Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-17T12:51:04.429Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 14 - The Consumerist Threat to Education and Democracy

from Part III - Responses to Contemporary Moral Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2023

Douglas W. Yacek
Affiliation:
Universität Dortmund
Mark E. Jonas
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Illinois
Kevin H. Gary
Affiliation:
Valparaiso University, Indiana
Get access

Summary

In this chapter I identify several important questions consumerism raises regarding moral education, and conclude by considering how moral education can address consumerism in several important ways. In doing so I explore the extent to which the moral and political aims of education intersect, noting consumerism’s moral implications for democracy, citizenship, and public life in general. Not only are advertising and marketing the “new educator” but consumerism is also undermining the more conventional or noncommercial kinds of education. Moral education always takes place in a social and political context, which today is increasingly dominated by consumerism. I argue that schools, which are foundational in the formation of the moral and civic identities of future democratic citizens, are still a crucial locus of resistance against the forces of consumerism. Given the moral implications of the dominance of consumerism in the contemporary world, there is an urgent need to address consumerism in modern moral education.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Althof, W., & Berkowitz, M. W. (2006). Moral education and character education: Their relationship and roles in citizenship education. Journal of Moral Education, 35(4), 495518. doi: 10.1080/03057240601012204.Google Scholar
Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle. (1984). The complete works of Aristotle: Vol. 1. J. Barnes (trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Original works published c. 350–330 BCE.)Google Scholar
Babic, M., Fichtner, J., & Heemskerk, E. (2017). States versus corporations: Rethinking the power of business in international politics. The International Spectator, 52(4), 2043. doi: 10.1080/03932729.2017.1389151.Google Scholar
Babic, M., Heemskerk, E., & Fichtner, J. (2018, July 10). Who is more powerful – states or corporations? The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/who-is-more-powerful-states-or-corporations-99616.Google Scholar
Bakan, J. (2005). The corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Banerjee, S. B. (2008). Corporate social responsibility: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Barber, B. (1995). Jihad vs McWorld: Terrorisms challenge to democracy. New York, NY: Ballentine Books.Google Scholar
Barber, B. (2008). Consumed: How markets corrupt children infantilize adults and swallow citizens whole. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, J. (1973). For a critique of the political economy of the sign. St. Louis, MO: Telos Press.Google Scholar
BBC News (2021, January 25). Wealth increase of 10 men during pandemic could buy vaccines for all. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55793575.Google Scholar
Bergen, M. (2020). Kids on YouTube see many ads, few educational videos. Bloomberg. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-17/kids-on-youtube-see-many-ads-little-educational-videos-report.Google Scholar
Bowler, K. (2013). Blessed: A history of the American prosperity gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, R. (2021, May 24). Students as consumers? The perspectives of students’ union leaders across Europe. Higher Education Quarterly, 76(3), 626637. doi: 10.1111/hequ.12332.Google Scholar
Boyles, D. (2011). The privatized public: Antagonism for a radical democratic politics in schools? Educational Theory, 61(4), 433450.Google Scholar
Carr, D. (2006). The moral roots of citizenship: reconciling principle and character in citizenship education. Journal of Moral Education, 35(4), 443456. doi: 10.1080/03057240601012212.Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, W. (2008). Being consumed: Economics and Christian desire. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Coleman, S. (2000). The globalisation of charismatic Christianity: Spreading the gospel of prosperity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, C. (2021, October 18). US billionaire wealth surged by 70%, or $2.1 trillion, during the pandemic: They are now worth a combined $5 trillion. Institute for Policy Studies. Available at: https://ips-dc.org/u-s-billionaire-wealth-surged-by-70-percent-or-2-1-trillion-during-pandemic-theyre-now-worth-a-combined-5-trillion/#:~:text=America’s%20billionaires%20have%20grown%20%242.1,analyzed%20by%20Americans%20for%20Tax.Google Scholar
Conway, M. (2021). The legacies of 1945: The evolutions of European civic morality. Journal of Moral Education, 50(1), 2131.Google Scholar
Cook, D. T. (2000). The rise of “the toddler” as subject and as merchandising category in the 1930s. In Gottdiener, M. (Ed.), New forms of consumption: Consumers, culture and commodification (pp. 111130). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Cook, D. T. (2001). Exchange value as pedagogy in children’s leisure: Moral panics in children’s culture at century’s end. Leisure Sciences, 23(2), 8198. doi: 10.1080/014904001300181684.Google Scholar
Cox, H. (2016). The market as God. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Crocker, R., & Chiveralls, K. (2018). Subverting consumerism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cropsey, J. (1957). Policy and economy: An interpretation of the principles of Adam Smith. New York, NY: Springer.Google Scholar
