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University Libraries
Libraries Faculty Research
Texas Tech University Year
McDonaldization in Cyberspace:
Examining Commercial Education Web
Sites
Brian A. QuinnTexas Tech University, brian.quinn@ttu.edu
This paper is posted at eScholarship Repository.
http://esr.lib.ttu.edu/lib fac research/27
McDonaldization in Cyberspace: Examining Commercial Education Web Sites
Nearly a decade ago, a sociologist named George Ritzer proposed an unusual thesis- that
the principles of the fast food industry were gradually coming to dominate more and
more aspects of society. This process, known as Mcdonaldization, became one of the
most controversial and influential ideas in the field. This study examines commercial
education Web sites in order to determine whether they have become McDonaldized, and
if so, to what extent. It analyzes seven of the better-known sites, in terms of the four
basic components of the McDonaldization process: efficiency, predictability,
calculability, and control.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 3
In the early 1990’s, George Ritzer, a sociologist at the University of Maryland,
published a controversial book called The McDonaldization of Society (Ritzer, 1993).
The book caused quite a stir among sociologists because it contained a bold thesis. Ritzer
claimed that the principles of the fast food industry were increasingly pervading all
aspects of society, including the field of education.
Much of Ritzer’s thesis was based on the work of the distinguished German
sociologist Max Weber. Writing at the turn of the century, it was Weber who first
suggested that society was becoming more rationalized. By this he meant that people
were increasingly guided by a system of formal rules and regulations designed to help
them achieve the optimum means to a given end. Weber called this formal rationality
(Weber, 1968), and stated that it was bureaucracy that best exemplified the process of
rationalization. In a bureaucracy, a rational hierarchy of offices is created, governed by a
system of formal rules and regulations designed to achieve a given end. Typically this
involves breaking down a task into a series of sub-tasks and assigning each office or
department the responsibility of overseeing a particular sub-task, usually in a pre-
designated sequence. Weber was convinced that no other social structure epitomized the
optimal means of achieving pre-determined goals like that of a bureaucracy.
Weber was careful to point out that bureaucracies offer certain advantages like the
ability to be fast and efficient. However, he was also concerned that highly rationalized
bureaucracies could generate certain irrationalities. Many of us are all too familiar with
what can happen when bureaucracies get so encumbered with rules and procedures that
they create various forms of red tape (Bozeman, 2000). Not only can bureaucracies be
annoyingly inefficient to the clients they are supposed to serve, but they can also be
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 4
detrimental to those who work in them. Workers who find themselves performing a
series of rigidly constricted, narrowly-defined tasks can become alienated from their
work and from “the system.” Weber believed that carried to extremes, bureaucracy could
become an “iron cage” that hindered human growth rather than facilitated it.
For Ritzer, it is not bureaucracy that constitutes the essence of rationalization, but
the fast food industry. McDonald’s and other fast food chains have become an
inescapable, ubiquitous aspect of American society and represent a growing international
presence as well, with outlets in Moscow, Beijing, and Nairobi. Many other businesses
have adopted the principles of McDonald’s, among them Wal-Mart, Jiffy Lube, and
Pearle Vision Centers. Menus at K-12 schools are frequently modeled on fast food
restaurants, and college and university cafeterias have become fast food arcades serviced
by numerous chains.
If McDonaldization appears to be an increasingly pervasive phenomenon, the
question arises as to whether and to what extent McDonaldization has affected the World
Wide Web. It is the purpose of this study to examine one particular sector of the Web—
commercial education Web sites—to see if McDonaldization has made inroads there.
Along with the rise of the “dot.com” industry, commercial education Web sites have
mushroomed. Many appear to be positioning themselves as direct or indirect competitors
with both primary and secondary educational institutions, as well as colleges and
universities.
According to Ritzer, the McDonaldization process can be broken down into four
fundamental components: efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control (Ritzer,
1995). These four elements of McDonaldization will be used as a framework for
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 5
analyzing the extent to which commercial education Web sites can be regarded as
“McDonaldized.” Each element will be discussed in turn, citing relevant examples from
commercial education Web sites whenever appropriate.
