Educational Vouchers for the Onteora School District

I just sent this letter to Paul Smart, editor of the Olive Press.

Dear Editor:

A local government official has revealed a shocking statistic to the Town of Olive Republican Committee.  The average cost of education in the Onteora school district is currently $31,000 per enrolled student.  The official who revealed this number compares Onteora's $31,000 per student tuition to a national average of $10,259 per enrolled student and a New York State average of $17,200.  New York's public tuition is the highest in the nation, according to the official, but Onteora's is 44% higher than the state's average.

Assuming the $31,000 per student cost number is accurate, let us see how Onteora's costs compare to private schools'.  Nationally, in 2008 the average private school tuition was $8,549, 27% of Onteora's.  Nonsectarian secondary schools averaged $27,302 while Catholic elementary schools averaged $4,944.  Many of the nonsectarian secondary schools are elite schools that cater to the wealthy.  According to one survey Northfield Mount Herman in Massachusetts is the top ranked private elementary school.  The tuition for day students, according to its website is $31,700, roughly the same as Onteora's cost per student.  The UN International School, one of the best private schools in Manhattan, charges $24,350 per year, 21% less than Onteora.  The Beekman School in Manhattan has tuition of $28,500. The Rudolf Steiner School, with a 1:8 faculty-student ratio charges $29,468. Beekman calls itself "the tutoring school" and offers customized schedules, university-level classes in math, science, humanities and English, an average class size of eight (8), and one-on-one tutoring in concentrated subject areas.  Beekman has a one-on-one college placement program (one guidance counselor to one student) with continuous follow up conferences to refine college choices.  Guidance counselors guide students through the college application process. Specialized classes with three (3) students may be formed if requested, such as for advanced placement.  Tutoring is available once or twice per week. The school provides eight written evaluation reports in addition to four quarterly report cards.   98% of Beekman students go on to college. 

What is the college attendance rate for Onteora High? Given that the three Onteora schools are more expensive than Beekman, do they provide similar services? Are class sizes limited to 8 students? Is there intensive career guidance?  If a student wishes to study acting, is a course set up to cater to them?  If not, where is the $31,000 in teacher jackpot money going? 

It is going to keeping an extra school open. Moreover, the Onteora School district puts students far down on its list of its priorities. The $31,000 per student cost is a pretext to fund teachers' salaries, pensions and administrative bloat.  Teachers are more interested in indoctrinating students ideologically than in teaching the three r's. The Democrats are loyal to the teachers' unions, and could care less about your children. This is because of the dominance of academic certification organizations like the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), which could care less about the three 'rs and exclusively emphasize political correctness.

In his book Capitalism and Freedom,  Professor Milton Friedman came up with an ingenious idea.  Give school budgets to parents in the form of vouchers, and let them decide the school to which they send their children. Schools would compete for students just as automobile manufacturers used to compete for customers. Onteora would have to compete with Beekman and the UN School, and provide an education of a comparable standard to Beekman's for the same price.  Since the taxpayers of Olive have magnanimously chosen to spend like a rich person on behalf of the Town's children, it is foolish to squander the money on subsidies to Onteora's unproductive school administrators as the Democrats have chosen to do.  We Republicans believe that if we are spending as much on education Olive's children ought to be given the same educations that rich people's children receive.  It is true that this arrangement would likely mean lower salaries and pension benefits for teachers, less administrative bloat, and fewer make-work jobs, which is why the teachers hate libertarians and the GOP but love the tax-and-spend Democrats.  But there is little doubt that your children would be better educated under a voucher system.  Perhaps it is time to ask the Onteora School district to compete with Northfield Mount Herman, the UN School and Beekman, and to end the festival of waste in the Onteora School District.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert
Town of Olive Republican Committee

Ethics and Creativity in Madmen II

Robert P. George's Clash of Orthodoxies (2001) provides a beautifully articulate defense of natural law.  George's discussion of John Rawls's pro-life arguments are eye opening and raise the abortion debate to a much higher level than one generally encounters.  As well his integration of the natural law and natural rights theories of Aristotle (in Rhetoric), Cicero, Sidney and Locke with current discussions, especially of civil rights, are important and rich with insight.

