[lbo-talk] 'American kids, dumber than dirt'

[Miles Jackson]

Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Oct 29, 2007, at 7:59 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>   
>> I think I located the key in my response to Dennis Perrin: It is the
>> virus of radical indivualism that grounds capitalist ideology and
>> isolates intellectuals in their own little bubbles where they can sit
>> and sneer at everyone for not having exactly their own perspective on
>> everything.
>>     
>
> Besides, I don't get why the intellectual pathologies of capitalism  
> should affect only critical intellectuals - why not scores of  
> millions of kids too?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
>   
Capitalism in our society could not function without literate adults.  
--Effective formal education and capitalist social relations are 
mutually reinforcing: formal education provides individuals with various 
"job competencies" to generate profits for capitalist organizations, and 
capitalist organizations directly and indirectly support the formal 
education system (taxes, donations, lobbying).  Granted, I suspect that 
most LOBsters aspire to a formal education system that is something more 
than boot camp for the capitalists' army, but my point stands: one of 
the "individual pathologies" of capitalism is the diffusion of formal 
education and scientific modes of thinking throughout the general 
population.

Miles