Efficiency
Central to the process of McDonaldization is a concern for achieving a given end
as quickly and easily as possible with the least expenditure of effort, time, and resources.
One of the most important reasons that people eat at fast food restaurants is because they
consider it to be an efficient way to obtain sustenance. No time or effort is lost in
preparing the meal or cleaning up afterward. Drive-through windows epitomize
efficiency by allowing customers to pick up an order and whisk through in an orderly,
systematic way, without even getting out of the car (Hall, 1978).
In a similar manner, commercial education Web sites claim to make education
available in a fast and easy way by offering desktop convenience and around-the-clock
access, much like a 24-hour convenience store. One commercial education Web-site,
bigchalk.com (2001, Mission section, para. 4) states that they help teachers create “a
learning environment that breaks the barriers of classroom walls, fixed hours and limited
school resources.” Bigchalk.com (2001, Mission section, para. 12) reinforces the idea of
efficiency by stating that “We also offer students and teachers remote home access to our
services to provide maximum opportunity for research and enable students to pursue class
assignments and personal study after hours.” Education thus becomes a “product” that
can be consumed at the location and time of the student’s choice, with a minimal
investment of effort. The student does not have to go to school or to the library to obtain
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 6
an education. Bigchalk.com enables the educational product to be delivered to the
student much like a Domino’s pizza, a kind of fast food for thought. The Web site
suggests that by allowing the student 24-hour access, the student will be encouraged to
become an avid consumer beyond the “normal hours” that students are expected to keep
(Presser, 1998).
Students are not the only consumers who can take advantage of the efficiency
offered by commercial education sites. A site called Classroom Connect.com (2001,
About Classroom Connect section, para.3) features a resource called Connected
University. The page features a slick advertising banner running across the top of the
page that has a photo of a person in pajamas and slippers followed by the slogan “Any
Pace, Any Place.” The copy below goes on to tout “round the clock resources” and
“cost-effective, time-efficient” professional development for teachers.
Another site called School Center.com (2001, Internet Management Tools section,
para. 6) promotes a program called Jump Start that is aimed at making it easier for
teachers and administrators to create a Web site for their school. “Are you having trouble
finding time to set up your school or district’s website? Let us do it for you!! School
Center’s Brand New Jump Start program is the quick and easy solution to getting a web
presence fast.” Just as a meal at McDonald’s serves as an efficient solution to a busy
mother who is too harried to cook dinner, School Center.com offers the preoccupied
school teacher or administrator an efficient “quick fix” in the form of a school Web site.
Those who register for the Jump Start Program are promised a starter’s kit which is akin
to a digital Happy Meal. The customer submits the order and is promptly served up a
customized (“Have It Your Way”) Web site.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 7
Along with students and teachers, parents can find commercial education sites
that offer to make them more efficient parents to their school-aged children. Family
Education Network.com (2001, History section, para.1) began as an education newsletter
designed to bring “thousands of time-starved parents the information they needed.” With
the development of the Internet, Family Education Network created a Web site that
“became a one-stop resource for busy parents.” It now offers online exchange between
users about education, family, and children. Users are in “constant conversation,
anytime, anywhere.” Family Education Network claims to have “powerful education
resources” that are “instantly accessible.” Speed and efficiency are of the utmost
importance, and just like a menu at McDonald’s, all FEN resources are “within just a
click of each other.” It offers a kind of “one-stop shopping” on the World Wide Web,
eliminating the need to perform time-consuming searches and then having to sift through
pages of results (Raeder, 1996).
The Web sites of commercial education purveyors are themselves models of
efficiency. Resources are carefully arranged in neat categories of links and often
highlighted by colorful graphics, icons, and symbols to make them easy to identify and
navigate. Some of the busier, more cluttered ones even resemble a McDonald’s menu
board. The organization of the Web sites is typically logical, though not always intuitive.