Chapter nine, "Natural Law and Civil Rights" offers a solution to the questions I raise to my class about the ethics of Madmen's Don Draper's manipulation of the public with respect to consumer goods.  The solution (p. 166) comes from no less a source than Reverend Martin Luther King, whom George quotes as to unjust versus just law and segregation:

"What is the difference between the two?...To put it in the term of St. Thomas Aquinas:  An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.  Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.  All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.  It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority...Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful...I can urge [disobedience to] segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong."

---Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail, quoted in Robert P. George, Clash of Orthodoxies, p. 166.

In Madmen, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) aims to engage the public's nostalgia for their children's and their own childhoods and weddings.  Is it ethical to manipulate people's feelings in order to encourage consumerism? One standard parallels King's evaluation of law.  Any business activity that uplifts human personality or improves human life is just. Any business activity that degrades human personality or harms human life is unjust.  There is little to criticize with respect to the Kodak camera or carousel.  Although a degree of manipulation is used in Draper's presentation of his concept or the real-world advertisement, on balance consumers can assess whether the product is to their benefit.  Cameras have improved human existence.  But the same cannot be said for smoking.  It is true that smoking brings pleasure, but the harm done from smoking's health effects outweighs its pleasure.

But the federal law banning advertising of smoking is not justified.  There are other concerns with respect to regulation. Laws which limit economic activity and choice demean the individual. They assert that human beings are incapable of choosing for themselves and therefore are like serfs to a patriarchal state that knows better than they do. Economic regulation limits human creativity and creates an atmosphere of fear whereby activities whose effects are uncertain are discouraged.  This in turn reduces creativity, initiative, progress and achievement.  Therefore, while advertising cigarettes is unjust, that is, it manipulates people into smoking and so harms them, laws against advertising smoking are also unjust because they harm human freedom and dignity, replacing human freedom with violent state power.

Ethics and Creativity in Madmen

I teach Introduction to Management at Brooklyn College.  The distance learning software we use nowadays is called "Blackboard" (NYU, Troy State and Brooklyn College have all used it since about 10 years ago).  I just posted a discussion assignment on the course's Blackboard site for this fall's class. One of the subjects in the course is "creativity" and the question I'm raising is whether there are ethical limits to creativity.  I use AMC's TV series Madmen to raise two discussion questions. The links to the Madmen and television advertisement clips are below.

The questions I raise are as follows.

After reading chapter two and after the class discussion on creativity go to blackboard's "external links" folder "Creativity and Ethics in Madmen" (see links below). Watch the five Youtube clips in the folder. The first two are of 1950s Lucky Strike TV commercials. The third is of a 1960s Eastman Kodak camera commercial. The fourth and fifth are from the TV series Madmen. They depict the fictitious creative genius behind the fictitious Sterling Cooper advertising firm, Don Draper (note the allusion to drapes, draping, hiding, the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain). The fourth clip is of Draper creating the Lucky Strike advertising strategy. The fifth is of Draper creating the ad campaign for Eastman Kodak's carousel (a picture slide display device) which is similar to the Eastman Kodak ad shown.

(1) What are the benefits of advertising?  What arguments can be made to justify the ethical foundations of Don Draper's approach to advertising? 


(2) Are there moral limits to emotional manipulation? For example, is a government which uses patriotism to motivate loyalty despite policies which are harmful to the public ethical? Likewise, is a firm which uses love, happiness, freedom and similar virtues to motivate sales of products ethical? If so, what are the limits? If not, is it realistic to expect managers to adhere to strict ethical standards? 

(3) Elaborate on the question of whether Don Draper is ethical in using higher order emotions, happiness and familial love to sell cigarettes that he knows kill and photography supplies given the gains from advertising.
External Links

Lucky Strike ad 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeUAhuSzSDs


Luck Strike ad 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWj_tR64Ti4

1960s Kodak ad, “Turn around”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBWVWjdNWC0

Madmen clip: Lucky Strike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5rQF7Ofc5w

Comment: AMC's excellent Madmen series is supposed to be about the advertising business in the early 1960s, but as you can see from the above the "It's Toasted" concept was already established in the 1950s and earlier (1917 according to Wikipedia). Also, American Tobacco, founded by James Buchanan Duke (cf: Duke University), owned the Lucky Strike brand and it was not a family run operation by the 1960s (the US Supreme Court broke up American Tobacco, the Tobacco Trust, in 1911). Famed heiress Doris Duke who died in 1993 was Duke's only child.

