xmca@weber.ucsd.edu writes:
>Perhaps B&G take us part way to a better understanding -- it's not as
>though a
>"ruling class" controls curriculum and runs schools -- I did not read
>that into
>SCA at all -- but that everyone makes it happen, and in the processes of
>separation, what happens benefits some much more than others. This gives
>the
>former additional resources which, in turn, feed back to support and
>sustain
>the processes of inequality.
SInce that period in the 70's capital itself has been going through a
radical transformation nad has explicitly begun to redefine its labour
needs. The kinds of jobs Willis's lads would have had have been exported
to SE Asia etc and the East India Company model of imperialism (nothing
new in corporate imperialism eh?) imposes its own debates ( as in Goteborg
and Seattle).
Nearer to home (UK and Chicago so it appears) "working class failure"
ceases to be part of the ideological state apparatus and functioning
according to the screening hypothesis and becomes a problem for capital in
its own right. Unskilled labour means both a lack of skilled labour
necessary for the transformation of capital, but also it means a growing
rump of lumpen youth and all the criminality that that entails.
We have meritocratic rhetoric driving a notional "standards" based
political interventions in the schools, with a view to eliminate working
class failure. Things certainly get problematic in the UK because the
definition of success is based on former models and simplistic visions of
literacy and numeracy and how to achieve it.... precisely in the ways that
Bowles and Gintis would recognise as leading to inevitable failure.
In the UK I think we had a window of educational reform which had the
shutters drawn down on it. Paradoxically, it came from the most
Hayek-market-economist driven intellectual we ever had in British
politics, Keith Joseph. As successivly Minister of
Education/Employment/Industry , he introduced a wave of reforms which were
clearly about removing curriculum barriers to success in secondary
education.
As Minister for Employment he introduced a nationwide Technological and
Vocational Education Initiative: a richly funded curriculum reform which
redefined what was acceptable as a curriculum, encouraged new forms of
learning ( labelled flexible learning strategies), collaborative learning
and learning beyond the walls of the school from people who were not
labelled "teachers". The implementation of this particular package was
also notable in the way it treated teachers on in service programmes. The
accomodation were it happened, the food they were given etc were all much
better than any teacher had had before.
In this particular programme he was clearly tampering with what counted as
schooling and questionned schooling itslef: what is also interesting he
did it from outside the educational establishment and education ministry.
As Minister of Education he replaced a divisive binary examination system
at 16 with a unified system for all students. Wisely he used the system
that had been devised for the less able ( more reliance on course work,
teacher assessment, practical assessment) than the model used for the
elite. For secondary education in the UK this was a major reform.
Finally as Minister for Industry, he took work (in which I was margnially
involved) from an inner city school, which was working on the real
aspirations of working class youth with a view to emulating the model in
inner city areas accross the UK in non-school and non-college based
frameworks.
Sadly in all cases these initiatives was subverted or abandonned. The main
retrenchement came from the re-establishment of a National Curriculum.
This curriculum has a clear ontology from 19th C liberal humanist origins
and all the elitism that entails (only Classics are missing): Hirst and
Phenix positivism writ large.
Nothing seems to change. There are parallels from the analysis of
curriculum debates in the 1850's described by Layton in "Science for the
People", wherein the education of "mechanicals" was towards the
understanding of their own environment was found unacceptable.
However capital still faces its potential labour crisis. CISCO present
figures that there is a 28% underprovision of skilled labour. Taking their
own initiative, CISCO have devised their own curriculum and working with
religous and charitable bodies, they are taking the curriculum to the
inner cities and the third world. IBM are investing in their own programme
"re-inventing" education and entering in direct negotiation with
educational adminitrations to implement what is a more "modern"
curriculum. In many ways I find this at least more honest and in many ways
preferable to schooling as we know it.
I recently attended a European eLearning Summit funded by CISCO, IBM,
Nokia and other ususal suspects where the agenda was strongly focussed on
getting a message voer to European education policy makers that the
education system should be levered towards educating Europe's youth
towards consumption and maintenance of these companies products... and
that through a pact of "public-private partnerships", the European
taxpayer should pay for it.
Martin
'We have only the world that we can bring forth with others, and only love
helps bring it forth.'"
Maturana and Valera
The Tree of Knowledge
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