Negative Effects of the Privatization of Education

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/19/4_ways_privatization_is_ruining_our_education_system_partner/

            Just as prisons have started to be privatized over the years, so has the education system. With this privatization of both structures, there have come negative consequences.  In the article, Four Ways Privatization is Ruining our Education System; Buchheit brings to light the issues of privatization.  Private schools are not improving education, just as private prisons are not improving the incarceration system in our country.

Having the profit motive distorts the goals of education just as profit-motivating prisons have perverted the system. When you bring profit into play it is hard to see any honest motive in these systems other than making money, and at that, making money at any cost even that of the student/prisoner.  As Buchheit states, “Our nation’s impulsive experiment with privatization is causing our schools to look more like boardrooms than classrooms” (2014). This goes for the prison system as well. Only in the case of prisons, sentences are extended and sentences are harsher for miniscule crimes in order to support the private corporation funding the prison. As Buchheit discusses, the profit motive leads to “questionable ethics among school operators…” just as in the prison system. Davis discusses in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete, the affects of systems where prisoners are treated as less than human, in a very unethical manner.

Buchheit discusses the third reason in the higher education system, as why privatization of education is wrong.  As the prison system takes advantage of the poor, in criminalizing those in poverty at a higher rate than middle class and upper class counterparts, so does privatized college education.  As Buchheit quotes in his article, “At the college level, for-profit schools eagerly clamor for low-income students…who conveniently arrive with public money in the form of federal financial aide” (2014). This same issue goes for private prisons, feeding off of the government for money, getting a certain amount for each prisoner they hold in the facility each year.

 Finally, in both the privatized school and prison, there is unequal treatment/help available. Lower-performing children are being left behind in the education system, and prisoners who need mental treatment or rehabilitation are being left to rot in cells versus getting the help they need. While there are some differences in the privatization of schools and the prison system, both have, clearly, very negative effects.