Bourgeois Education: Learning the Logic of Capitalism

[cenv]

This is an (anti-)essay I wrote about the role of the student in capitalism and the various ways the bourgeois education system forces students to internalize bourgeois ideology. You'll notice that I draw liberally from situationist ideas, especially the idea of "spectacle." Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback on the ideas and the way it's written. I attached it as a .doc file so the footnotes wouldn't get screwed up. Thanks.:)

[CELMX]

On your last paragraph, you say "world of pleasures". It sounds as if the world will become a lala land. In my opinion, I think it would sound better and less utopian and childish if it is stated along the lines of happiness, joy, etc. Pleasure sounds like leisure (to me). How are you going to expect people to work if they are leisurely?

And, tests, can you suggest a way for teachers to know if the students are actually getting the material the teacher is teaching?
I frankly disagree with the "strict" schedule and overload of homework (unless this is about college, which I know nothing about...) Classes (at least in America) are WAAAY too easy, and not strict enough. We are not learning anything.
It also seems that the only "incentive" for children to study and learn is through homework and tests. How else will children learn? At an early age, they might not be able to separate the unimportant and important.

I totally agree, however, with the " idea that an individual can be reduced to a letter represents a dehumanizing objectification and compartmentalization that strips individuals of their freedom to behave as active subjects." I don't believe in grades at all. I think paragraph 5 was very influential and well written.

I loved the style of the last paragraph, how you added elements of the Communist Manifesto into it. The way you wrote it was also creative and funny, i.e. paragraph 2 and 9. Overall, I think your essay was pretty convincing and well written :thumbup:!

[cenv]

On your last paragraph, you say "world of pleasures". It sounds as if the world will become a lala land. In my opinion, I think it would sound better and less utopian and childish if it is stated along the lines of happiness, joy, etc. Pleasure sounds like leisure (to me). How are you going to expect people to work if they are leisurely?

And, tests, can you suggest a way for teachers to know if the students are actually getting the material the teacher is teaching?
I frankly disagree with the "strict" schedule and overload of homework (unless this is about college, which I know nothing about...) Classes (at least in America) are WAAAY too easy, and not strict enough. We are not learning anything.
It also seems that the only "incentive" for children to study and learn is through homework and tests. How else will children learn? At an early age, they might not be able to separate the unimportant and important.

I totally agree, however, with the " idea that an individual can be reduced to a letter represents a dehumanizing objectification and compartmentalization that strips individuals of their freedom to behave as active subjects." I don't believe in grades at all. I think paragraph 5 was very influential and well written.

I loved the style of the last paragraph, how you added elements of the Communist Manifesto into it. The way you wrote it was also creative and funny, i.e. paragraph 2 and 9. Overall, I think your essay was pretty convincing and well written :thumbup:!
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.:)

I definitely hear you about the "world of pleasures" thing. I was unsure about that too, but I went with it in the spirit of shameless plagiarism (I was trying to echo Vaneigem's famous quote: "We have a world of pleasures to win, and nothing to lose but boredom."

My main problem with tests is the grades aspect and the fact that tests emphasize exclusively individual work. With homework, I disagree that more homework would be beneficial. A lot of homework emphasizes rote work to the detriment of understanding the concepts involved, and doing well on homework doesn't necessarily correlate to learning. As someone who does tutors middle school students in my free time, I think it's pretty easy to tell whether a student is struggling or excelling without having to reduce their experience to a particular test or homework assignment. In fact, doing so can be misleading.

(Of course, this is also a question of teacher:student ratios. Once class sizes get too bloated, condensing the learning experience into grades, tests, homework, etc. is the only way for overworked teachers to keep their sanity).

I also think the idea that children need "incentive" to learn is a slippery slope -- if they need incentive to learn, who says they won't need incentive to work when they grow up? And we know where that logic goes.

Finally, I think we need to reexamine the artificial division between "leisure" and "work" and, to the extent possible, integrate the two. If we see work as a distinctly separate activity with no elements of leisure involved, it follows that some way to coerce people into work will be necessary. Maintaining a sacred boundary between work and leisure is, as I see it, only necessary if you're trying to maximize the efficiency of said work -- i.e. trying to maximize surplus value while ignoring the subjective experience of the worker. To build a society based on working-class power, it's necessary to examine the subjective experience of the working class.

Anyway, thanks again for the response and the constructive criticism!

PS. I wanted to add that I agree with your statement that "we are not learning anything." In my mind, this problem stems from the way our education is structured, not the rigor of the classes.

[CELMX]

"I also think the idea that children need "incentive" to learn is a slippery slope -- if they need incentive to learn, who says they won't need incentive to work when they grow up? And we know where that logic goes."

Children do not see learning in school as something necessary at a young age. Mostly all they want to do is play. They need a catalyst to learn. They need an incentive. However, when they do start to learn, most youngsters will find a particular field or subject area they enjoy, which can be their career when they grow up. I don't think they would need incentive when they grow up because they will enjoy their job. However, as a child, you probably won't go to school because you enjoy learning. The child wouldn't even know what learning is like...until they are forced to join school, in which they will start to develop a joy for it.
Children also have different ages at which they start enjoying a particular subject. It might take time, and during that time, they are not going to willingly stay in school. They must be "forced" to until they finally start showing interest.

