Corprotocracy and Schooling in US

[FlannelAsshole]

For any other people currently receiving a public school education, you are probably familiar with the word potential, something that teachers are encouraged by the administration to tell us we have, with the motive of removing visible accountability from educators and placing it in the hands of students, so that any failure can be shown as the fault of a student, and because of the way that standardized testing has hypnotized us, a failure can translate to a disagreement.If you format an essay wrong, if you say that an instructor does not understand a quote from a story, if you argue that capitalism is in no way a relative of democracy, you can fail. Or if you act out? You are brought to a figure of false authority who repeats text from a handbook to you as part of a job that is paid for by tax money, which could be better spent on something such as a lunch for each student, instead of a piece of bread and cheese for those whose parents are not owners of production. This is all a companion of don't ask don't tell, a reactionary plan to stretch out the space in between classes by increasing the education and as an extension income of the rich and sucking the poor into the military. Ask most public school students what they think of this and they will tell you that they'd prefer the current system to educational equality, as they're more comfortable knowing the rich get richer and poor get poorer. They are taught this at a daily basis at school, where the young cool new teacher type is slowly being either excised or brainwashed into providing information the way the school system wants it, which is to stress the capitalistic and not democratic portion of society, projecting a feeling of hopelessness but content at the student's socioeconomic position, because that is all the school's version of potential has planned for them.

[rundontwalk]

I really don't think it's quite so conspiratorial as that - that the teachers and administration have this single minded obsession with pushing capitalism on students. I think schools are just a reflection of society as a whole, what the with pushing of competition and everything.

And I don't think most students believe that ''they'd prefer the current system to educational equality, as they're more comfortable knowing the rich get richer and poor get poorer.'' Most students don't give a shit about these issues one way or the other.

Don't get me wrong, school does suck though.

Signed,

Resident high school dropout

[FlannelAsshole]

Not just capitalism, but to make students boring and predictable, so that anything pushed on them will be seen at face value as legitimate. The teachers are not only pushing that goal, but it is so ingrained in the US school system that despite the urge to encourage learning and thought you cannot help but weaken the student. You're right in saying that most students don't care, but the ones with opinions often side with the given system, and openly knowing it.

[Ocean Seal]

Its not a conspiracy, its cultural hegemony.

[RedMarxist]

I put on my state writing exam that we should Nationalize artificial seed manufacture corporations to benefit farmers and society as a whole...Ya I should not have done that in retrospect.

So...they can fail you for mentioning that Capitalism doesn't work? Then I should most likely just flunk high school. oh well, it was worth a shot.

but seriously, I completely agree that students are a mold of the current social-economic system. All in all, you're just another brick in the wall.

Unless you fall out of the wall that is. Then your get branded a whole list of derogatory names, become an outcast etc. etc.

That's what we Communists are. Bricks that have fallen out of the wall, capable of realizing their lot in life that Capitalism has "provided them." We want a better world, and for wanting to change the present, craptacular world, we are branded as outcasts.

[RedRose]

I don't think people are particularly failed just for being anti-capitalist. I don't think it helps yes, and if you have a right-wing teacher then he may disagree with you. But even if you're studying economics and you write a paper about the failings of wage-labour then you won't get failed just for not conforming to the system.
Schools are trying to model everyone in a way, into good citizens of the state. Now this is usually dictated by the state as to what a good citizen is, but there is also room for dissent. One of my old teachers for Citizenship told us to always remember, he could be wrong. All teachers could be wrong. Don't take anything for face value. It's things like that that have inspired me to take everything with a pinch of salt and research more clearly. Which is why I'm now a communist :D
My teacher for Theology and Ethics however knows I'm a communist, and we often have discussions about it, both in and out of the classroom (she's a general centre-left, neutral to capitalism liberal) and I often mention my communist views (we're encouraged to put ourselves in our work) and I actually got an A* for one of my more passionately leftist pieces where we were simply told to write a paragraph about our views of fascism, and what we'd do if a fascist government took power. I wrote 3 pages :thumbup:
That wasn't a state exam, and also this is in the UK, I don't know if it's much different in the USA, but I don't think it's as brain-washing as you think it is. But like everything, take it with a healthy attitude of scepticism.

[Mr. Natural]

"College is not the place to go for ideas." Helen Keller

Life is a systemic process, and the system of capitalism has now enveloped Earth--gone global. This means that socio-economic institutions, especially those in the more advanced capitalist countries, are now capitalist institutions, and education is a prime example of this general degradation.

I often refer to capitalism's growing mental control of humanity. People, too, are becoming capitalist institutions. Without radical awareness, we are loyal parts of The System's whole.

Marx repeatedly pointed to this inherent "system problem": that we are born into already existing systems with their institutions, values, and practices, and we are formed in the image of our birth system before we begin (semi-) consciously producing and creating our lives.

Marx: "The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." from preface to A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy.

I love knowledge and hate what has happened to the human intellect under capitalism, and Americans (I'm one) live and think and go to school in the belly of this beast.

RevLeft has much to offer educationally. I'm looking forward to roaming its archives in the rainy days to come.

My red-green best.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Nobody learns much in high school. WShen I was in school I was a very apathetic student but I was a voracious reader, I pretty much devoured my school library. I learned much more there than from any clases I had.

[Rafiq]

Again, enough with the "Corporatocracy" nonsense.

The Corporation is a method in which the Bourgeoisie efficiently stays in class power and represses the interests of the proletariat.

It is not an evil boogyman that is new.

Please, comrades, let's start saying "Bourgeois" or "Bourgeoisie" instead of saying "Corporate, Corporatory, Fascist, 'The Rich'" just for the sake of us not stooping to the level of some kind of hippie-liberalism

[RadioRaheem84]

Public schools in the US are horribly underfunded, reactionary, crowded, dangerous and useless in the way they're being run.

Of course, surprisingly the liberal solution is to convert them to charter schools, an idea being pushed by Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs.

[RedMarxist]

hehehe. One of my teachers thought that "Communism" was an totalitarian system wherein people are forced to work for the state, wheres "democracy" what the United States has, is a "free" system of government.

[FlannelAsshole]

Again, enough with the "Corporatocracy" nonsense.

The Corporation is a method in which the Bourgeoisie efficiently stays in class power and represses the interests of the proletariat.

It is not an evil boogyman that is new.

Please, comrades, let's start saying "Bourgeois" or "Bourgeoisie" instead of saying "Corporate, Corporatory, Fascist, 'The Rich'" just for the sake of us not stooping to the level of some kind of hippie-liberalism

Comrades? Hippie-liberalism? Who is using fascist as a synonym for those in control of schooling? I can't seem to understand.