Like McDonald’s, the design of these Web sites generally appears to be geared toward a
mass audience and has a dumbed down, lowest common denominator quality to it. Most
of the sites are organized in outline format and begin with basics like “What’s New,”
“About Us,” “History,” “Overview,” “Mission,” or “Vision” then proceed on to
“Products,” “Services,” “Tools,” or “Resources.” Many sites conclude with “For More
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 8
Information,” “Feedback,” “Recommendations,” or “Subscribe Today!” The resources
and the site are frequently categorized according to the audience they are geared toward:
students, teachers, administrators, or parents. In case any users are in a hurry, many Web
sites feature site maps to allow them to zero in on a particular resource. At
Lightspan.com (2001, About Lightspan.com, para. 13) even leisure pursuits like puzzles
and games have their own neat categories and links.
One of the reasons why McDonald’s has become a model of efficiency is because
it lets customers do much of the work themselves. Customers must order and pick up
their own foods. Once their order is ready, they add their own condiments, fill their own
drinks, and then empty their trays when finished.
Commercial education Web sites have adopted a similar approach to efficiency
(Greengard, 1998). Students are expected to identify and locate their own instructional
material through a process of pointing and clicking. Once located, the lesson, puzzle,
game, quiz, etc., is often interactive, forcing the students to do the work of educating
themselves. The teacher is usually absent, having in some cases been eliminated from the
education process altogether.
Much like a salad bar, commercial education Web sites offer a kind of educational
smorgasbord. Students are free to pick and choose from the offerings available at the
Web site. Traditional notions of sequence and selectivity with regard to curriculum
content do not necessarily hold true here. In the bigchalk.com library (2001, Library
Resources section, para.1) students must formulate their own questions, conduct their
own searches, sort their own results, and print them themselves. Teachers, parents, and
even schools must do their own work as well. At Lightspan.com (2001, Teachers section,
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 9
para.1) teachers are asked to create their own quizzes, and schools must create and post
their own projects on the Web to compete in CyberFair, an online learning program.
Similarly, at FamilyEducation.com (2001, Parent section, para.2) parents are asked to
take a quiz called “End of School-Year Checklist” which rates them on how well-
prepared they are for “those final, hectic weeks of school.” This same site asks teachers
to create their own grade books and Web sites.
Another way that fast food restaurants increase efficiency is by strictly limiting
the choices of food available on their menu. Despite Burger King’s old slogan, “have it
your way,” the number of selections consumers can order at a fast food establishment are
strictly limited. It is possible to order slight variations in the way menu items are
prepared, but customers that do often have to wait longer than customers who do not
make special requests. Beyond these slight variations, a customer who asked for any dish
that differed significantly from the standard fare would be told that it would not be
possible.
Commercial education Web sites similarly limit their offerings to a relatively
small number of resources. Some sites may offer links to other sites, but generally the
selections are quite limited (Devlin, 1997). The typical commercial education Web site
offers a limited number of options to each of its target consumer groups: students,
teachers, administrators, and parents. The resources offered to these groups, such as
lessons, games, and puzzles for students, are not only limited in number but are rarely
able to be customized by the user to any significant degree.
Bigchalk.com (2001, Mission section, para.10) claims that its reference, research,
content and curriculum offerings can be “customized and personalized to the specific
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 10
needs of each bigchalk.com member.” ”Yet its use of templates that allow teachers to
create sites and assignments, by definition, limits options. Many sites feature pull-down
menus with pre-determined options sorted by a student’s grade level. A number of sites
also offer pre-determined topics of the day, week, or month. If the featured topic of the
week is Congo gorillas and a student needs information on dolphins, the student, like the
fast food restaurant patron, must go elsewhere. Nonetheless, it is common to encounter
sites claiming to be “comprehensive solutions” to the Internet needs of users, or “one-
stop resources” for those users with little time to spend searching the Internet. Some
commercial education Web sites like Lightspan.com (2001, Showcase Features section,
para.1) have attempted to mimic the McDonaldized efficiency of the shopping mall by
compiling thousands of links to other Web sites at their own site.
