Is education, in a way another opium for the masses?

[BIG BROTHER]

I've always had the notion, that in a capitalist society, education in a way has served in a similar role to religion. Why? Because I've seen many people who enstead of hoping to overthrow the capitalist system, or fighting for the justice of the workers; simply think that the answer lies in getting educated so you have a high paying job(with higher posibilites to become a bourgeoisie)

I've seen that happen a lot. People see education as the ultimate answer for povery and misery. I mean education is important indeed but the system needs to be overthrown.

So would you agree or disagree that education in a way is also an opium?(or did u even understood my question?)

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Well, outright lies are taught in school. Gramsci talked about cultural hegemony, and compulsory education, while progressive, enables the bourgeoisie to have cultural hegemony.

"They don't trust you, Anakin. They know your power will be too strong to control. You must break through the fog of lies the Jedi have created around you."

[Plagueround]

If a person goes to school for an education then I think it's a positive thing. If a person goes to school for the promise it will make their life better because they will have more money, then they are doing it for the wrong reason, and they probably didn't learn very much from it. I'm guilty of it myself, and I wish I had gone into a field I was more interested in, although in the end I do enjoy my work and I manage to study a lot of my interests in my spare time.

The other thing about education, as Jacob pointed out, is one has to learn to filter and question what they are taught in schools. Between programs with government and capitalist agendas, poor funding and outdated information, and teachers that won't let you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat, if you take everything you learn in school as the end all be all...again, you didn't learn very much.

[BIG BROTHER]

That's the thing, a lot of people just study because of money, and seccond of all they think that poverty and inequality would be over if everyone had a masters degree or something.

[erupt]

That's the thing, a lot of people just study because of money, and seccond of all they think that poverty and inequality would be over if everyone had a masters degree or something.
I had a conversation with a friend of mine today, concerning the same thing. Most American students want nothing more than to do whatever it takes to get the best grades, get in the best college, get the best job, and make the most money. Very few actually want to be informed or learn something. Most students have high aspirations of being a lawyer or a doctor (which are two very high paying jobs.)

In capitalist societies, everyone wants to be the boss. They want tobe the guy who does nothing all day long and makes money off of hundreds of thousands of workers who are actually making the product.

These same people who have the money to get a higher education do seem to think this education is the answer to poverty and opression, jose, and sadly, it just creates more poverty. The more people go to college, the more people have the "intellect" to be corporate executives and treat other people unfairly.

Everything in capitalist society is designed for competiton, for the most part. Student vs. student, worker vs. worker, company vs. company; it's all competition.

But, in response to it being a comparison to Marx's quote of "opium of the masses," I can deffinetly see where your coming from in that they both give hope to people who want something more.

[hekmatista]

But of course, we do. Unfortunately anything that promotes critical thought is reserved for the "last ones standing" after the pruning operation of tracking, competitive entrance exams, and Ivy League snobbery. Critical thought is functional among the ultimate beneficiaries of capitalist education, those bound for the upper managerial elite who, with preferred stock options and "good" marriages can rise even from lowly station into the bourgeoisie (no one ever claimed capitalism does not open careers to "talent"). For the rest of us, of course, critical thought is another matter; it is dysfunctional for the system. If you are college track, stick to the hard sciences; while they are not class-neutral, there is more of value to your class in them than you will find in the rest of the hegemonic curriculum. Literature and philosophy can be pursued in your spare time. I guess my prejudices as an autodidact are showing.:blushing:

[Dean]

If one uses education as a means by which they fulfill drives irrationally (i.e. for the purpose of spiritual augmentation or submission to authority) than it is no different than a drug and indoctrination service. However much I think it is used that way, I don't think it constitutes a significant opium of the masses when compared to religion and the mass media, for starters.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If you are college track, stick to the hard sciences; while they are not class-neutral, there is more of value to your class in them than you will find in the rest of the hegemonic curriculum. Literature and philosophy can be pursued in your spare time. I guess my prejudices as an autodidact are showing.:blushing:

You forgot non-economics business school as an alternative. :p

[But yeah, the soft "social sciences" stuff tends to be crap.]

[mykittyhasaboner]

as far as the public school system in the US goes, its nothing more than a institution where the ruling class brainwashes kids. think about it its compulsory, you dont "learn" anything per say, you simply do menial assignments, the authority figures abuse their power all the time, and you need to achieve the status quo of good grades and test scores. to me that just screams "concentration camp".

[BIG BROTHER]

another example of my point,is for example a little talk i had with my mother about the shinning path. I told her how they lived in incredible misery and like Marx said, they had nothing to lose and a world to gain. But she was like, yea but they(the gov't) should have helped them get education.

And like my mome i have found the same mentality in many people.

Also the school system is indeed biased toward the ruling class. But how effective do you think this indoctrination is? I mean in Cuba they teach about che guevara, and I don't see the cubas that come to the U.S. starting a guerrilla foco or something.

In the end, I've also concluded that if everyone of like a really high percentage of the population was a doctor or a lawyer in a capitalist society, it wouldn't be a high paying job anymore because there would be so many people with the same job, that he employers and people seeking the services of doctors and laywers would go after the ones who charge the least.

