You Are Not My Customer 1-6

julia99baby · 发表于 2009-12-23 17:37:00

You Are Not My Customer

By Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.1

[N]othing of great value is either abstract or commensu-
rate. Start with your hand. The workman’s compensation
office can tell you the value of your hand in dollars. Con-
sider your daughter. An insurance company or litigation
lawyer can tell you her value in dollars. What is your
home place worth? Your lover’s hair? A stream? A spe-
cies? Wolves in Yellowstone? Carefully imagine each be-
loved person, place, animal, or thing redescribed in eco-
nomic language. Then apply cost-benefit analysis. What
results is a feeling of sickness familiar from any forest sale
or predator-control proposal. It is the sickness of being
forced to use a language that ignores what matters in your
heart.2

By now you have heard the lingo. You have heard a university ad-
ministrator (or someone else on campus) refer to students as “cus-
tomers” or “consumers.” By paying tuition, it is said, you are pur-
chasing goods and services. Those who teach you—quaintly known
as instructors, teachers, masters, or professors—are to be called
(and, more importantly, thought of as) “vendors” or “service-pro-
viders.” There is said to be a “market” for education. Indeed, educa-
tion itself is coming to be viewed in some quarters as “training” or
“information delivery.” Perhaps this new language—this jargon, this
argot, this patois, this fa.on de parler—appeals to you. It may sound
reassuringly familiar. After all, we live in a “new economy.” Those
who have marketable skills are supposed to flourish, whereas those
who allow their talents to rust are sure to languish (or, worse, per-
ish). There are other reasons besides familiarity why a student may
prefer the new language. In the marketplace, as the adage goes, the
customer is always right. Consumers, like those accused of crimes,
2. Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1996), 64.

have legally protectable interests (i.e., rights). Those who ignore, dis-
respect, or otherwise slight their patrons may find themselves out of
business, an ignominious end indeed. To have money, in a commer-
cialized, materialistic society such as ours, is to have power—both
power-to and, more problematically, power-over.3
3. For a discussion of these types of power, see Thomas E. Wartenberg, The Forms of
Power: From Domination to Transformation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 18.
4. The Jefferson nickel is one-fourth nickel and three-fourths copper, according to Micro-
soft Encarta: The Complete Multimedia Encyclopedia (1994 edition).
In this essay, I want to persuade you—or rather, remind you,
since deep down you know it—that this picture of students as cus-
tomers, of professors as vendors (or service-providers), and of uni-
versities as business firms is degrading (hence insulting) to all con-
cerned. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we will be rid of the
inappropriate and demeaning lingo; and the sooner we are rid of the
lingo, the better off we’ll be, both individually and collectively. If I
were a student (it is not long since I was), I would resent being called
or thought of as a customer. I hope that by the end of this essay you
see why.
Let me begin with a simple example. A nickel (the one with
Thomas Jefferson’s image on it) is not just a nickel; it is a physical
object, a piece of metal, a piece of nickel (or nickel alloy),4 and a coin
(among other things). Each of these descriptions is true. What this
shows is that there can be multiple true descriptions of, or labels for,
the same object. To a physicist, the salient description is “physical
object.” To a metallurgist, the salient description is “piece of nickel
(or nickel alloy).” To a coin collector, the salient description is “coin”
(specifically, “nickel,” or “five-cent piece”). We can take the example
a step further. The nickel in question may have special features. If
it were minted in 1950 in Denver, then it is what numismaticians (a
fancy name for coin-collectors) call a 1950-D nickel. Since there
were comparatively few of these produced (take my word for it), it is
worth more, in economic terms, than the run-of-the-mill nickel.
Nickels cannot feel degraded, as humans can, but if they could,
they would be insulted by the description “piece of metal,” or even
“coin,” however apt these descriptions may be. I can imagine a
nickel shouting, “I’m not just a piece of metal, dammit; I’m a coin,
and a pretty impressive one at that!” Think of it this way. All 1950-
D nickels are nickels, but not all nickels are 1950-D nickels. All

