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Life''s good? Education as a consumer product.

Publication: Arena Magazine
Publication Date: 01-FEB-04 		Format: Online - approximately 1150 words
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Life''s good? Education as a consumer product.(Australia''s education system)

Article Excerpt
You may have seen a recent advertisement for LG electrical appliances, where a child can watch herself spun around by her dad on an internet-compatible television located on a fridge. The art of advertising is the art of selling a product no one needs. In the world of markets, this is called 'choice' theory, which is simply management jargon for selling a seemingly useful product.

Without much deviation from this, the Howard government has rendered education a matter of choice--a consumer product, in other words. Parents are purchasers. Choice is pre-eminent. You 'shop around'. Collective interests and a common good are diminished. The collective good is only regarded as a convenient Demiurge to evoke at the time of potential floods by refugees and the phantasmic image of the head scarfed terrorist. But when it comes to education, radical conservatism shudders, seeking refuge behind notions of 'individual choice'. The LG choice.

The enlightenment ideal of a free education, never easily reconciled in colonial Australia--the religious schools were carefully nurtured with government support--has...

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