Fast food restaurants represent only one example of the McDonaldized efficiency
that has become pervasive in contemporary society. In his book on McDonaldization,
Ritzer mentions the package tour as another example of how efficiently tourists are
shuffled from city to city on a tight schedule. There is little time to linger in a location if
a tourist finds it interesting or to diverge from the itinerary should travelers decide they
would like to visit other destinations. Since each stop on the tour is relatively brief and
only allows time to visit the main attractions at that location, the traveler ends up with a
superficial and cliched impression of that site. The tour is nonetheless an efficient way of
seeing a large number of cities in a relatively brief time at an affordable price.
Commercial education Web sites have created digital versions of the package tour
by offering to take students on virtual tours of exotic locations (Ritzer, 1997). Classroom
Connect.com (2001, Classroom Connect, para.1) for example, offers “interactive
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 11
expeditions” to the Amazon. The tour consists of articles and lists of resources about the
Amazon, as well as links to other Web sites offering facts and activities about it. Photos
of exotic and unusual Amazon plants and animals are included, along with maps and
other learning aids. All of this is efficiently packaged and presented in a series of highly
colorful and graphic pages that resemble an online version of an old geography textbook.
There is even a biweekly Quest Newsletter that allows users to stay current regarding all
the Quest activities.
Providing a wide array of educational resources to promote teaching and learning
is another way commercial education Web sites emphasize efficiency. K-12 teachers are
able to navigate through an orderly sequence of screens that prompt them for their
subject, grade level, and other factors to help them locate activities, projects,
assignments, lesson plans, readings, and tests that will be relevant to the particular class
they are teaching. The resources are designed to make the teaching process much more
efficient by saving teachers time and effort. FamilyEducation.com (2001, Teacher Vision
section, para.1) includes a Web page called Teachervision.com that features a Lesson
Planning Center to “make your teaching life simpler.” Lesson plans are arranged
according to various themes and summer readings lists are also provided. A series of
links to resources on how to improve teaching and manage the classroom better is also
included. The site even provides ready-made handouts that teachers can give to parents.
Commercial education Web sites represent an enhanced source of efficiency for students
as well. They provide students with study aids, electronic message boards, lessons
disguised as “fun” activities such as games and computers, sample test questions, live
chats with scholars, and online texts. By using these resources, students are able to work
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 12
outside the classroom in the location of their choice, in a vivid medium that many prefer
over traditional paper textbooks. Beyond logging on and exercising basic navigational
skills, all the work has been pre-packaged for them in a user-friendly, colorful, graphic
format that makes studying similar to watching TV in some ways. Much of the “work”
of being a student—of locating and organizing information, has already been done for
them (Albanese, 1999).