5. Some philosophers (and others) dream of a grand cascading reduction. Social sciences
such as sociology, they say, are reducible to psychology, which in turn is reducible to biology,
which is reducible to chemistry, which is reducible to physics, which is reducible to mathemat-
ics, which is reducible to logic (the core, not coincidentally, of philosophy). Not all reductionists
are eliminativists. The latter wish to eliminate the language of the reduced field. For example,
once psychology is reduced to biology, there will be no need for psychological terminology; it will
(and should) be eliminated from our vocabulary. We will no longer “talk that way,” and anyone
who persists in doing so will be treated as superstitious, the way astrologers and alchemists are
treated as superstitious. Those reductionists who are not eliminativists have no principled objec-
tion to continued use of the terminology of the reduced field, but they believe that it is inferior to
the terminology of the field to which it has been reduced.
nickels are coins, but not all coins are nickels. All coins are pieces of
metal, but not all pieces of metal are coins. All pieces of metal are
physical objects, but not all physical objects are pieces of metal. To
reduce a thing, philosophically, is to (re)describe it in less-specific
language, to put it into a class with other things in a way that ob-
scures its uniqueness or specificity. It is to take a unique, special, or
extraordinary thing and render it mundane, generic, and ordinary.
Describing a 1950-D nickel as a “piece of metal,” though true, and
though useful in certain contexts, puts it into a category with brass
nails, pewter spoons, aluminum cans, and gold tooth fillings.5
As I say, nickels cannot feel degraded. (To degrade—de-grade—
a thing is to reduce or lower its grade or status.) But wouldn’t you
feel degraded if someone ignored your unique or special features, or
some special relation in which you stand to others, and treated you
as a generic person? We know that every human being is (to put it
indelicately) a bag of chemicals. But who wants to be thought of, or
described, as a bag of chemicals? I don’t! To think of me that way is
to miss what is distinctive of me. For one thing, I am a thinking bag
of chemicals. I have a mind, a personality, volition, sensation. To
describe me as a bag of chemicals, or as a physical object, or even as
a biological organism, is to lower my status. How insulting! I resist
being reduced in this way, and I question the motives of anyone (in-
cluding a scientist) who attempts it. If someone describes me as a
physical object, thereby lumping me in with the computer on which I
write these words and the cup from which I sip my coffee, I begin to
wonder whether the next step is to treat me as a physical object. I
will be particularly vigilant in detecting reductionist terminology, for
that is the tangible expression—the indicator—of how I am being
conceived. Whenever someone describes me as anything other than
as a person (a morally exalted state, to be sure), I will remind him or

6. The philosopher Gilbert Ryle makes essentially the same point in his usual pithy
way: “Mechanical principles contain the explanations of all bodily states and processes. But
plants, insects, animals and men are bodily organisations. So all their states and processes
can be mechanically explained. Yet living things are not merely complex mechanisms; the bio-
logical sciences are not mere off-shoots of mechanics. Where there is life there is purposive-
ness, and where there is sentient, mobile and, especially, conscious and intellectual life there
are progressively higher and higher levels or types of purposiveness.” Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 125 (emphasis added).
[ 本帖最后由 julia99baby 于 2009-12-24 09:42 编辑 ]

julia99baby · 发表于 2009-12-23 17:38:00

7. A thing is valued intrinsically when it is valued for its own sake, independently of any-
thing else it may, or does, bring about. A thing is valued instrumentally (i.e., extrinsically) when
it is valued for its propensity to bring about something intrinsically valuable. Logically speaking,
a given object can be valued both intrinsically and instrumentally. Some people cite friendship
and knowledge as examples.
her that it understates the case—perhaps, depending on the descrip-
tion, vastly so.6
You can see where this is going. With all due respect to univer-
sity administrators (some of whom, believe it or not, are my friends),
describing students as “customers” or “consumers” ignores what is
special about them. It treats them like K-Mart shoppers searching
for blue-light specials (commodities) or like weary athletes contract-
ing for massages (services). Is that a flattering, uplifting, ennobling
description? Do you feel good thinking of yourself in that way, or
knowing that others, with power over you, think of you in that way?
I wouldn’t. I would be the opposite of flattered; I would be outraged.
To me, the relation between teacher and student, master and pupil,
custodian and charge, is special. Not to sound corny, but it is as sa-
cred a relation as there is in our secularized culture. Teachers (the
good ones, anyway) care about the souls of their students, not just
about their marketability. They try to instill character as well as
train the intellect. The knowledge that they impart, and the skills
they inculcate, are those that they deem intrinsically, and not just
instrumentally, worthy.7 Henry Simon’s advice to fledgling teachers
is as sound today as when he offered it more than six decades ago:

Your job, if you teach any subject that is less obviously
‘cultural’ than music or the fine arts, is to make of it too a
truly cultural subject. That means that you must develop
your pupils fundamentally, must make of them fuller,
richer persons mentally, physically, or morally, must de-
velop their awareness of things, their understandings, and
their powers of appreciation and expression. Any teaching
which does not get under the pupils’ skin and make them

