Dirty Money

Exploiting the Poor and Vulnerable

One of the things we really, really despise about this evil system under which we operate is people making money off other people.  Especially vulnerable people.  Think about that Shylockian leech who owns the corner dairy.  All those underprivileged kids flocking into his store on the way home from school, purchasing whatever their desires and credit will permit.  All the while, Shylock is making money out of the desires and weaknesses of other, more vulnerable people.  See him rubbing his hands. 

Schooling is a sector which always seems to attract this kind of nonsensical analysis.  For some reason the slightest whiff of anyone making a profit from providing education services is declared to be rapaciously evil--just like the leech who owns the corner dairy.  And if a school were to make a profit, or run a surplus, well that just goes to prove they were taking advantage of the most vulnerable. Profits mean exploitation, by definition.

And it is at this juncture in the road we are confronted by the real objection so many people appear to have to charter schools.  They make profits.  They are fattening themselves by living off the vulnerabilities of poor students and their families.  Mandy Hager, education reporter for the NZ Herald, tweeted this week:

This is incredibly worrying: our govt now wants to make money out of our most vulnerable people - just disgusting.

She was objecting to the noisome news that the six New Zealand charter schools had made a profit.  (Actually, all of these charter schools are non-profits, so any surpluses will have to be re-invested in the schools in some way, shape or form--but we digress.)  Making a profit--it's disgusting!  And not just a profit--it is being made off vulnerable people. 

Yes, it does have a bad taste.  We admit it.
  But that's not all.  There are plenty of people who make profits from education--which is to say they make their profits off vulnerable people.  If we are going to be in for a penny, we might as well go for the pound.  We find ourselves gravely concerned--disgusted--that hundreds, nay thousands of teachers, school administrators, principals make profits from education.  Sure, their profits are parleyed via a wage or salary package, but they are profits nonetheless.  It's disgusting.  Ms Hager has declared it so, and Ms Hager is an honourable person, full of heat and no light.


If we were really concerned for the most vulnerable people, here's what we would do.  We would strike a wage that reflected a subsistence payment and would make that the standard salary or wage package for all teachers and support and administrative staff.  Then, we would be able righteously to claim, that none of our teachers were making profits from our most vulnerable people.  They were being paid only what they needed to enable them to survive week to week, at the corner dairy (naturally).  Yes, we do reluctantly concede that we would still fall foul of Mandy Hager's scintillating, coruscating observation that teachers and the like ought not make any money at all off teaching in schools. 

And all these powerful insights from Ms Hager--the Herald's education reporter--have no doubt been garnered from her days in one of our journalism schools.  Someone, somewhere along the way, made money out of Ms Hager and it's just disgusting.  In more ways than one.