Wednesday 23 January 2019

Not customers: doctors have patients, libraries have patrons, lawyers have clients and teachers have students

a post by Cory Doctorow for the Boing Boing blog



Professionalization isn't perfect: historically, professional societies "were structured around hierarchies of gender and race and laypeople were expected to obey expert judgment without even asking questions."

But professionals were also organized around ethics of service and morals, with professional standards that required practitioners to use their expertise to further the public good.

Decades of neoliberal marketization has flattened out these service-based ethics, turning every kind of professional into just another kind of business with customers who expect "customer service," and "value for money." When teachers have "students," they are meant to teach those students the truth. But once teachers have "customers," they are expected to teach the things that deliver "satisfaction" -- Young Earth Creationism, eugenics, Lost Cause historical revisionism, and so on.

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