Nevertheless, this scene gives a cool illustration of a creative process. In the episode, the hero, the brilliant and creative Don Draper (Jon Hamm), is asked to think of an ad campaign for Lucky Strike cigarettes to address the recent findings that cigarettes cause cancer. He thinks about it for weeks but cannot come up with an idea. At the beginning of the meeting with the tobacco executives, he still draws a blank. After consulting a psychologist, he is still speechless. His account exec, Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) quotes the psychologist to fill the gap (Campbell is sneaky and the implication is that he stole the research from Draper's trash can).

Just as the tobacco executives are walking out, Draper's light bulb lights: the cancer finding is a strategic opportunity to appeal to higher order needs like happiness. Lucky Strike is "toasted."

Madmen clip: Kodak carousel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus

The Eastman Kodak executives are interviewing ad firms to handle their new product, which they call "the wheel." You put slides in the wheel and then click to turn the wheel to the next slide. They have told Don Draper and his boss, Herman "Duck" Phillips (Mark Moses), media director Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), and art director Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) that their firm, Sterling Cooper, is one of four or five they are interviewing.

Draper uses his own wedding pictures, pictures of his wife Betty (January Jones), his children and himself to show that the product should be named the "carousel", not the wheel, because it is reminiscent of childhood and evokes the nostalgia of bringing up children that the "carousel" can capture--the deep feelings the consumer has for his or her own children, the nostalgia for the past and perhaps their own childhoods. "It takes us where we ache to go again. It lets us travel like child. The carousel."

Harry Crane leaves the room as he breaks into tears. The Kodak executives are speechless. Phillips confidently looks at the Eastman Kodak executives and says "Good luck at your next meeting."

A First Lady of the (Highly Paid) People

Jim Crum sent me this list of salaries of Michelle Obama's staff.  Note that five of her staff earn over $100,000 per year. I am certain that they make major contributions to the public welfare. Certain.

 

1. $ 172,2000  - Sher, Susan (Chief Of Staff) 

2. $140,000  - Frye, Jocelyn C. (Deputy Assistant to the President and Director
    of Policy And Projects For The First Lady)

3.  $113,000  - Rogers, Desiree G.  (Special Assistant to the President and
    White House Social Secretary) 
4.  $102,000  - Johnston, Camille Y. (Special Assistant to the President and
    Director of Communications for the First Lady) 
5.  $100,000  - Winter, Melissa E. (Special Assistant to the President and
    Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady)
6.  $90,000  -  Medina   , David S. (Deputy Chief Of Staff to the First Lady) 
7.  $84,000  - Lelyveld, Catherine M. (Director and Press Secretary to the First
    Lady) 
8.  $75,000  - Starkey, Frances M. (Director of Scheduling and Advance for the
    First Lady) 
9.  $70,000  - Sanders, Trooper (Deputy Director of Policy and Projects for the
    First Lady) 
10.  $65,000  - Burnough, Erinn J. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social
    Secretary) 
11.  $64,000  - Reinstein, Joseph B. (Deputy Director and Deputy Social
    Secretary) 
12.  $62,000  - Goodman, Jennifer R. (Deputy Director of Scheduling and Events
    Coordinator For The First Lady) 
13.  $60,000  - Fitts, Alan O. (Deputy Director of Advance and Trip Director for
    the First Lady) 
14.  $57,500  - Lewis, Dana M. (Special Assistant and Personal Aide to the First
    Lady) 
15.  $52,500  - Mustaphi, Semonti M. (Associate Director and Deputy Press
    Secretary to The First Lady) 
16.  $50,000  - Jarvis, Kristen E. (Special=2 0Assistant for Scheduling and
    Traveling Aide to The First Lady) 
17.  $45,000  - Lechtenberg, Tyler A. (Associate Director of Correspondence For
    The First Lady) 
18.  $43,000  - Tubman, Samantha (Deputy Associate Director, Social Office) 
19.  $40,000  - Boswell, Joseph J. (Executive Assistant to the Chief Of Staff to
    the First Lady) 
20.  $36,000  - Armbruster, Sally M. (Staff Assistant to the Social Secretary) 
21.  $35,000  - Bookey, Natalie (Staff Assistant)