If education was based on capitalism

ONCE UPON A TIME there was an economics professor...
She loved teaching almost as much as she loved her subject. Like most born teachers, she was much more interested in what her students learned than she was in establishing her authority in the classroom, or assigning grades. She knew that those things are necessary to the task of teaching, and to the system she taught in, but regarded them as tools to be used to increase learning.
One year she found herself teaching a class full of dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. They seemed unable to think beyond their ideology, and countered any evidence she presented with economic dogma, which they didn't even seem to have thought through.
"Free markets can be trusted to solve all problems," they said, "economic or otherwise."
"Government regulation will predictably lead to economic collapse," they said.
"Any attempt to introduce enforced 'fairness' into a system," they said, "will only undermine the market forces which make the system work."
The teacher was saddened at their closed-mindedness and narrowness of thought. She considered long and hard how to get them to connect their thinking to the real world, which she knew was much more complex than their political theories.
Finally, she came up with a plan.
She walked into class one day, faced the students, and asked a question.
"Do you see any similarities between our country as a whole and this classroom?"
The students were silent at first, then one raised a timid hand.
"Well, the country has citizens, and the classroom has students..."
"Very good," the teacher replied. "So if you represent the citizens, who symbolizes the government?"
Another hand went up.
"You do."
"Exactly. And what would be the equivalent of currency?"
"Grades?"
"Very good. Would you be willing to undertake a little experiment, in order to test whether government regulation is a good thing or a bad thing, right here in this classroom?"
The students, being a bit cocky, readily agreed.
"Fine. HERE'S WHAT I PROPOSE," the professor said. "I will grade the scheduled exams and papers just as I always have, and assign the grades as usual. However, from this moment forward, I will cease to regulate how you go about writing those papers or taking the tests."
The students, blinded by their ideology, saw no problem with this.
The first paper was due the next week. Several of the top students turned in their usual excellent work, and were very surprised to get C's when the grades were returned.
They might never have figured out what happened, except that one or two of the students who received A's couldn't resist bragging.
Those students, the others who had received A's, and most of the ones who had received B's, had simply gone to the library and found an article by a professional economist which fit the assignment. They had then copied it, changed the name to their own, and turned it in.
The students who had worked very hard on their papers only to get C's immediately went to the teacher and complained.
"But they cheated!"
"Yes. I know."
"Aren't you going to do anything about it?"
"What would you want me to do?"
"Disqualify their papers. Give them F's. Give us the A's."
"But your papers aren't as good as theirs. You're asking for government regulation. We agreed to let market forces work this out."
The next grade was on a test. By now the class had begun to figure out how the new system was working, so it was no surprise that only the very best students took their own test.
The richest students spent their inherited money to hire other professors from the economics department to sit in for them.
Some of these students were deeply disappointed, since it was mostly the more conservative professors who would agree that the deregulated approach was legitimate, and of course they had the same ideological blinders on that the students did, so they didn't do so well on a fact-based test.
Some students who were less well off hired other students in the department, with mixed results.
Some of the better students in the class dropped out, in order to take exams for wealthier students.
But that was only one exam.
By the end of the course, the market had gotten a lot smarter. Fewer mistakes were made, and consequently students pretty much got the grades they had legitimately paid for.
The richest students formed a corporation and pooled their resources to hire a burglar, who stole the answers from the teacher's office. They got all the A's.
The poorest students couldn't compete, so they dropped out, taking F's.
With a few exceptions, the students in between had grades which generally reflected how wealthy their parents were.
On the last day of class, the teacher asked the students what they thought of the experiment.
Oddly enough, the wealthiest students thought it had gone fine.
The students in the middle ranges, however, weren't so sure. In general, the more competent they were, the less they thought of the system.
And, of course, the poorest students weren't there anymore, and so had no voice.