Predictability
Another aspect of the rationalization process that is characteristic of
McDonaldization is predictability. This refers to a need on the part of consumers to be
able to know what to expect of a product. Manufacturers strive to make their products
look, taste, smell, and feel the same from one use to the next, and from one location to
another. One of the reasons that people go to McDonald’s is because they understand
that the Big Mac they eat in Boston will be remarkably similar to the ones served in San
Diego, Tokyo, or Paris. That is because McDonald’s uses the same ingredients and
prepares them according to precise standards in order to ensure that they do not vary from
one location to another. Not only is the food at McDonald’s fairly predictable, but names
of menu items like “Big Mac” and “Happy Meal” are the same, and the atmosphere tends
to be similar as well—the same bright, cheerful colors are used in many of the
restaurants. McDonald’s customers prefer this sameness and seek it out when they travel
to unfamiliar locations. They do not want surprises and McDonald’s offers reassuring
consistency that they feel that they can rely on.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 13
Commercial education Web sites also emphasize predictability. Much of the
content of these sites is specifically designed to imitate and replicate as much as possible
an ideal K-12 world so familiar to students, teachers, parents, and librarians. The
structure, content, features, and even the names of these sites (“bigchalk,” Netschools,”
“Classroom Connect,” and “School Center,”) all use traditional imagery to make teachers
and students feel that they are in a comfortable, familiar, predictable environment. The
people pictured at these sites who represent students, teachers, and parents are all
attractive-looking models who appear friendly, intelligent, intellectually engaged, and
highly motivated. One never encounters disinterested students, unhappy parents, or
frazzled or weary teachers. There is less emphasis on creativity and innovation, and
much more on making these Web sites seem like online versions of traditional
educational settings (Albert, 1996). Schoolcenter.com, for example, advertises that it
allows teachers to post homework assignments and special events as well as create Web-
based review tests and display student work via an electronic scrapbook. Teachers may
also promote class discussion using a messageboard. None of these activities, however,
are radically different or novel when compared with the kind of activities that occur in
the traditional non-electronic school setting. Commercial education Web sites have
simply taken many of these familiar activities and transferred them to the online
environment. Users of these Web sites are thus assured of a predictable setting that is
designed not to diverge significantly from what the teacher or student encounters in a
typical school.
Parents are offered a similarly predictable array of familiar educational tools like
student handbooks, permission slips, and school calendars that are digital copies of the
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 14
standard items. One commercial education Web site, FamilyEducation.com (2001,
Family Education section, para.3) offers parents an online list of “Sunny Day Activities,”
designed to keep children occupied “when your kids get tired of the beach or the ball
field. If the weather turns bad it offers indoor activities to keep the children distracted.
At this site, teachers will find the same reassuring tools they are used to working with in
school: lesson plans, bibliographies, and articles on teaching styles and managing
classroom behavior.
Commercial education Web sites use other means to assure that their users will
find them predictable. Beyondbooks.com (2001, About Beyond Books section, para.2) is
careful to use program content that has been written by “award winning teachers” (what
awards they have won is never specified). These teachers write in a style targeted toward
secondary school students, one they will find reassuringly predictable. This site also
provides thousands of “grade-appropriate” links for students and teachers designed to
complement the programs offered at the site. The links are annotated with brief reviews
so that teachers and students will know what they are accessing before they even click on
the links. This assures predictability and a lack of any surprises, either positive or
negative. Classroomconnect.com (200l, About Classroom Connect section, para.5) even
advertises that its content has been “classroom-tested,” to help assure that it is predictable
and safe. For parents, Lightspan.com (2001, Parents Section, para.1) takes the
uncertainty out of parenting by providing a link called “Grade by Grade.” It enables
parents to gauge the development of their children by informing them of exactly what
students should know by a particular grade.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 15
Another way that commercial education Web sites assure predictability is by
aligning their content with national, state, or local education standards. Netschools.com
(2001, NetSchools Orion section, para.2) offers its own online curriculum alignment and
integration system. It features a search engine that allows teachers to select a standard
and then search for Web sites that are related to it. “Alignment to standards is no longer
a hit or miss process,” the site proclaims. Similarly, bigchalk.com (2001, Mission
section, para.13) features online tests and diagnostic instructions that are geared toward
statewide assessments. The site even touts that its content meets AASA (American
Association of School Administrators) standards. These standards are designed to create
a benchmark for the quality of Web content and to assure that it is correlated to standards.
These kinds of quality assurances are an additional way that commercial education Web
sites try to ensure predictability. The standards themselves are a way of guaranteeing that
educational content is predictable and uniform (Spady, 2000).
