For the sake of your cardiovascular system, don't ever come to the US,
especially New York City. This motivation for "education" has been going
strong since at least 1960 or thereabouts. The original motivation for
free education was to assimilate immigrants (make all those outlandish
and maybe subversive furriners into good English-speaking Americans). By
the time we Boomers hit the system that wasn't relevant any more, and the
rationale was that a technologizing society needs educated people to fill
the jobs adequately.
Maybe you know about the current NY State and City governments' efforts
to abolish open admissions at City University and turn it back into a
haven for the upwardly mobile and socioeconomically "acceptable"
population. Very few people are bothering to try to make a case for the
idea that the hapless victims of the local public school system are
*entitled* to use the educational system their tax dollars are paying
for. No, the rationale which is proving to swing the most weight is the
idea that, "They won't be able to get jobs and they'll be a drag on the
economy/all go on welfare." In the last thirty years this country has
lost all ability to evaluate anything except in terms of "the almighty
dollar."
Stay where you are! I just finished a course on "US Health Care Systems"
taught by advocates of universal coverage, and one of the examples of a
workable plan which was presented to us was - Australia!
Rachel
>Just weedling through some trite doctrinaire "Homo economicus" texts
about the role >of education in society and thinking: Has education
everywhere been relegated to an >instrumental "thing" that people "do" to
get a job?
training grounds ...
>
>Phil
>angrily
>Phil Graham
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