[joe_the_red]

I think that education (real education, not capitalist mind-whipe/reprogramming) is a good thing. Universities aren't a bad place to learn a language or two, study up on philosophy, use computer resources, and learn a few other things, too. But, there is WAY too much capitalist propaganda crap to sift through. Understanding this is the first step. While studying in a University in the U.S. (or probably the British Empire also, for that matter), you should also be supplementing all the time you are wasting listening to their attempted brainwash by also conducting your own research in your spare time. Even if you're not getting an "education" it's always a good idea to do research, at a library or on the computer or whatever. As far as purely definitions go, Marx said that religion was the opiate of the masses because it's a blanket, it's a comfort to make people feel better because their lives suck in capitalist anti-society. Education in capitalist society isn't quite an opiate, as such, but a false path. You might use the term false hope instead, and an opiate would be a good word for it then. Depends on your definition though. Personally, by technical definition alone, I don't quite agree with opiate, but it is on the same level. Religion is how the capitalists trap the ignorant, and education is how they trap those who may have potential (these days, the ignorant, too, though, ever since that 'no child left behind' crap, now nobody is going to actually be qualified for anything, degree or not). -Joe

[Red Equation]

Education is definitely in some senses, opium for the masses, although I probably majorly misunderstood your analogy, capitalists make millions off children who buy their sodas and chip products, etc.

Capitalist education is especially like opium. They teach you that World War II ended because of the atomic bombs... Who actually believes that? Even the Japanese admit that it was August Storm...

[ckaihatsu]

Thanks, Jose, for bringing up this thread -- I jumped right at it, because my degree and professional experience are in education (high school history).

I don't think education is so much peddled as an opiate for the masses as much as it's put forward as a "magic feather" for the masses. Remember the Disney story of Dumbo, the child elephant who was given a placebo so that he would realize he had the ability to fly? Here's from a web search:



One of the best parts of Dumbo is when Timothy the mouse gives Dumbo a "magic feather," to help him fly. Of course, the feather is just a feather, but Dumbo doesn't know that. Or maybe he does, but he believes so much in Timothy that the feather does, in effect, help Dumbo fly. It is only when he drops it that Timothy tells Dumbo the truth, and Dumbo realizes he has the power to fly.

http://susansenator.com/blog/2008/03/magic-feather.html



Unfortunately the "magic feather" aspect of education can lead into the superhero or "great white hope" mentality -- that, with the right education one will be the next keymaster, effortlessly removing every obstacle for self and others with a super-brain and super abilities. My beef with this approach to education is that people wind up becoming experts in trivia, absorbing lifetimes of ephemera, but not necessarily to a practical or progressive end.

Probably the greatest thing I learned from all the time I've been around education, on both sides of the teacher's desk, is that one has to decide / know what to *do* with that knowledge -- what's the point of all of it, personally? What role(s) will one pick up in society at large? What's worth doing with one's life?

It's worth noting that the political revolution necessitates the personal revolution, because in the process of deciding to fight for the working class others may disagree with that particular choice. This has to be resolved in some regard -- there's no way around it.

Certainly many people want to take the track that will secure them some sort of long-term security -- the professional, career- and wealth-oriented track. Hekmatista is advising sticking to the hard sciences, but I would tend to disagree with that approach, at least for the time that I spent in college.

My college experience was in the humanities, and while in retrospect I know which bourgeois-oriented parts to throw out (Hayek comes first, btw), I can look back and see that I had a good education, one that was mostly interesting, with my own personal initiative guiding much of it.

I can't speak to the technically oriented track myself, but I notice that plenty of people put up with tremendous amounts of stress on a daily basis so that they can win the rat race, molding themselves and their lives into the cookie-cutter plans that bourgeois society has for them. While accomplishment is surely a fine thing, I can't help but wonder if many find the destination worth it once / if they get there.

On the converse, focusing too much on the education itself turns the personal path into a Rube Goldberg sort of affair, where one has to make everything line up just right so that initiative can manifest itself properly. Many people develop anxieties over not having the correct book knowledge for applying to a given situation. They're stuck in heuristics mode, which is what religion encourages -- having to know an entire canon so that a correct judgment in the present can be lifted from the wisest of decisions from the ancient world.

The antidote to this scholastic method, of course, is critical thinking skills -- including complexity theory, I would argue -- so that one can size up novel situations and develop creative solutions on-the-fly.

What's been concerning me lately is not so much this-or-that person's fulfillment of their life plans so much as the direction that civilization as a whole is going in. Now that much of the world is finally modernized, and even computerized, life tends to be more up to the level of modern expectations for more people, and for society in general, in my opinion -- there's still plenty left to improve, of course, but at that point the overall question becomes: What way forward? Even if all the problems of current war and privation could be solved tomorrow we'd have to figure out what direction to swim in, or else we're just treading water.

My vote goes to a global proletarian revolution for digitally facilitated communism, of course, but there are still plenty of fetters....


Chris




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[Dust Bunnies]

The reason for a Communist getting educated in a Capitalist society is so that the Communist can get knowledge. Even if the knowledge is tainted, there must be some truth in there, and things like math can't be tainted. In order to succeed in a revolution in this age you must know what the enemy knows. I learn not for money but to help the human race advance.