Lily Parminter ECS Year 1 Culture and Identity

Everything is viewed in terms of quantities; everything is simply a sum of value realized or hoped for (Slater and Tonkiss 2001, p.162). In light of this quotation, examine the commodification of adolescence within contemporary society. What are the implications for the education system?

Throughout this essay I shall simultaneously analyze two main streams that have influenced the transition that has taken place regarding the general notion and identification of adolescents as commodities. I shall begin analyzing the global rise and evolution of the concept of teenager, expanding on the connotations it carries and the socio-historical environment in which it first arose, focusing on what I believe to be the causes that originated and facilitated the evolution of the concept adolescence to its present meaning; the rise of liberal democracies and their social immersion within the capitalist market. Following this broader view I shall then focus more explicitly on the correlation between the evolution of the educational system within the United Kingdom throughout the past decades and the respective transmutation of the perception of adolescents and their role within society.

Finally I shall address and interpret the issues that concern the evolution of the

commodification of adolescence and the adolescent world and the repercussions they may have on the education system in the future. Adolescence, previously just a formation of adulthood for the working classes, and an extension of childhood for the rich, has presently become a parenthesis between childhood and adulthood. It was during the 1970s that the concept teenager was born and that adolescents came to be considered as components of society. (Mizen, 2004 p.16) This denotated impulsive, capricious people, craving for rights and repelling responsibilities. Simultaneously, the economic recuperation that was experienced after the end of the Second World War caused a huge increase in wealth in the middle classes and furthermore led to the rise of Capitalism under which all citizens became subjected to the market forces. And as this occurred, throughout Europe democracies gained power, and individuals became considered and prompted to be free to choose and furthermore obliged to be free (Rose, 1998 p.17). All these events had a great effect on the perception and attitude towards adolescents, and thus on the institutional treatment of them, which consequently reflected directly on their self-perception.

From the capitalist and the markets point of view, adolescents with their chaotic psychology and personality in formation became a great target for market forces. Not only due to their weak resistance and overwhelming interest, individuals of choice but not of consequence; but most importantly due to the predisposition of consumerist and market-captivated adolescents to become such adults, thus feeding into and maintaining the market force in an indispensable position for the mass of society. (Miles, 2000 p.51) From the democratic point of view, adolescents are adults in formation and it is

through the education of these pre-adults that one can nearly guarantee the perpetuation of the social structure and therefore governmental system (Coleman, 1961). But although, according to this point of view, it would be expected that in a democratic society, the education of young adults should be focused on enhancing their sense of equality, what was highlighted, in the United Kingdom under Thatchers government was the (false) sense of freedom. Within the educational system parents were given the freedom of choice as to what school their offspring should attend, and within the curriculum adolescents were given the choice of A level subjects, and thus the choice of their future.

Between the pressure the market puts on adolescents and the freedom of choice given to them by the political system, adolescents become individuals striving for quantities. Within the market space, the more, the bigger, the sooner, the better is the ruling litany. That is, the more clothes or electronic devices, the bigger the house, the more cars they will own as adults, the better. But these goods become ephemeral, and thus patience degrades. Finally, this quantification of ephemeral belongings and goods is simply the process of surrounding oneself and superficially enriching ones material belongings, but essentially ones interior development does not change. If an adolescent is successfully targeted and captivated by the market forces, the development of his or her personal identity becomes inextricably linked to the interests of the market and consumerist tendencies (Miles, 2000 p.50). And his or her personal development becomes tied to, and nearly externally and superficially imposed by the market force.

Not only has adolescence become a commodity, but furthermore so has the education system to which adolescents are subject, within which the custodial professions turn adolescents into their clients (Ct and Allahar, 1996 p.151). Thus, a vicious circle has come to be established within the realm of adolescence under which capitalist market mechanisms cannot be escaped. Nevertheless, if we put this in relation to the infantilist ethos that Barber develops (Barber, 2008 p.81), the commodification of adolescence not only encompasses the adolescent and child population, but with the growth of the present adolescents into adulthood will contagiously spread over the whole society. The state of being, especially if one is a whimsical and weak adolescent is the main target and tool of the market force. I contend that this phenomenon is occurring with far greater viciousness in the United Kingdom than in other countries, and with a magnitude and velocity only comparable to the United States of America. This is precisely due to the common path that the educational system is taking towards consumerism, which is, I believe, the echoing result of the Thatcherist intention of marrying free market economy with the family (Chitty, 2002 p.5).

