Corporate Educational Language
EdReform, EduBusiness, In The News, Media Watch, Secondary Education Tuesday, January 11th, 2011
The Beeb tell us that a fifth of of secondary schools are ‘in the red’.
How can a school be ‘in the red’? They are publicly-funded. They’re not businesses. Deficits are for companies.
Schools should have enough money. The 6th largest economy in the world has enough money. There’s not a bottomless pit, obviously. But there’s enough to go around. The talk of austerity is a scare tactic.
It is telling that the mainstream media so uncritically employ the language of management consultants, and their co-conspirators in the Tories, to talk about education.
Both these groups do not believe in education as a public good – tuition fees hike, anyone? – and would like nothing better than to privatise the whole thing.
The consultants can be expected to do very nicely in fees from the ‘restructuring’, ‘liberalisation’, ‘marketisation’, ‘streamlining’ or whatever euphemism is en vogue.
The Tories on the other hand can cleverly redirect the taxes paid for education somewhere else, say, lowering income taxes and buying the next election.
For all the balance that the Beeb offers, using neo-liberal business language to talk about state education must be music to Gove and chums’ ears.
