The Study
Advocates of school choice, charters, and vouchers argue that American schools can only be saved if we can just make them more responsive to the educational consumer. But in a recent book, David F. Labaree, associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University, argues that schools are already at the mercy of powerful consumer pressures and that this situation is causing a lot more harm than good. Rampant consumerism is threatening to turn education into a game of How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning (the book’s title). Labaree explores this situation by analyzing the impact of consumer demand on major elements of the educational system over the years – including standards for achievement and student promotion; the evolving form and function of the middle school, high school, community college, and college of education; and the shape of a teaching career.

The Findings
As citizens and taxpayers, we see schools as a public good. We rely on them to provide us with neighbors who are both competent citizens and productive workers, and therefore we all benefit from good schools and suffer from bad ones. This is true whether our not we have children in school. As educational consumers, however, we all treat schools as a private good. We see that educational credentials can help us get ahead in the competition for good jobs, and we pressure schools to create educational advantages for our own children even if this comes at the expense of other people’s children. The consumer approach thus undermines the very public-ness of the public schools. Educational consumerism also undermines the motivation of students to learn. It does this by focusing their attention on getting ahead rather than getting an education. Encouraged to be cagey consumers rather than avid learners, students concentrate on acquiring the symbols of education (grades, credits, and diplomas) rather than the substance, and they seek to buy these commodities cheap. After all, why learn more than you need to in order to get a good grade?

What It Means to You
This book provides teachers, administrators, and citizens alike with a compelling argument for resisting current efforts to promote educational consumerism through the medium of school choice, charters, and vouchers. By fending off efforts to make schools more responsive to the self-serving demands of individual consumers, we are reaffirming the historic mission of the public schools as a public trust and preserving it from becoming just another form of private property. At the same time, we are reaffirming the mission of schools as institutions of learning rather than mere diploma mills and reminding students that the goal is to get an education rather than to consume school.

More Information
Consult Labaree, David F. (1997). How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning: The Credentials Race in American Education. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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