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Sherma Edwards OMDE 606 Section 9040 22 September 2013 Social justice, economics and distance education.

2 In his 2007 essay on Open Learning entitled Social justice, economics and distance education, Greville Rumble illuminates a debate over the merits of passing social welfare by providing insight into the reasons for supporting easily-accessible education, specifically distance education, while also discussing the sociopolitical philosophy behind the movement opposing this type of education. This debate is, today, more relevant and pervasive than ever. College tuition at both public and private schools has never been higher and is placing an extremely heavy financial burden on a middle class that has already seen a great deal of suffering due to Americas most recent economic recession. Making this matter decidedly worse is the impending collapse of the so-called student loan debt bubble, which can be seen as comparable to the collapse of the housing bubble that caused the recession. With student loan interest rates and college tuition both at unprecedented highs and the current unemployment rate hovering above seven per cent, those Americans who would seek education have found themselves in a dilemma, caught between the need for schooling and the inability to pay for it. Beyond college-level education, there, too, is crisis: public schools are under fire from politicians who accuse teachers unions of being unduly greedy; many schools are suffering from the threat of shutdown and reeling from aggressively slashed budgets. Rumble argues that what we have come to witness in this tremendously negative attitude toward public education on the part of both politicians and the average citizen is a clash between the basic, democratic need for the federal subsidization of education, which would provide easy access to education for even the poorest citizens, and libertarian politicsespoused in the modern American political landscape by all manner of political bodies from the Tea Party to hardline conservative Republicans to the constituency of

3 Ron Paul. In his essay on the necessity of maintaining a social contract and a safety net for those living bad lives, Rumble assumes a predominantly moral argumentthat of an obligation to ensure material, social, and financial securityand attempts with a ounce of success to focus that argument through the lens of distance education reform. Rumble begins his essay by declaring that education is a fundamental human right. He follows this by defining and contextualizing neoliberal and libertarian politics, saying this mode of thought centers around the idea that a government should provide options to its citizens regarding basic servicessuch as resource consumption, health, and educationand that these services may be privatized for citizens benefit so long as the citizens assume the cost of these services; this notion, in turn, would call for the institution of limits on how much money a government can collect from its people and how it can regulate a countrys economy. Rumble asserts libertarian thinking, which would have federally-subsidized education defunded and privatized, is destructive to the concept of distance education, which provides educational services for those who cannot, for reasons of time, location, or a lack of resources, be present in the same place as the classroom or place of instruction. He goes on to state the basic premise of his position: because so many people alive today are living what Rumble calls bad lives, we as a society are morally obligated to provide them every possible chance to improve their existences, including the ability to have access to distance education or other forms of federally-subsidized schooling. Furthermore, he offers, according to the human capital model of socioeconomic thought, an educated population is more capable of developing a strong economy and should be considered a worthwhile investment. Rumble sums up this point

4 by saying we as a culture need to re-evaluate our moral assumptions regarding humanitarianism, the same assumptions, which currently dictate how political bodies in liberal-democratic societies, behave and enact policy. This position is Rumbles respective value stance; it dictates and informs the argument he goes on to craft in the rest of his essay as he philosophizes and cites the work of other thinkers based around this point. Rumble then gives the reader a brief overview of the history of distance education, particularly the reasons for its initiation in the 1960s, in the first paragraph of his essay. Rumble goes on to detail the advent of the policies opposing distance education, explaining that during the 1980s and 90s, the mode of sociopolitical thought we now know as modern libertarianism, or neoliberalism, began to develop. This form of thinking was built on the classical, free-market ideals of laissez-faire economics; it saw government intervention as a distortion of free competition and, furthermore, supported those who argued for the privatization of education (169). In the section of his essay titled Libertarianism and distance education, Rumble discusses the notion of a shift in public policy, especially in terms of access to education, as being compatible to a shift in both economic policy and sociological ideology. In all three of these abstractions, the overall shift was from the common good and the welfare of the nation-state to the idea of individual competition and the access of the individual to various social, political, and economic freedoms. Here, Rumble cites the work of modern philosophers such as Bobbit, Lomasky, Hausman, and McPherson, who argue for the advent of the market-state over the nation-state and of individual freedom over social