It is as if the government and the market forces had made a coalition. For the government, not only the party in power, but understood as a political entity in general, holds a weighing interest in the market force; this interest is due to the fact that successfulness of the market forces is the direct means of securely enriching the country. Nevertheless, by enriching the country via the gains of the market forces, the majority of the population is consequently made poorer, poor in this case not to be understood solely as economic status, but to be understood culturally and most importantly as the impoverishment of individual satisfaction. If it is hard for a

turbulent adolescent (Mays, 1969 p.40) to find him or herself in peace of mind, the market forces, in coordination with the media and the government, when managing the education system, constantly bombard them with an apparent and repulsively false sense of freedom. The media, for instance, exacerbates consumerism both as a good in itself and as the vehicle that encourages and enhances the necessity to follow the consumerist ethos. Furthermore, in theory a device for entertainment purposes actually causes a general sense of depression, by portraying tantalizing images of beautiful and important people with interesting lives, abundance in opportunities and exuberant possessions, which contrast with the adolescents reality and furthermore encourages him or her to pursue this idealized and materialistic lifestyle. In addition it is addictive, for once the audience finalizes the media experience, suddenly the harsh reality falls on them and thus in search of evasion they search to console themselves with more recipient passivity (Ct and Allahar, 1996 p.148). In order to achieve this grandeur the sooner one starts acquainting important people and frequenting renowned and influential places, the better.

The general striving for the fast and secure way toward adolescents future economic prosperity, in combination with the 1988 Education Reform Act has made schools compete on attendance (Chitty, 2002 p.38). But in order to achieve a good level of attendance, and therefore convince families that it is plausible to pay the fees required, schools must also be selective and maintain good achievement levels, although this limits the amount of pupils that attend the school, it secures the income, guarantees government subventions and furthermore, avoids higher expenses that problematic students may cause. This competition was further enhanced in the 1992 Education Act, with the privatization of the school inspection process through the creation of the Office of

Standards in Education, OFSTED. The purpose of which was to regulate and universalize educational standards throughout the United Kingdom by producing league tables and reports on schools (Ibid. p.75). In practice, nevertheless, the OFSTED reports and the use of league tables have done no more than exacerbate the imbalance between middle class and working class quality of education, further intensifying the focus on results and the disregard for the individual learning process, and accentuating social stratification. Under this system, education has became totally money focused and far from sustaining democratic equality and true freedom of choice; it has become a perpetuator of social stratification and inequalities (Green et al., 2008). It is due to this fallacious sense of freedom that the school failures in Britain are considerably higher than in most other European countries. In 2007, 10.7% of British teenagers between the ages of fifteen and nineteen were not in school (Sugden, 2009). I believe this happens because adolescents experience the growing pressure of the frenetic consumerist lifestyle, but are faced with the systematic obstruction of any true freedom of choice. Due to the inequality present between schools, and the difference between independent and state school quality (ibid.), working class adolescents are deprived of the possibility of receiving an efficient and fruitful education, but nevertheless the influence of the market forces still prevails over them. The frustration that these contradicting subliminal messages cause to already unstable teenagers (Mays, 1969 p.40) makes school failure imminent in many cases. For work means fast money, and school at present, higher education, that is, is so saturated that it neither guarantees a job within the present economic climate (Ainley and Allen, 2010), nor is it a means for fast money. On the other hand, both the saturation of University Campuses and the increasingly low standards are causing the devalorization of higher education and beginning to make people question the plausibility of taking university

studies. I predict that with the lowering of the standards of university courses, due to the saturation and multiplication of students in dissonance with the augmentation of staff, and in combination with the predicted growth of course prices (Coughlan, 2009), University education will soon enter in decadence. Consequently, the although frustrated expectations and hopes that still posses adolescents of attending university as a means of acquiring a respectable, well paid job are going to be reduced. As a result we will see the alteration of the purpose and persistence now put into secondary education, and with this, in all probability, the creation of a crisis within the educational system which will lead to further changes in future.

