The guide map, the beacon and keys to the front and back doors: a case of consumerism

Recently I was idly leafing through one of our State's educational review magazines. My attention was immediately captivated by a headline which read ‘Students to be empowered as consumers’. ‘At last’, I thought, as I dived in to consume the article, ‘even the education system is going to empower students in their role as consumers of school life’. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered that in fact the education department was introducing a program of teaching students to be good retail consumers. You know the kind - Levis versus Corfu, MacDonald versus Hungry Jacks, Revlon versus Shiseido, Dolly versus Juice, hip versus funk - the type of purchasing traumas we all experience from time to time.