Calculability
Along with efficiency and predictability, the third aspect of the rationalization
process that contributes to McDonaldization is calculability. McDonald’s and many
other fast food franchises place a tremendous emphasis on numbers, counting, and the
quantification of many aspects of their business. For many years McDonald’s displayed
signs at its restaurants that proudly proclaimed “Billions Served.” The purpose of the
sign was not just to emphasize the success of the company. It was also to imply that the
huge sales could somehow be attributed to the quality of the burgers served. This process
by which fast food outlets equate quantity with quality is the essence of calculability.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 16
Commercial education Web sites also place considerable emphasis on
calculability. At Lightspan.com, both general and specific numbers are cited to suggest
the quality of the site and its value. Lightspan.com (2001, Company Information section,
para.4) is more specific: “Many of the over 400 staff at Lightspan are former
educators…” Quoting figures and quantifying aspects of their business is an important
way that commercial education Web sites project or imply quality and also reassure users
and prospective users that they are serious enterprises and not mere fly-by-night
operations.
One way for a commercial education Web site to suggest that it is not an
ephemeral presence on the Web is by alluding to the size of its customer base.
Classroomconnect.com (2001, About Classroom Connect section, para.4) for example,
claims that its Quest Channel “allows hundreds of thousands of students” to become
“virtual explorers.” When a visitor clicks on “About Us” the first sentence reads:
“Classroom Connect currently helps more than half the country’s K-12 schools make
sense of the Internet.” Bigchalk.com (2001, Mission section, para.12) is more specific in
the figures it advertises: “Currently, our research and reference services have been
licensed for more than 40,000 of the nation’s 110,000 schools and approximately 2,000
public libraries, creating a large base of established customers…” On the same page,
another sentence alludes to the size of its subscriber base “Currently, more than 9,000
schools have posted Web sites on bigchalk.com.”
Another way that commercial education Web sites use quantity to imply quality is
by promoting the breadth and depth of their offerings (Ojala, 2000). Beyondbooks.com
(2001, About Beyond Books section, para.3) claims to “link to thousands of Internet sites
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 17
to complement every focus area covered in our programs.” At FamilyEducation.com
(2001, Teachers Section, para.2) teachers are purported to be able to “access thousands of
assessment quizzes written by teachers like you.” Some sites are able to be more specific
in their effort to suggest quality. Netschools.com (2001, NetSchools Orion section,
para.4) for example, boasts “over 47,000 pre-screened Web sites.” Bigchalk.com (2001,
Library Resources section, para.2) equates the quality of its bigchalk Library with
quantity by offering the following statement along with a detailed breakdown: “Quality
information from seven media types: “Magazines-900 titles, Newspapers-185 titles,
Reference Works-175 titles, Transcripts-70 programs, Maps-7 collections, Images-15
collections, Audio/Video-4 collections.”
Perhaps the most impressive way that commercial education Web sites attempt to
convince potential customers of their quality is by quantifying results. Lightspan.com
(2001, What is Lightspan Achieve Now? section, para.2) promotes its Lightspan Achieve
Now curriculum program by quantifying its popularity with children: “Kids love our
interactive lessons, Lightspan Adventures, so much that 88% of them spend half an hour
or more on the Adventures every day after school. That’s an extra two and a half hours
studying the core curriculum, every week.” Lightspan.com (2001, What is Lightspan
Achieve Now? section, para.3) also offers statistics on the effect that their program has
on parents: “Two thirds spend at least half an hour with their children on the core
curriculum, every night.” These statistics are calculated to convince consumers that
commercial education Web sites are valuable and effective. Lightspan.com (2001, What
is Lightspan Achieve Now? section, para.6) has also surveyed and quantified the teaching
segment of its audience in order to underscore the quality of its products: “In a survey of
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 18
more than 250 teachers, 98% said that Lightspan Achieve Now makes a real difference in
student motivation.” By quantifying various aspects of their products and services,
commercial education Web sites attempt to offer hard evidence of their quality (Hawkins,
1999). Yet the numbers themselves cast doubt on the quality of these sites. When
Lightspan.com (2001, About Lightspan.com section, para.6) boasts that it is a “one-stop
resource for more than 1,500 of the best online lesson plans,” the question arises, how
can there be 1,500 “best” of anything? Similarly, when a claim is made on the same page
that Lightspan offers “115,000 grade-appropriate, expert-selected sites” some users might
wonder how “selected” the sites really are.