5 welfare. The seeming heartlessness of this ideology in terms of the welfare of the less fortunate, or those who are living bad lives, is then qualified, with Rumble stating: After this brief indictment of libertarian sociological ideology, Rumble then differentiates and more accurately defines a good life and a bad life, citing figures on life expectancy and the disparity in GNP per person between the rich and the poor. Rumble then addresses competing philosophical approaches to the provision of welfare for those living bad lives, first discussing that of Rawls, a liberal philosopher whose conception of the necessity of socioeconomic welfare is based on the notion of a lack of foresight on the part of those living good lives into their own, respective futures. As such, argues Rawls, it would benefit these people to protect themselves by ensuring the existence of a standing social contract, which would provide a safety net, both for them and their fellow man. Rumble refutes this argument by saying such a social contract would be based on the beliefs of those in control of public policy about what is fair or unfair, resulting only in an outcome dictated by self-interested belief. Rumble then moves on to the philosophy of Honderich, which he seems to advocate, summing it up by stating, in opposition to libertarianism and liberalism, Honderich thus proposes a morality of humanity that has just one fundamental principle: to try to save people from bad livesthis is the stuff of our moral obligations and rights (172). Here, it seems, Rumble finds a bit of ideology he truly advocates; he takes the work of Honderich and applies it to socioeconomic conditions in the United Kingdom, then the United States. Rumble wraps up his discussion of the morality of social welfare by finding his way back to distance education and related policy. This conclusive section of his essay

6 seems to regard distance education as somewhat of an afterthought in the light of a very touchy argument on the merits of aiding the poor. This seems to be the central weakness of Rumbles essay: he claims to base his discussion of morality around his discussion of educational policy and its necessity when, in fact, it appears as the reverse. Rumble is very sure of the respective value stance he takes in his advocacy of a reform of the moral assumptions related to the public policy that would disenfranchise the less fortunate, especially in terms of their access to education; his essays argument hinges around the belief that education will, over the long-term, drastically improve the lives of everyone to whom the service is provided, pulling forward humanity on the whole by increasing our collective level of intelligence. In this, his article examines the concept of distance education in a useful light, as well as from a democratic stance, effectively turning the concept into a discussion about the philosophy and purpose of social morality. This moral debate takes center-stage and few words are devoted to actual, practical reform of distance education and social welfare policies related to giving those living bad lives access to affordable, logisticallyfeasible schooling. In this aspect, Rumble seems to adopt the inconsistent and ignorant qualities of the libertarians whose ideology he decries: he takes to an ivory tower from which he excludes without exploring into the harder, dirtier facets of the fight he picks between neoliberals, whom he characterizes as callous and uncaring, and those who would advocate more ardent, aggressive policies of social welfare. He is abstract and conceptual, offering only the most general of examples and data, citing fewer empirical figures than varying bits of sociopolitical thought; further still, none of the data cited by Rumble is related to education or the result of a lack of education on economic or

7 financial standing, life expectancy, or any of the other aspects of the good life he promotes. Rumble makes a moral argument, which can be viewed as both a strength and a weakness of this essay. In one sense, this is the sort of appeal that seems to hit a reader hardest; it is emotional and plays on ethical sensibility. However, Rumble, aside from failing to provide much empirical data, also falls short in his argumentative approach. He picks and chooses at which points to differentiate libertarianism and neoliberal beliefs, and at which point to lump the two in together. He says, libertarianism (or neoliberalism), building on classical economics and the theory of laissez-faire capitalism, saw government intervention as a distortion of free competition...it supported those who argued for the privatization of educationand then goes on to say, Indeed, far from defending the libertarian commitment to equality of opportunity, neoliberalism at the extreme emphasizes the extension of individual choice, especially through the private provision of education and training (169-170). He also, at times, seems to conflate economic theory with social theory, applying free-market notions of finance to concepts of social freedom. He equivocates, even with the arguments he chooses to support, offering statements like, Honderich accepts that what constitutes a good life in this sense is a matter of opinion. On the other hand, he suggests that one can recognize a bad life when one sees it (172). These flaws in Rumbles rhetorical strategy cause his essay to flounder, turning an occasion for an important point on the necessity of reforming distance education into a wordy and confused article of moral proscription.

8 Reference

Rumble, G. (2007). Social justice, economics and distance education. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 22(2), 167 -176.