Andy writes
>However, the young person's real relation to the real world is a mediated
>one, and the study of theories, of the mediated approach to reality, is
>taken into the real world of work predominately not in the practice of
>manual or even technical skill, but increasingly in the form of
>collaborating with other people in the production process, and this system
>of relations is, even within enterprises, a relation mediated by value.
>The
>use of tools has been increasingly replaced by the use of commerce.
>Nowadays young workers are taught to budget, to organise their own time,
>to
>have regard for customer demand, etc., etc. In other words, the economic
>aspect of work so penetrates the labour process nowadays that production
>and commerce are inseparable.
re-reading your post, again, i see the relations as you describe them and
there is something to be said for the pervasive/invasive structure of
money and values,
the collusion of labour and ethics, capital and meritocracies -
there are, of course, countless studies on infant cognition that support
ideas about
a predisposition to learning, novelty, adaptability, concentration, and so
on, concepts that form a ground of physics, mathematics, and so on, so
understanding the calculations of money does not seem especially
brilliant,
contrary to what many curriculum propose, as you note -
and yes, the conflicts of a value-system are exacerbated by the
assumption that youth are "incomplete" and merely in-waiting to be adults
-
it's sad, really, that childhood was only recently
"invented" and is now, a 100 yrs later, being disposed of in favour of the
consumer model.
by the same token, there are cultures where childhood still does not exist
and where labour is itself a fact of life, not a choice - so i wonder,
still, if this view isn't
a privileged one,
and in what ways can this - if it can - help us understand the social
consciousness of
child labour, slaves, children in the sex trades, and
other forms of 'capital' activity. i mean, if money is the sign that forms
a structural center that determines the whole,
how does this help us to understand the different relations of labour and
children,
such as in slavery and so on?
i can be such a terrible poop! can't i?
diane
**********************************************************************
:point where everything listens.
and i slow down, learning how to
enter - implicate and unspoken (still) heart-of-the-world.
(Daphne Marlatt, "Coming to you")
***********************************************************************
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
==================== ==================== =======================
university of colorado, denver, school of education
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