Control
The final aspect of the rationalization process that furthers the growth of
McDonaldization is control. One of the most important characteristics of a rationalized,
McDonaldized society is that it attempts to control any irrationalities that may occur in
the system. The optimal functioning of a McDonald’s restaurant leaves little room for
unpredictable imprecision, or inefficiency. The goal of McDonald’s is to control every
aspect of the restaurant experience so that there is nothing left to chance. When a
customer enters a McDonald’s, the customer becomes part of an elaborate, carefully
planned, orderly dining sequence. Each customer lines up, reads the menu, makes a
selection, then observes as the meal is prepared by machines tended by a kitchen crew in
a highly systematized, assembly-line manner. The customer pays for the food, picks it
up, fills the drink cup and picks up condiments, utensils and napkins, and then sits down.
After the meal, the customer cleans up and carries the tray to a waste bin and disposes of
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 19
the leftovers. Every aspect of the dining sequence is planned and controlled, right down
to the questions and responses of the counter help.
It has taken many years for McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants to obtain
this level of precise control over the dining experience. Over the years, more and more
aspects of the human role in the process have been gradually replaced by machines. It is
machines that now automatically broil the burgers, and cook the French fries. This is to
eliminate human uncertainty and judgement about whether the food is cooked enough.
The whole process of preparing and cooking the food has become so mechanized and
automated that the kitchen crew must choreograph and synchronize their actions to the
machines.
The ultimate goal of McDonaldization then, is to eliminate all human irrationality
and uncertainty from the dining process and replace humans with machines. That is
because machines are more rational, efficient, predictable, and controllable than humans.
Commercial education Web sites attempt to exert this same kind of control over people in
the education process. They use technology, specifically computers and the World Wide
Web, to control those who use their services to pursue educational aims. Teachers and
parents use technology to control students, and administrators use it to control teachers.
These forms of control are often quite overt, and some commercial education
Web sites actually promote it as a benefit for users. Schoolcenter.com (2001, Tech
Coordinators Section, para.4) for example, touts in a bold heading “You always have
control.” Beneath the heading are bulleted subpoints, that delineate the forms of control:
You grant or deny user’s access level,” “You design the look of the site,” “You choose
your own Web address.” Variations on the theme of control are offered throughout the
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 20
sites. A subsequent page states “Only your User ID and Password will allow for any
changes to be made to your pages.”
Other commercial education Web sites similarly reinforce the theme of control by
reminding teachers that they not only regulate access, but also the content of the site.
Classroomconnect.com (2001, Quick Tour section, para.1) allows teaches to check
whether students have started an assignment and how much progress they have made.
Teachers can even examine the class notes and portfolios of the students. At
NetSchools.com (2001, NetSchools Orion section, para.7) their system features an online
calendar that displays important days on the school calendar, as well as meetings and
holidays. The site reminds teachers: “You can enter calendar events that will appear on
your students’ calendars.” NetSchools.com (2001, NetSchools Education Services
section, para.16) claims to offer proprietary software, that “assists you in controlling the
use of student laptops.” Teachers cannot just control them, but also monitor them.
Control of student work goes beyond surveillance to include actual content. A good
example is a feature of NetSchools (2001, Products section, para.6) technology called
Desktop Monitor, which includes the following description: “Desktop Monitor permits
teachers to control which programs students may run while they are in the teacher’s
classroom. Teachers may, for example, completely disable student machines during
lecture periods, or they may exercise more selective control such as disabling E-mail and
Web browsing during a quiz.” Netschools.com (2001, Products section, para.8) is so
enamored of this technology that it proclaims that it has a patent pending on it. A further
measure of control is afforded by what the company refers to as an anti-theft control
system, which includes student laptops that feature a “teacher-defined timing device that
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 21
makes them inoperable after the time limit expires.” Technology is thus being used not
as an educational tool but as a form of behavioral control (Kahn and Friedman, 1998).
