All advertisements are advertisements for other advertisements. All advertisements convince us of one thing only-  it is good to consume. 
  
John Berger 
 

Questions, in a fundamental way, are inimical to authority. The question values change over tradition, doubt over reverence, fact over faith. The question responds to knowledge and creates new knowledge. The question initiates and reflects learning. Yet the question is essential if information is to yield its full value. Obedience will not lead to and does not require a depth of understanding. 
 

       Shoshana Zuboff

 Directly, in the case of fees, and indirectly, through the tying of state grants to enrollments, students constitute a pool of income bearing units, for whose custom universities are required to compete. Hence, using everything from personal high school visits to media advertising, a constant need for student recruitment...... Teaching itself, in this scenario, becomes influenced by questions of corporate self-presentation. There is pressure on courses not just to be good (which means as a market norm, relevant but challenging, tough but well-structured and fair) but to look good, and in ways which make the department which offers them look good as well.  This also entails, whether the impetus is inner or imposed, special attention by teachers to even the physical details of classroom presentation, from dress, deportment, communicative style, and organizational competence, to the outlines, reference material, and assignment sheets handed out in class  (Wernick   160). 

The relation of universities to the labour market, then, is not simply as the co-producers (with students themselves) of various high-grade skills and abilities. Universities also produce, and distribute, various kinds of tokens which promotionally stand in for them. It is these tokens, correspondingly, and not just enhanced knowledge, understanding, etc, which a student takes away from a university, as indeed from any educational establishment. Whether consciously sought or not, and however well-strategized, what students acquire from their pre-career career is their very own store of promotional capital  (Wernick  168).

 The author of the last two quotes, Andrew Wernick,  despairs over our postmodern embracing, in society in general and education specifically, of what he has come to call  promotional culture. Contrary to what my taking his thoughts out of context may lead one to read into his comments, he sees the tokenization of grades, diplomas, and letters of recommendation as something to be regretted. However, notice, again, how seductive the language is with which he chooses to describe this phenomenon-- students as income bearing units, teaching as corporate self-presentation, educational establishments as producers of tokens which stand in for skills and knowledge, grades and courses as promotional capital. And what is so seductive about these images is that they are countable. They are part of the rationalization of education. How much easier to compete with other students if one can show one's standing on a computer printout. And, how much easier it is to compete with other educational establishments if one can promote one's own school with easily understood and comparable figures attesting to high levels of success. 

 And promote they do. My own school daily assaults the air waves with a ridiculously "hip" commercial which promises, to the accompaniment of cheesy stadium rock guitars, that "______ makes it possible, you make it happen!" But, the local television stations regularly show yet other commercials for various educational institutions which portray listless, bored men and women, stuck in "dead-end jobs," miraculously transformed (apparently by carrying books down a hall and sitting around the student union, laughing) into vibrant, exciting people pursuing glamorous "careers"-- and who also happen suddenly to be dressed much more expensively and shown driving very nice cars. The ante has definitely been upped through this move. That is, my school may, through numbers in a brochure, assert that our student's success rate, upon transferring to a four year institution, is of a particular ranking among all community colleges in our state. But a nearby school, choosing to utilizes such TV commercials can go us one better and show ( that is, tell a story about) prospective students exactly what the advantages can be for using their product. 

In other words, would any school ever, in writing, promise a student a high paying, glamorous job simply for acquiring the correct number of educational tokens, for merely buying an education? No, of course not. But by buying into (perhaps a more apt metaphor borrowed from business?) the need to competitively advertise a product, we are allowed, potentially, to insinuate such promises. In fact, we are compelled to do so by the very nature of TV commercials and their extreme suitability for telling stories, stories through which we have had endless practice in finding a moral. Use this deodorant and become as the good-looking couple who have found love among the terminally physically-fit. Drink this beer and turn any social gathering into the ultimate example of hip. Buy this education and lead the good life (the details of which don't need to be elaborated upon too much as we have already learned what the good life is from most other commercials). 

