception of state power in that the hospitals to play-groups’. xvii As Margaret individual was to be taken as an object to be Thatcher once famously put it, ‘The task freed from the interventions of the state, neo- is not to just change the economy, but to liberalism has come to represent a positive change the soul’. conception of the state’s role in creating the appropriate market by providing the Interestingly, because of the focus conditions, laws and institutions necessary for on measurable results and central control its operation. In classical liberalism, the over important decisions, the federal individual is characterized as having an government’s power has actually been autonomous human nature and can practice sharply enhanced. (The Bush freedom. In neo-liberalism the state seeks to Administration’s legislation concerning create an individual who is an enterprising ‘No Child Left Behind’—where schools and competitive entrepreneur. In the classical labeled as ‘failing’ on standardized tests model the theoretical aim of the state was to are to be subject to market competition limit and minimize its role based on Education, Markets, and an Audit Culture - M. Apple 7 postulates which included universal what is happening at all levels of education, egoism (the self-interested individual); including higher education. xx And this is invisible hand theory which dictated that occurring at the same time as the state itself the interests of the individual were also becomes increasingly subject to the interests of the society as a whole; and commercialization. This situation has given the political maxim of laissez-faire. In the rise to what might best be called an audit shift from classical liberalism to neo- culture . To get a sense of the widespread liberalism, then, there is a further element nature of such practices, it is useful here to added, for such a shift involves a change quote from Leys, one of the most perceptive in subject position from ‘homo analysts of this growth: economicus’, who naturally behaves out [There is a] proliferation of auditing , i.e., the of self-interest and is relatively detached use of business derived concepts of from the state, to ‘manipulatable man’, independent supervision to measure and who is created by the state and who is evaluate performance by public agencies and continually encouraged to be perpetually public employees, from civil servants and responsive’.

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