And while many of these Web sites would seem to offer teachers a remarkable amount of
control over students, Classroomconnect.com (2001, Connected University section,
para.7) features an online resource called Connected University which enables teachers to
take professional development courses online. Connected University, however, is
controlled by school administrators, allowing them a degree of control over teachers.
Commercial education Web sites are able to use technology to monitor and
control behavior in another way. FamilyEducation.com (2001, Privacy section, para.3)
uses cookies to monitor user behavior at its site. Cookies are technological mechanisms
in the form of message files that can track what pages a user reads, what advertisements
they click on, and what products they order. Search preferences and patterns are then
analyzed by companies to determine a user’s interests and preferences. This information
can then be shared with or sold to other marketers or advertisers (Falk, 1999). Although
commercial education Web sites like FamilyEducation.com state at their Web site that
they will never release personal information to others without permission, their use of
cookies raises questions of privacy, surveillance, and control that are unsettling. Cookies
are another way commercial education Web sites use non-human technology to impose
rationality and control over human behavior.
Conclusion
Rational processes like McDonaldization almost invariably tend to produce
irrationality in one form or another. This is something that Ritzer refers to as “the
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 22
irrationality of rationality.” Thus, while McDonald’s is purported to be a highly efficient
and expeditious way to dine, customers who eat at McDonald’s sometimes find
themselves faced with long lines. Similarly, McDonald’s has its kitchen and counter
employees carefully trained to conduct their work in a series of very rigid, narrowly
defined actions that reduce them to robot-like workers. This rigidity, combined with low
wages, helps to account for the extremely high turnover rate among fast food restaurant
employees, resulting in a loss of revenue for McDonald’s and other fast food outlets.
Rational systems, when carried to extremes, are ultimately irrational because they
dehumanize people and do not utilize their creative potential. Companies like
McDonald’s have thus been unable to develop new products and have instead merely
been successful in repackaging old ones.
The same could be said for commercial education Web sites. They tend to
dehumanize students and teachers by forcing them to act in certain prescribed ways.
Rather than harness technology to create truly innovative forms of teaching and learning,
commercial education Web sites have to a large extent merely imitated and repackaged
traditional forms of education in digital form. Visitors to these sites encounter many of
the same aspects of the K-12 world—including virtual classrooms, texts, syllabi, lesson
plans, tests, permission slips, etc.—that are common in education today. Commercial
education Web sites have in many cases deliberately imported may of these familiar
elements of conventional education settings into the digital realm in order to make their
products and services more reassuring and comfortable—and thus more marketable—to
administrators, teachers, parents, and students.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 23
Commercial education Web sites have failed to utilize the potential of information
technology because they have not yet produced truly creative ways to educate students.
By forcing teachers and students to act on the Web much as they would act in a
traditional physical classroom, students and teachers never learn to be creative. These
Web sites have avoided the challenge of coming up with genuinely new approaches to
pedagogy and learning and have contented themselves with simply repackaging the
traditional trappings of K-12 education. They have created an illusion of innovation by
repackaging the conventional educational system using bright colors, bold graphics, slick
advertising copy, and professional models. The result is a sterile, sanitized, Disney-like,
carnival atmosphere that hides a lack of real innovation and genuinely fresh solutions to
educational problems.
Equally disturbing is the way many commercial education Web sites utilize
information technology for purposes of surveillance and control. Students, and to a lesser
extent teachers, are afforded less privacy than in a non-electronic setting. Every aspect of
their work, right down to their class notes and exchanges with other students, can be
monitored, recorded, and archived electronically by teachers or administrators. The use
of cookies by many commercial education Web sites creates the possibility of tracking
and analyzing student, parent, and teacher behavior, and of using this information to
create profiles of individual interests and preferences which can then be used for
commercial purposes. This has an ominous, “Big Brother” quality that suggests a need
for further research and investigation and which raises many disturbing issues related to
an individual’s right to privacy in electronic settings.
McDonaldization and Commercial Education Web Sites 24
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