Davies, I., Gorard, S., & McGuinn, N. (2005). Citizenship education and character education: Similarities and contrasts. British Journal of Educational Studies, 53(3), 341358. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3699247.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. (1962). Capitalism and freedom. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, T. L. (1999). The Lexus and the olive tree. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.Google Scholar
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. New York, NY: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gilead, Tal. (2015). Economics imperialism and the role of educational philosophy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 47(7), 715733.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, J. P., & Hess, F. M. (2019, November 5). America’s students flounder while education reformers virtue signal. National Review. Available at: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/11/school-reform-struggles-virtue-signaling-ignores-student-performance-stagnation.Google Scholar
Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 2. Lifeworld and system: A critique of functional reason. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, L. M., & Risler, L. (2015). The role consumerism plays in student learning. Active Learning in Higher Education, 16(1), 6776. doi: 10.1177/1469787415573356.Google Scholar
Heath, J., & Potter, A. (2005). The rebel sell: Why the culture can’t be jammed. Toronto, Canada: HarperPerennial.Google Scholar
Henderson, D. (2001). The case against “corporate social responsibility.” Policy, 17(2), 2832.Google Scholar
Hess, A. J. (2021, September 9). The U.S. has a record-breaking $1.73 trillion in student debt – borrowers from these states owe the most on average. CNBC Make It. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/america-has-1point73-trillion-in-student-debtborrowers-from-these-states-owe-the-most.html.Google Scholar
Hoeschmann, M., & Poyntz, S. (2011). Media literacies: A critical introduction. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jabbar, H., & Menashy, F. (2021). Economic imperialism in education research: A conceptual review. Educational Researcher, 50(9), 110. doi: 10.3102/0013189X211066114.Google Scholar
Jannat, T., Alam, S. S., Ho, Y., Omar, N. A., & Lin, C. (2022). Can corporate ethics programs reduce unethical behavior? Threat appraisal or coping appraisal. Journal of Business Ethics, 176, 3753. doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04726-8.Google Scholar
Jonas, M. (2010). When teachers must let education hurt: Rousseau and Nietzsche on compassion and the educational value of suffering. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 44(1), 4560.Google Scholar
Jubas, K. (2007). Conceptual con/fusion in democratic societies: Understandings and limitations of consumer-citizenship. Journal of Consulter Culture, 7(2), 231254. doi: 10.1177/1469540507077683.Google Scholar
Kalajtzidis, J. (2016). Moral education and moral consumption. Ethics & Bioethics, 7(1–2), 3944. doi: 10.1515/ebce-2016-0004.Google Scholar
Kavak, B., Gürel, E., Eryiğit, C., & Tektas, Ö. Ö. (2009). Examining the effects of moral development level, self-concept, and self-monitoring on consumers’ ethical attitudes. Journal of Business Ethics, 88, 115135. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40294987.Google Scholar
Kenway, J., & Bullen, E. (2001). Consuming children: Education-entertainment-advertising. Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Kisby, B. (2017). Politics is ethics done in public: Exploring linkages and disjunctions between citizenship education and character education in England. Journal of Social Science Education, 16(3), 720. doi: 10.4119/jsse-835.Google Scholar
Klein, N. (2000). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. New York, NY: Vintage Canada.Google Scholar
Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York, NY: Knopf Canada.Google Scholar
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York, NY: Knopf Canada.Google Scholar
Kristjánsson, K. (2020). An introduction to the special issue on wisdom and moral education. Journal of Moral Education, 49(1), 18. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2019.1705041.Google Scholar
Krutka, D. G., Smits, R. M., & Willhelm, T. A. (2021, April 20). Don’t be evil: Should we use Google in schools? TechTrends, 5(4), 421431. doi: 10.1007/s11528-021-00599-4.Google Scholar
Lazear, E. P. (1999). Economic imperialism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazear, E. P. (2000). Economic imperialism. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(1), 99146.Google Scholar
Lazetic, P. (2019). Students and university websites – Consumers of corporate brands or novices in the academic community? Higher Education, 77(6), 9951013. doi: 10.1007/s10734-018-0315-5.Google Scholar
Lehmann, C. (2017). The money cult: Capitalism, christianity, and the unmaking of the American dream. New York, NY: Melville House.Google Scholar
Mandeville, B. (1989). The fable of the bees: Or private vices, publick benefits. London: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1714.)Google Scholar
Martens, L. (2005). Learning to consume-consuming to learn: Children at the interface between consumption and education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(3), 343357. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036072.Google Scholar
McGibbon, B. (2006). The end of nature. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks.Google Scholar
McGregor, S. (2011). Consumer education philosophies: The relationship between education and consumption. Journal for International Educational Research and Development, 34(4), 48. doi: 10.25656/01.9446.Google Scholar