8. Henry W. Simon, Preface to Teaching (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 31.
Note that one aim of teaching, according to Simon, is to transform one’s students. This involves
giving them what they need, not what they want. (Needs and wants can, and for most of us
much of the time do, diverge.) The commercial marketplace doesn’t just cater to wants; it manu-
factures them. I cannot resist quoting the philosopher Richard Mohr, who believes that “The
proper function of high schools and compulsory public education in general—one that by default
must be carried out by colleges—is the saving of students from their parents and their religion.”
Richard D. Mohr, “The Ethics of Students and the Teaching of Ethics: A Lecturing,” chap. 13 in
his Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988), 293-311, at 303.
9. One insidious feature of economic thinking, or perhaps I should say “conventional eco-
nomic thinking,” is that it divides the world into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive
categories: humans and resources. The resources, as the name implies, are assumed to exist for
human use and consumption. Sentient nonhuman life—e.g., birds, snakes, rabbits, dogs, and
chipmunks—has value in this view only if, and only to the extent that, it is valued by humans,
whether as a means or as an end. As one economist put it, “Economics is concerned with man’s
well-being. It encompasses the social relationships or social organization involved in allocating
scarce resources among alternative human wants and in using those resources toward the end of
satisfying wants as fully as possible.” Richard H. Leftwich, The Price System and Resource Alloca-
tion, 3d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966), 2. For a critique of the economic way
of thinking about nonhuman animals and the natural environment, see Mark Sagoff, The Econ-
omy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988).
eventually different and better persons might almost as
well not take place at all.8

Good teachers know that most learning, certainly all durable learn-
ing, is self-effected. What good teachers try to do is facilitate—i.e.,
make possible—a lifetime of curiosity, discovery, and edification.
This is why all the professors I know, at UTA and elsewhere, care
deeply about where their students go and what they do. Nothing is
as satisfying to the professorial mind, or so warms the pedagogical
heart, as seeing one’s pupils succeed. Not in the base economic
sense of accumulating wealth, status, or power, for these, in the
scheme of things, are hollow, but in the sense of contributing to the
life prospects, happiness, and well-being of others (including nonhu-
man animals).9
Is there anything wrong, per se, with the language of economics
(or commerce)? No. Economists (the good ones, at any rate) have
enhanced our understanding of almost all social phenomena, even
those that would appear to have nothing to do with markets and
prices. Here is Richard Posner, an economically minded lawyer (and
judge), on marriage:

10. Richard A. Posner, Economic Analysis of Law, 5th ed. (New York: Aspen Law and
Business, 1998), 157. Posner is Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sev-
enth Circuit and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
11. Ibid., 158.
12. The expression “dismal science” was coined by Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) upon
reading the work of Thomas Robert Malthus (1776-1834). See Robert L. Heilbroner, The Worldly
Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, rev. ed. (New York: Si-
mon and Schuster, 1961), 61.

julia99baby · 发表于 2009-12-23 17:39:00

13. See, e.g., Steven E. Rhoads, The Economist’s View of the World: Government, Markets,
and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 11.
There is a substitute in marriage for the control mecha-
nisms within a business firm. Economists naturally do
not call this factor “love,” but describe it as a form of al-
truism. Altruism is the condition in which the welfare of
one person is a positive function of the welfare of another.
If H loves W, then an increase in W’s happiness or utility
or welfare (synonyms) will be felt by H as an increase in
his own happiness or utility or welfare. Altruism facili-
tates cooperation; it is a cheap and efficacious substitute
for (formal) contracting.10

Here is Posner on children:

We have treated children as an ultimate “commodity,” but
it is possible to treat them instead as an input into other
commodities. The economist speculates that children are
produced (1) as an unintended by-product of sexual activ-
ity, (2) as an income-producing investment, (3) as a source
of other services to the parents, and (4) (really a subset of
(3)) out of an instinct or desire to preserve the species or
perpetuate the genetic characteristics, the name, or the
memory of the parents. . . . Liking children is a subset of
(3): The pleasure we get from our children’s presence is
the result of “consuming” the intangible “services” that
they render us.11

Are you surprised, when you read these passages, that economics is
called “the dismal science”?12 It is said, perhaps unfairly, that
economists know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.13 I
don’t want to be hard on economists. They are not responsible for
the encroachment of their language into areas where it does not be-

