This muddle-speak became more popular when society began - to rebel against any type of authority. Posted: Nov 13th, 2015 - 3:32 am In Reply to: Does it differ - marge
Even by the most distorted, silly sort of odd abstraction, an education is not a "product" that students consume or parents purchase. If you must, start at the input side of "Education Inc", a factory where the student enters as raw material, has a lot of "value-adding", shaping, bending, folding and packaging activities performed on him, and finally pops out at the other end. What is he? He's the end-product of the system.
If anything, then, by this model society is the consumer (and don't we make this very argument when we want to float an education tax or bond?), but I wouldn't care to defend that model for long either.
Part of the problem arises from confusion of educational systems with educational institutions, confusion of educational institutions with educational methods, and confusion of educational methods with "becoming educated."
The fact that students and/or parents might have certain input, might choose which school to attend, might choose which courses to take, etc., does not make them "customers."
Parentis in loco has certainly been rejected, but it's a matter of conjecture whether it was parental authority that evaporated first and took all other related forms of authority (pastor-parishioner, teacher-student, employer-employee) with it, or vice versa.
...which reminds me. It's not uncommon these days for employers to be urged by consultants to think of employees as "inward-facing customers."
The real problem we have is one of rejection of authority. Of course, this is really a refusal to submit to authority, isn't it?
The most common form that this rejection takes is the refusal to recognize or acknowledge the existence of authority, much less the need for it. We re-frame such relationships in false terms to the point that we no longer properly understand them at all. This phenomenon became particularly virulent in the 1960s, and has now progressed to the point that we live in a society that is one of perpetual adolescence, with all of the petulance, prickliness, ignorance and rebellion that goes along with it. As in "Lord of the Flies", where there are no adults, we've created for ourselves Golding's island and its attendant consequences.
Unless you are, in fact, thinking about business itself, with respect to any other sort of relationship you cannot ride the business model down the road very far before the wheels start to wobble and you end up in the ditch.
Reply By Email Options
Complete Discussion Below: (  marks the location of current message within thread)
|
