White Courtesy Telephone

Dieting Advice for Education Advocates

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If you care about public education in the United States and want to shed a few pounds, have I got a diet for you:

1. Run a lap each time you hear somebody frame the purpose of K-12 education in terms of "developing 21st century skills for the workforce" or "supporting vibrant regional economies."

2. Reward yourself with an extra helping of mashed potatoes each time somebody asserts that the primary goal of education should be to help create good citizens with the knowledge and skills necessary for participating meaningfully in a democracy.

My guess is that you’ll be ready for that yellow polka dot bikini in no time at all.

I remember being surprised by a 60 Minutes episode many years back when a reporter—was it Morley Safer?—lamented the declining state of public education. His primary concern was the effect this decline would have on corporations and their ability to hire skilled workers. There was no mention, as I recall, of what it might mean for our democracy to produce high school graduates unable to write a coherent paragraph, understand a simple op ed, or locate the Atlantic Ocean on a map of the world.

Was I witnessing the divergence of a new species, Homo economicus, from its less well adapted cousin, Homo democraticus? The business sector has had a big say in framing the purpose of K-12 education. Have government and nonprofit voices been muted by comparison?

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Image source: Música y Recuerdos

I Assume You Know Who You Are

Sector Agnosticism

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I’ve been hearing it mostly from younger people entering the nonprofit field: You can do good for society in any sector—nonprofit, business, or government.

The lines between the sectors have blurred, I’m reminded, and it’s the IRS that forces incorporated entities into nonprofit and for-profit boxes. The social entrepreneur who starts a profit-making venture to support her charitable work shows us how to free our not-for-profit minds. Blended entities such as B-corporations promise double and even triple bottom lines. If you’re hip to the jive, you avoid using words like nonprofit altogether.

Am I imagining this or do I sometimes detect a bit of a sneer in all this sector agnosticism?

Belittlements aside, the view that nonprofit designation is largely a matter of IRS convention—or worse, a failure of entrepreneurial imagination—appears to be gaining currency.

I understand the frustration some people feel with the normal course of business at many not-for-profits. But our sector agnosticism overlooks an uncomfortable truth: there are important social goods nobody wants to pay for. If it really were possible for a business-minded individual to turn a hefty profit by providing health care to the penniless, for example, it would have happened long ago.

R U a philanthrocapitalist? If you are, I’ll eat my shoe if you can convince a hundred investors to buy stock in a company that promises to make a killing by helping returning prisoners reintegrate into their communities.

The nonprofit status of organizations that provide services to the indigent reflects not a failure of imagination or of will, but rather a sober assessment of what people value enough to pay for freely. If you’re selling a product like the iPhone, you’re in luck. If not, you might need to resort to begging like the rest of us not-for-profit shlumps.

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Image source: Sketchpot