"I wanted to add that I agree with your statement that "we are not learning anything." In my mind, this problem stems from the way our education is structured, not the rigor of the classes."

I don't believe students are ignorant just because of the rigor of the classes, but a combination of both the education structure and the difficulty of the classes. When I said classes were too easy, I also meant that teachers aren't making students think. All it is is basically rote memorization, and nothing that stimulates the mind. The system doesn't allow students to formulate their own ideas and thoughts.

Just out of curiosity, is this essay for a class, and if so, which class?

[cenv]

Haha, no, I don't think I'd want to show this to any of my teachers. :P This was just my attempt to organize my thoughts about education under capitalism ... and to vent. ;)

[redsmurf]

Interesting perspective. I guess I never really considered how individualistic our education system is - to me the idea that every student should study and take tests individually is completely natural. But your essay got me thinking - what if school emphasized collective projects more? It may actually be possible to solve the incentive problem. Students who "free ride" on the group projects by not doing their part could be punished with social disapproval from the other students. But in order to get a critical mass of the group motivated, you should make the project fun. You could introduce some element of competition between the groups, like a game. Then students might actually be motivated to learn on their own in order help their team out.

The problem with our education system is that the students don't know why they're learning anything. Except to get good grades and beat the other students in the job market and college application process down the road. So learning just becomes a matter of memorizing some crap to do well on a test then forget it later. It doesn't tie in to anything the students find interesting or relevant (well at least until college, when they get to choose their classes). Because students don't know why they should learn, they don't really learn. They learn very little of value in all 13 years of primary and secondary education - except conformity.

[Anaximander]

The problem with our education system is that the students don't know why they're learning anything. Except to get good grades and beat the other students in the job market and college application process down the road.

So, in essence, those who can succeed within the logic of a society based around/within capital are being separated from those who cannot, commonly called "lazy," "unmotivated," "ADD," or "stupid." This is bourgeois ideology at its purest, where that which does not live up to its expectations are dismissed, while at the same time used as a negative standard (or that which one should avoid becoming).

What we know as schooling (memorization, standardized testing, text books produced by shadowy organizations of corporate "historians") is inherently a prep school for the binary opposition between successes and failure, the top and the bottom, the schematic by which we have traditionally organized society and economy. The dull and shallow methods of teaching method only reinforce this opposition as what is to be and should be expected from the world outside of school, whether you participate in manual or intellectual labor.

I'm too high and this is too repetitive.

[redsmurf]

So, in essence, those who can succeed within the logic of a society based around/within capital are being separated from those who cannot, commonly called "lazy," "unmotivated," "ADD," or "stupid." This is bourgeois ideology at its purest, where that which does not live up to its expectations are dismissed, while at the same time used as a negative standard (or that which one should avoid becoming).

What we know as schooling (memorization, standardized testing, text books produced by shadowy organizations of corporate "historians") is inherently a prep school for the binary opposition between successes and failure, the top and the bottom, the schematic by which we have traditionally organized society and economy. The dull and shallow methods of teaching method only reinforce this opposition as what is to be and should be expected from the world outside of school, whether you participate in manual or intellectual labor.

I'm too high and this is too repetitive.

Its interesting how "success" is defined as obtaining a middle class, intellectual job. So then if you do any kind of manual labor you're a "failure" - you must have gotten poor grades in school and are probably lazy and/or stupid. But since someone has to do the manual labor, its actually not possible for everyone to "succeed" by that definition. The majority are actually destined to "failure." So maybe the real function of education in a capitalist system is not to actually help kids "succeed," but to kill the self-esteem and pride of future manual laborers and denigrate the value of their work. If their work is not valuable and manual laborers are not smart/hard-working, then maybe their position in a capitalist society is natural. Without pride in what they do, they seek not to be treated equally and fairly, but to become part of the middle or upper-class themselves (or to pretend like they are).

[cenv]

Its interesting how "success" is defined as obtaining a middle class, intellectual job. So then if you do any kind of manual labor you're a "failure" - you must have gotten poor grades in school and are probably lazy and/or stupid. But since someone has to do the manual labor, its actually not possible for everyone to "succeed" by that definition. The majority are actually destined to "failure." So maybe the real function of education in a capitalist system is not to actually help kids "succeed," but to kill the self-esteem and pride of future manual laborers and denigrate the value of their work. If their work is not valuable and manual laborers are not smart/hard-working, then maybe their position in a capitalist society is natural. Without pride in what they do, they seek not to be treated equally and fairly, but to become part of the middle or upper-class themselves (or to pretend like they are).
And the flip side is that those who do "succeed" feel like they deserve to be better than everyone else. So, bourgeois education serves to crush the self-respect of the working-class, as you pointed out, while simultaneously increasing the sense of entitlement among the middle and upper classes -- and in the end no one bothers to question the logic of capitalism.