Page 90 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 90
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
of colonization. As individuals, the patriciate of the transnational cap-
italist class are as likely to be as honest, fair-minded and upstanding as
any other group you might meet at the local pub. Again, and this de-
serves to be emphasized, it is not the individuals themselves, but the
system of asymmetrically structured social relations of exploitation re-
produced by capitalism, that is the problem. The problem is not the
capitalists—who doesn’t know some very nice, caring, and benevolent
capitalist in their family?—but capitalism. You cannot succeed in the
capitalist world without exploiting workers. But no capitalist will admit
to this because nobody wants to believe that they are participating in an
immoral and repugnant system that leads to immiseration, pauperisa-
tion, casualisation, the gutting of the welfare state, neo-imperialism, etc.
But some of capitalists (what Trump refers to as the “winners”) are clear-
ly more successful than others. But even the “winners” face an uncer-
tain future (albeit a more certain future than ours, to be sure) since cap-
italism cannot avoid systematic crises, which have been witnessed in the
1930s, 1970s, 1980s, and 2008, and they will be witnessed again by suc-
ceeding generations unless we put a stop to it through our collective ef-
forts at resistance followed by a plan for emancipation. Clearly we need
to repristinate the locus of self-questioning advocated by my mentor,
Paulo Freire, and other educators who have an understanding of glob-
al political economy. Whatever strategy we employ to fight the continu-
ation of Trump’s neoliberal agenda will require the participation of the
global working class.
How would radical pedagogy tackle the failure of upward social mo-
bility (the ‘opportunity gap’) that constitutes the very promise associ-
ated with the American Dream?
Education is embedded firmly in the notion of the American Dream
which is why education has always been in bed with the value form of
the commodity and also, of course, in the social production of labor pow-
er. Every decade capitalism demands that successive generations of work-
ers relegitimize the structural contradictions of the internationalist cap-
italist system as the limits to human possibility. In this way workers will
be always already susceptible to the notion that there is no alternative to
capitalism . One way the transnational capitalist state accomplishes this is
to fashion pedagogical approaches that re-encrypt justifications for capi-
talism throughout the education system. And, as Glenn Rikowski notes,
schools are interested in manufacturing and reinforcing the skills, per-
sonal attributes and other labor power attributes of students as potential
88
of colonization. As individuals, the patriciate of the transnational cap-
italist class are as likely to be as honest, fair-minded and upstanding as
any other group you might meet at the local pub. Again, and this de-
serves to be emphasized, it is not the individuals themselves, but the
system of asymmetrically structured social relations of exploitation re-
produced by capitalism, that is the problem. The problem is not the
capitalists—who doesn’t know some very nice, caring, and benevolent
capitalist in their family?—but capitalism. You cannot succeed in the
capitalist world without exploiting workers. But no capitalist will admit
to this because nobody wants to believe that they are participating in an
immoral and repugnant system that leads to immiseration, pauperisa-
tion, casualisation, the gutting of the welfare state, neo-imperialism, etc.
But some of capitalists (what Trump refers to as the “winners”) are clear-
ly more successful than others. But even the “winners” face an uncer-
tain future (albeit a more certain future than ours, to be sure) since cap-
italism cannot avoid systematic crises, which have been witnessed in the
1930s, 1970s, 1980s, and 2008, and they will be witnessed again by suc-
ceeding generations unless we put a stop to it through our collective ef-
forts at resistance followed by a plan for emancipation. Clearly we need
to repristinate the locus of self-questioning advocated by my mentor,
Paulo Freire, and other educators who have an understanding of glob-
al political economy. Whatever strategy we employ to fight the continu-
ation of Trump’s neoliberal agenda will require the participation of the
global working class.
How would radical pedagogy tackle the failure of upward social mo-
bility (the ‘opportunity gap’) that constitutes the very promise associ-
ated with the American Dream?
Education is embedded firmly in the notion of the American Dream
which is why education has always been in bed with the value form of
the commodity and also, of course, in the social production of labor pow-
er. Every decade capitalism demands that successive generations of work-
ers relegitimize the structural contradictions of the internationalist cap-
italist system as the limits to human possibility. In this way workers will
be always already susceptible to the notion that there is no alternative to
capitalism . One way the transnational capitalist state accomplishes this is
to fashion pedagogical approaches that re-encrypt justifications for capi-
talism throughout the education system. And, as Glenn Rikowski notes,
schools are interested in manufacturing and reinforcing the skills, per-
sonal attributes and other labor power attributes of students as potential
88