When, under Thatchers government, the education secretary Sir Keith Joseph spoke of his voucher system campaign, he initially defined it as a way of freeing parents from all money considerations in choosing a school, but two years later in 1984 when dismissing it, he described it as a market mechanism in which parents would act as customers (Chitty, 2002 pp. 29-30). Although the parental choice system was kept under the preceding education secretary, Sir Josephs words illustrate the extent to which the market is embedded within the education system. A system within which adolescents are seen as mere commodities, used by the schools for benefits, and by the government to prove standards. Buying into a well-behaved and successful child is guaranteeing status and income to the school. In correlation to this and in order for the system to work efficiently, a sense of fairness and freedom is promoted in a variety of ways; within parental choice, one can choose a public or a state school; concerning adolescents futures, one can choose specialised subjects at the age of 16, one has the choice to carry on studying or to work; and all the time, schools standards are objectively controlled by OFSTED. Nevertheless, when searching government reports on maintained and independent schools, or on school failure and achievement,

it is meaningfully difficult to find any objective information that does not take a positive viewpoint on the issues and thus enhance the positivity of government policies. I contend that the list above are all illusory choices promoted by the system in order to preserve social order by creating a false sense of freedom, whereas the true situation of discontent is obscured and replaced by the growing necessity to follow the consumerist ethos inculcated by the market. (Ct and Allahar, 1996)

Thatcherism was an attempt to link the principles of a free market economy with an atavistic emphasis on the family, traditional moral values and the virtues of a strong state (Chitty, 2002 p.5). I believe this link was so successfully achieved that they have become inseparable, to the extent that consumerism is any individuals only true family. It is what were taught to aspire to, it is what the media coaxes us into buying both as a good to be acquired and as an exemplifier of society. It is the motto of the nation. But to whose benefit is it if in the end money is not enrichment, if the more we consume the bigger the black hole of greed, desire and whim becomes? The freer we prove ourselves to be, the more limited we become. Caught within consumerism, caught by the market forces. The forces that very slowly draw near to conquering all aspects of our life. Nevertheless, one fault is to be found within this linkage; the traditional moral values that were sought to be maintained have been completely eclipsed by the growing infantilist ethos (Barber, 2008 pp.81-87), an ethos within which adolescents constitute the central element between the dualistic connection of child and adulthood. By maintaining the general population within this illusory sense of freedom of choice, enhanced by the market for the purpose of the function of the market, while enriching the country, in reality the general population that constitutes the country itself becomes a sheer commodity, with a special emphasis on the adolescent

population. And a vicious circle is formed within which the only constituents that seem to gain are merely the remnants of stale aristocracy. In practice, the whole system is a mere reincarnation of the wounded old regime disguised as democracy, where we finally live in a world of make believe following the infantilist ethos that Barber talks of (Ibid.). A world in which we systematically buy make-believe goods, in which we posses total make-believe freedom, a society in which we vote for make-believe changes.

In conclusion, having analyzed the commodification of adolescence in some detail, I maintain that the implications it has had on the education system within the United Kingdom have been the usage of the education system by the government as a tool to promote and maintain a false sense of freedom, thus maintaining social order. Nevertheless, due to its monetarization, the education system has become a principal perpetuator of social stratification, and furthermore, in relation to monetarization, the system has shifted from focusing on the individual students and educational processes to merely focusing on the results. This change in focus within schools has been mainly due to the present climate of competition between institutions, originally promoted in the 1988 Education Act (Chitty, 2002 p.38). Furthermore, this competition has resulted in the transformation of the education system itself into a commodity within which youths become clients who buy into the service, while simultaneously the schools buy into the students in order to maintain high standards. Moreover, higher education has become saturated and the standards have fallen. This, in combination with the exploitation of youth labour (Ct and Allahar, 1996 p.151), and the scarce opportunities within the job market (Ainley and Allen, 2010), has caused the devalorization of education and, I contend this will result in the consequent

decay of education.

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