Before the reader assumes an element of business-bashing in these and previous remarks, let me say that the validity of business itself as a cultural activity is not in question. It is the validity of applying the business model and its discourse to education I wish to challenge. However, to add an ironic spin to the discussion, it may be of interest to know that there are a number of business folk and educators who are advocating the application of the educational model to business. Unfortunately, this idea has filtered down into pop culture in the form of public service announcements extolling the virtues of "lifelong learning" and other buzz phrases which rarely explain just exactly what that means. (It is usually presented in terms of having to learn several  new jobs over one's tenure in the work force or having to change careers in order "to stay competitive in today's market." Rarely are the cognitive skills necessary to handle these changes discussed, nor are the underlying assumptions of this situation questioned. And just as rarely are other possible motives for learning acknowledged.) What it does mean is that the sorts of computer- and tele-communications-driven activities which businesses are becoming increasingly more oriented around seem to be creating the need for the kinds of relationships and activities associated with our more traditional sense of education. As information systems and computer-assisted automation take over more and more work in both business and industry, the typical relationship between middle-management and worker is becoming increasingly problematic. No longer can it be structured  by positions of power that are defined by who does and who does not have information. In order for workers to be effective, they will need to be privy to the same knowledge and understandings which traditionally have separated them from their foremen or managers. But who will pass on this knowledge? Who will make it understandable? 

 In her 1988 book, In the Age of the Smart Machine, Shoshana Zuboff reports on a nearly ten-year-long study which she made of three different businesses as they struggled through the crucial changeover necessary for automating either their production processes or office systems. After interviewing a large number of workers and managers, secretaries and bosses, Zuboff came to realize that she was documenting an historical change in working conditions akin to that experienced by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century workers during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. "The qualities of knowledge for which I had combed two-centuries-old documents were available here, now, in the hearts and voices of those people who were experiencing these new circumstances of production for the first time" (xiii). But as her interviews piled up, as she worked more and more closely with those she was studying, she also began to realize that she was dealing with a transformation which was taking place on very "intimate levels of experience-" 
 

The material alterations in their means of production were [transforming their] assumptions about knowledge and power, their beliefs about work and the meaning they derived from it, the content and rhythm of their social exchanges, and the ordinary mental and physical disciplines to which they accommodated in their daily lives (xiii). 

An individual's readiness to take on the risks and rewards of creating and communicating explicit meaning is likely to be related to the character of his or her other social experiences, the psychological and communicative competencies that have been regularly emphasized, and the structure of the current social context as regards its capacity to invite or inhibit the individual effort to create meaning (205). 

Competence and performance are not static attributes, however; they are dynamically related  experiences......competence grows under conditions in which it is required, invited, and nurtured. In the absence of changing role requirements and flexible social boundaries, opportunities to develop competence are reduced. Performance not only displays competence but also contributes to the development of competence. When roles are fluid, those who can learn are more likely to do so, because their daily experience provokes development (207).

 Drawing in part on Zuboff's work, Arthur Wirth, professor emeritus of education at Washington University, also argues for the need for a more education-like work place in Education and Work for the Year 2000— 
 

 Clarifying this new philosophy of work has been an international process......mounted by sociotechnical theorists who attacked the Taylorist tradition of scientific management......The reality of human work, these critics said, is "socio" as well as "technical."  "Socio" refers to the communicative, collaborative, idea-generating aspects of human beings. The mainstream efficiency model is out of touch....because it fails to engage the commitment and personal enthusiasm of people, as well as their capacity for learning and problem solving.....(36).

This new view of the work place (a view which, by the way, Wirth documents as being held by a large number of CEOs, management theorists, and educators), that is, as one which "supports the essential conditions of a learning environment: freedom to play, experiment, and enter into dialogue" (62), clearly evokes very little of the traditional language of business. 
 

When management realizes that the dual separation of thinking from executing that characterizes classic management is not only outmoded but dysfunctional, the way opens for exploring alternatives to hierarchy-- management faces the fact that learning is the productive heart of an informated work "place" where information circulates and must be responded to with thinking. A "division of learning" replaces the division of labor, one that takes on a new vocabulary: colearners, exploration, experimentation, innovation..... Relationships vary more in terms of what people know and feel and what the task at hand requires. Relationships operate more  flexibly as people participate in processes, such as inquiry and dialogue, that support learning (63).