14. Peter Berkowitz, “Money and Love,” review of Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith,
Condorcet, and the Enlightenment, by Emma Rothschild, The New Republic: A Journal of Politics
and the Arts 225 (1 October 2001): 41-5, at 45.
15. See John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1969); idem, Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of
Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
long. Posner, for example, is not advocating that spouses view
themselves as utility-maximizers or as rational economic agents; he
is claiming that viewing them in this way (i.e., under these aspects or
rubrics) explains much or all of their behavior. Economic analysis,
as a theory or method, is powerful and illuminating—qualities to
which every science aspires. Nor is Posner trying to eliminate the
language of love. He is saying that the phenomenon we call love can
(not “should”) be understood in economic terms. In other words, love
is reducible to, or explicable in terms of (although not ultimately el-
iminable in favor of), something else. Economists, when confined to
the realm of explanation, are harmless.
The problem arises when economic discourse escapes into
other domains, for then, like a tiger in a church, it is dangerous.
Here is one example of its destructiveness:

Our habits and our vocabularies testify to this commin-
gling of the [commercial and democratic] spheres. We
form an increasingly seamless web between friends and
lovers, and the business acquaintances with whom we
buy and sell and connect and “network.” Consider only
dating, that subject of which our culture never tires. Dat-
ing (as movies and television shows and novels depict it)
gives people the opportunity to shop around and to find
just the right partner. Until we achieve the perfect fit, we
dump boyfriends and girlfriends like traders getting rid of
declining shares. Eventually we hope to close a deal and
find a partner for life, but having learned to be choosy
consumers in the romantic marketplace, it is not easy to
cease being constantly on the lookout for a new, improved
model. Commercial reflexes have infested the most inti-
mate corners of our lives, unless we actively resist them.14

Every rational person is responsible for his or her actions, including
that subset of actions called speech (or linguistic) acts.15 Thus, uni-

16. Speaking, thinking, feeling, and acting are intimately related, of course—at least in
those individuals who have an integrated personality. How we speak, for instance, both reflects
and shapes (or reinforces) the way we think; and thinking is inseparable, logically and psy-
chologically, from acting.
17. Let me be clear about something. I am not against commerce or commercialization
(much less economics). I am against commercialism. This is the expansion of commerce, and its
attendant conceptual scheme and terminology, into realms to which it does not belong. Think of
the degradation of various holidays, such as Easter and Christmas. Think of the adverse effect
commerce has had on such venerable institutions as religion, art, science, law, medicine, and the
military. The university—academia—is not, and should not be conceived as, a commercial setting
or institution. This is true even though economists, whose aim is to understand behavior, may
find it useful to analyze universities (and the agents thereof) in economic terms. Recall the mar-
riage example. Economic analysis can shed light on marriage without those involved (the
spouses) viewing themselves as rational, self-interested contractors. By the same token, stu-
dents, professors, and administrators need not, and in my view should not, view themselves in
economic or commercial terms.
18. If, in spite of my plea, you persist in thinking of yourself as a customer (and of your
instructors as vendors or service-providers), then please at least realize that what you are pur-
chasing from them (or from the university that employs them) is not a particular grade, such as
versity administrators are responsible (accountable, answerable) for
the language they use to describe students and professors on their
campuses. If you find their language debasing, degrading, demean-
ing, and insulting, as I do, then you should resist it. The most im-
portant component of this resistance is to cease thinking of yourself
(assuming you have done so) as a “consumer” of an “educational
product.”16 If you conceive of your instructors as vendors or service-
providers, then you are lumping them in with washing-machine re-
pairpeople. This is not to disparage those who repair washing ma-
chines for a living, but I suspect that they care not a whit for the
“souls,” happiness, or intellectual well-being of the people who pay
their fees. The relationship—any commercial relationship—is con-
ducted at arm’s length. It is shallow rather than deep, narrow rather
than broad, one-dimensional rather than multi-dimensional, imper-
sonal rather than personal.17
The bottom line (commercial metaphor!) is this: If you want
your relationship with your instructors to be, and remain, special; if
you believe, as I do, that the student-teacher relationship is sacro-
sanct (like that of parent and child, minister and parishioner, doctor
and patient, friend and friend); then let your language reflect your
understanding. Do not stop there, however. Go out of your way (civ-
illy, of course) to condemn—to express respectful resentment to-
ward—anyone who tries to reduce you to a customer. You, my dear
student, are much more than a customer.18

an “A” or a “B.” What you are purchasing is the instructor’s professional judgment as to the
grade you have earned (on the basis of your demonstrated mastery of the relevant concepts,
methods, and techniques of the field of study). What you are purchasing, in other words, is a
chance to earn a good grade, not the grade itself.

julia99baby · 发表于 2009-12-24 17:36:00

也算短篇的，不过看完也费点时，有人看完了吗

BRUCEZHOU888888 · 发表于 2010-3-25 17:10:00

Is that all ?

qinml888 · 发表于 2010-4-15 17:31:00

楼主辛苦，我收藏了，

		自动登录	找回密码
密码			立即注册

You Are Not My Customer 1-6

浏览过的版块