Page 91 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 91
p. mclaren ■ from a city on the hill to the dungheap of history
workers—as part of bolstering the capitalist labor process itself. Institu-
tions of education demand compliance as an axiomatic attribute of the
student’s labor power, since capitalism needs agents with specific types of
labor power attributes that can remain mystified as to the ways in which
they help capital grow and expand not for the worker but for the capital-
ist. Education becomes an instrument of divine pettifoggery—insinuat-
ing the idea that with hard work and imagination, workers can construct
themselves in a myriad of playful and sublime ways. Labor power utili-
zation by capitalists demands acquiescence to a certain type of training
or pedagogy, that could be described as a pedagogy of domestication, as
education takes on a particular commodity form. Today, business mod-
els of education are specific commodity forms supported by the transna-
tional capitalist class and they are expanding at a ferocious rate and in the
U.S. they promote private or charter schools to replace pubic schools. In
the U.S. competition is fierce for jobs that pay living wages as job crea-
tion for high school graduates is mostly in the service industry in which
there are no medical benefits and little pay. Schools have been insinuated
into the logic of neoliberal economics administered by means of a mar-
ket metric macrophysics of power and set of governing tactics that sub-
mits everything in its path to a process of monetization and that simulta-
neously transforms everything and everyone within our social universe to
a commodity form
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, is a Michigan-based philan-
thropist who, along with her husband Richard DeVos, supports the privat-
ization of public schooling and is noted for her attacks on the LGBTQA
community, including undermining their hard-won anti-discrimination
protections in the state of Michigan. Proselytizing for private schooling is
a growth industry, and Betsy DeVos has been at the forefront. But the in-
creasing antipathy expressed by their bloviating flag-bearers towards pub-
lic schooling reveals a motivated amnesia surrounding the history of the
relationship of public education to the expansion of democracy through-
out United States. The health of the public education system should be
foundational to the generative process of being and becoming fully hu-
man, and this is true not just in the United States, but in most democratic
countries. Betsy DeVos’ plan to spend $1.4 billion on the Trump admin-
istration’s expanded school choice agenda, was called an “assault on the
American Dream” by John B. King, Jr. who served as Obama’s Secretary
of Education and now leads a think tank, Education Trust.
We need to expand the scale of struggle. It is natural that we should
want both to conserve and to create cosmovisions and social relations of
production in which the fetish of the commodity no longer rules. After
89
workers—as part of bolstering the capitalist labor process itself. Institu-
tions of education demand compliance as an axiomatic attribute of the
student’s labor power, since capitalism needs agents with specific types of
labor power attributes that can remain mystified as to the ways in which
they help capital grow and expand not for the worker but for the capital-
ist. Education becomes an instrument of divine pettifoggery—insinuat-
ing the idea that with hard work and imagination, workers can construct
themselves in a myriad of playful and sublime ways. Labor power utili-
zation by capitalists demands acquiescence to a certain type of training
or pedagogy, that could be described as a pedagogy of domestication, as
education takes on a particular commodity form. Today, business mod-
els of education are specific commodity forms supported by the transna-
tional capitalist class and they are expanding at a ferocious rate and in the
U.S. they promote private or charter schools to replace pubic schools. In
the U.S. competition is fierce for jobs that pay living wages as job crea-
tion for high school graduates is mostly in the service industry in which
there are no medical benefits and little pay. Schools have been insinuated
into the logic of neoliberal economics administered by means of a mar-
ket metric macrophysics of power and set of governing tactics that sub-
mits everything in its path to a process of monetization and that simulta-
neously transforms everything and everyone within our social universe to
a commodity form
Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, is a Michigan-based philan-
thropist who, along with her husband Richard DeVos, supports the privat-
ization of public schooling and is noted for her attacks on the LGBTQA
community, including undermining their hard-won anti-discrimination
protections in the state of Michigan. Proselytizing for private schooling is
a growth industry, and Betsy DeVos has been at the forefront. But the in-
creasing antipathy expressed by their bloviating flag-bearers towards pub-
lic schooling reveals a motivated amnesia surrounding the history of the
relationship of public education to the expansion of democracy through-
out United States. The health of the public education system should be
foundational to the generative process of being and becoming fully hu-
man, and this is true not just in the United States, but in most democratic
countries. Betsy DeVos’ plan to spend $1.4 billion on the Trump admin-
istration’s expanded school choice agenda, was called an “assault on the
American Dream” by John B. King, Jr. who served as Obama’s Secretary
of Education and now leads a think tank, Education Trust.
We need to expand the scale of struggle. It is natural that we should
want both to conserve and to create cosmovisions and social relations of
production in which the fetish of the commodity no longer rules. After
89