I am sure that it has not escaped notice that I have been opposing this business- model version of education against some vague notion of a tried and true, carved in stone, model of education which we know, in our heart of Western European civilization hearts, works. This, of course, is not true, which is much of the problem. Education is going through just as radical a period of rethinking and re-evaluation as is, among most other cultural institutions, business itself. Undoubtedly, this has made education particularly vulnerable to the encroachment of other models, such as business, as we cast about for answers to questions which we, and society in general, have been asking for a number of years now. What is the role of education in this world of radical change? To what degree should education be held responsible for creating some of the problems we as a society face. What solutions to those same problems can education be asked to provide? These, and many more, are valid and essential questions which we need to continue to ask, discuss, debate, and negotiate. But we must insist on being allowed to have this conversation with our own vocabulary, a vocabulary which, at least for now, still includes the potential for talking about these issues on a human level and in terms of people as creators of culture, of meaning, and of individual worth. 

Education is not a business. Yes, it has bills to pay, but so do religious institutions (although perhaps this is not as good an analogy as it once was). But the need to generate income in order to defray expenses is not, nor ever been, a defining condition of business. In our capitalistic culture, a business makes decisions based upon profit motive, upon making large sums of money, a practice which, for right or wrong, we embrace because of the corollary assumption that the business also provides wages and taxes which keep our economy flourishing. But these business decisions, driven by the profit motive, often result in altering a product or, in some cases, deleting a product from a business's line. In fact, if the market for micro-extruded doo-dads has seriously diminished, those making the doo-dads would be seen as irresponsible if they did not find some other product with which to generate a profit. But, as tempting as it is to draw an analogy between this description and education (if Poetry 201 doesn't attract the requisite 12 students then we must drop it from the catalogue or replace it with Rock Lyrics 301, etc.), we must resist doing so. We must resist letting the metaphors do our thinking for us. Rather, if we must engage in "marketing strategy," then let us at least see if we can convince our students that the interpretive powers which studying poetry (or any of the Arts, for that matter) enhances is actually a practical, work-oriented skill that they can profitably use on the job. 

 But, even if we acquiesce to the metaphors of business by this much, and certainly if we continue to move toward a model of education that is driven by competition, a model defined by what business thinks we should be, a model wherein students/customers influence curriculum through their "buying habits," we will be "out of business" in a very short time. Simply put, there are "businesses" which can do the job of skill training and information dispensing more efficiently, more "profitably," than we can. Proprietary schools, technical schools, training schools attached to specific businesses and industries, distance-learning programs and technology offered by the telecommunications industry (ATT being in the forefront of this new marketing strategy), all can do what we seem to be wanting to promise our "customers" to do, but better. 

 However, of utmost consequence will be the fact that if we continue to allow the discourse of business to define who and what we are, the sense that education should be something more than an information dispensing system will be lost in a very foreseeable future. Or, to personalize this projection, the reasons which I and many others went into teaching will become totally irrelevant. That is, the sense that education can be redemptive, can be constitutive, in important ways, of who we are, individually and collectively, and can enrich, in a deep sense, who we are as a society, will first become passe, and then, eventually, lost in the mists of time (unfortunately, in this day of radical change, the mists of time are not so much historical as convenient). 

Education is constitutive of who we are, whether we do or do not choose to take ethical responsibility for how we talk about it and ourselves. It is just as constitutive as Pop culture, big business, technology, or the media (although the distinction between and among these four is becoming subtler with each passing day). But education appears compelled to identify, in its quest for relevance (and student numbers), with one and/or all of the above. But neither Pop culture, big business, technology, or media take their identity from the human motivations of curiosity, nobility, compassion, tolerance, justice, loyalty, integrity, honesty, or Beauty as felt by the human soul. So, folks, here's a bottom line for you-- if I and the rest of my fellow teachers don't (or can't, because of a lack of an appropriate language) tell our students about these things, who will?