McGregor, S. (2016). Framing consumer education conceptual innovations as consumer activism. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 40 (1), 3547. doi: 10.1111/ijcs.12208.Google Scholar
Mintz, A. (2012). The happy and suffering student: Rousseau’s Emile and the path not taken in progressive educational thought. Educational Theory, 62(3), 249265.Google Scholar
Nixon, E., Scullion, R., & Hearn, R. (2018). Her majesty the student: Marketised higher education and the narcissistic (dis) satisfactions of the student-consumer. Studies in Higher Education, 43(6), 927943. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2016.1196353.Google Scholar
Norris, T. (2011). Consuming schools: Commercialism and the end of politics. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Norris, T. (2020). Are students becoming consumerist learners? Journal of Philosophy of Education. Special Issue on ‘Transformative Environmental Sustainability Education, 54, 874886. doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12489.Google Scholar
Norris, T. (2022). Educational futures after COVID-19: Big tech and pandemic profiteering versus education for democracy. Policy Futures in Education. doi: 10.1177/14782103221080265.Google Scholar
Olsson, D., & Gericke, N. (2016). The adolescent dip in students’ sustainability consciousness: Implications for education for sustainable development. The Journal of Environmental Education, 47(1), 3551. doi: 10.1080/00958964.2015.1075464.Google Scholar
Oxfam International. (2021, January 25). Mega-rich recoup COVID-losses in record-time yet billions will live in poverty for at least a decade. Available at: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/mega-rich-recoup-covid-losses-record-time-yet-billions-will-live-poverty-least.Google Scholar
Panitch, V. (2019). Liberalism, commodification, and justice. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 19(1), 6282. doi: 10.1177/1470594X19877653.Google Scholar
Peters, M. A. (2022). Hayek as classical liberal public intellectual: Neoliberalism, the privatization of public discourse and the future of democracy. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(5), 443449. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2019.1696303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, T. (1997, August 31). The brand called you. Fast Company. Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you.Google Scholar
Peterson, A. (2020). Character education, the individual and the political. Journal of Moral Education, 49(2), 143157. doi: 10.1080/03057240.2019.1653270.Google Scholar
Pope Francis (n. d.). Apostolic exhortation evangelli gaudium of the holy father Francis to the bishops, clergy, consecrated persons and the lay faithful on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world. Vatican: Vatican Press. Available at: https://www.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.pdf.Google Scholar
Potter, W. (2019). Media literacy. New York, NY: Sage.Google Scholar
Quiggin, J. (2019, December 5). Virtue signally and vice signalling. Crooked Timber. Available at: https://crookedtimber.org/2019/12/05/46961/.Google Scholar
Rutherford, M. A., Parks, L., Cavazos, D. E, & White, C. D. (2012). Business ethics as a required course: Investigating the factors impacting the decision to require ethics in the undergraduate business core curriculum. Academy of Management, 11(2). doi: 10.5465/amle.2011.0039.Google Scholar
Sandel, M. J. (2018). Populism, liberalism, and democracy. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 44(4), 353359. doi: 10.1177/0191453718757888.Google Scholar
Sandlin, J. A., & McLaren, P. (2010). Critical pedagogies of consumption: Living and learning in the shadow of the “shopapocalypse.” London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shiva, V. (2003). Monocultures of the mind: perspectives on biodiversity and biotechnology. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (1982). The theory of moral sentiments. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics. (Original work published 1759.)Google Scholar
Stiegler, B. (2010). The age of de-proletarianisation: Art and teaching in post-consumerist culture. D. Ross (trans). Available at: https://www.atlasofplaces.com/essays/the-age-of-de-proletarianisation.Google Scholar
Taylor, J. S. (2022). How the commodification of academia derails debate. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Theocarakis, N. J. (2006). Nichomachean ethics in political economy: The trajectory of the problem of value. History of Economic Ideas, 14(1), 953. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23723270.Google Scholar
Tomlinson, M. (2017). Student perceptions of themselves as “consumers” of higher education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(4), 450467. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2015.1113856.Google Scholar
Tosi, J., & Warmke, B. (2016). Moral grandstanding. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 44(3), 197214. doi: 10.1111/papa.12075.Google Scholar
UBC Sauder School of Business. (2019.) Me Inc. conference. Available at: https://www.ubcmeinc.com.Google Scholar
Ventrella, S. (2007). Me, Inc.: How to master the business of being you. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Vogel, D. (2006). The market for virtue. The potential and limits of Corporate Social Responsibility. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (2002). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Baehr, P. (Ed. and trans.). London: Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1905.)Google Scholar
Westra, E. (2021). Virtue signaling and moral progress. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 49(2), 156178. doi: 10.1111/papa.12187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×