An “externality,” according to Mankiw, is “the uncompensated impact of one person’s actions on the well-being of a bystander” (206). And, also according to Mankiw, “the consumption of education yields positive externalities because a more educated population leads to better government, which benefits everyone” (211). Well, that’s not the only side benefit of education, but I’ll buy it. Your education benefits not only you (because you’re a more well-rounded person, and because you can get a better job, among other reasons: again, I’m wanting to look beyond the vocational model of education), but society in general. Mankiw shows some supply and demand curves to support his contention that “Positive externalities in production or consumption lead markets to produce a smaller quantity than is socially desirable” (212), which helps me understand the scarcity of education as a commodity, although — besides looking at the pictures of the supply and demand curves — I don’t understand why it should work this way. And, also, I’ve still got some questions about this education-as-commodity thing, and about considering writing as a commodity, too. So here we go.
1. If education is a good, to be consumed, how is it produced? Who produces it? (Who owns the means of producing education?) If we follow Paulo Freire, which I’m inclined to do (while being aware of the problems inherent in attempting to translate his practices to American universities, and also aware of Freire’s Christian Marxist beliefs), we understand from “The Banking Concept of Education” that teachers do not “produce” education, nor do universities.
2. Is evaluation a product of the university? Students aren’t paying directly for grades, or they’d all receive As, so are they paying to be evaluated on how much they’ve learned? Well, obviously, it’s not an either/or proposition; education as “product” includes both learning and the evaluation of that learning. Still, the evaluation thing raises interesting questions: if the “cost” of something is what you give up to get it, perhaps an A in first-year writing is worth (tuition fees) + (x number of keg parties), and a keg party is worth some fraction of an A. Tuition fees buy you time, as well as education.
3. If writing is a good, who consumes it? In the composition classroom, students seem to be the ones who produce it, but who consumes it? The historical assumption, I think, has been one of an exchange model: the student gives writing to the teacher for a grade. (Horner, in Terms of Work for Composition, talks about this as exchange value.) A revised understanding would have us understand that the act of production — the writing — is what is supposed to be of benefit to the student. In that sense, does the student both produce and consume the writing? (Mental image of Kronos here, sitting in the computer lab, devouring his children as they spring from his forehead, just below the brim of the baseball cap.)
4. If teachers assign Web writing (weblogs, Web pages) in composition classes, who consumes the Web writing students produce, and how does this affect the production and consumption of education? As a composition teacher, I think it’s really important to make writing matter, and asking students to put their writing into circulation outside the classroom makes it something more than just an “academic” exercise — but that then raises some questions about evaluation, and makes me think about the ongoing debate about whether college athletes ought to be paid. On the other hand, as far as I know, most bloggers don’t get paid, and choose to write for other reasons. (Catherine Gammon, if you’re out there, I’m still struggling to find an answer for your question: why write?)
These questions seem to me to be informed partly by concerns over how writing circulates on the web, which tie into concerns about ownership and copyright that I’m a little too bleary-headed to pursue further tonight. Something for tomorrow, I suppose.
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