I can be as critical as I want of Progressivism but the growth of the twentieth century liberal/social democratic state - from education to the environment, from big science to social work, and from labor law to land management - fundamentally mediated capital's access to, treatment of and externalization of costs into the ecological, human and infrastructural conditions necessary for the expanded reproduction of capital. The state did it in a manner intensely constrained by pro-capital ideologies and, in many instances, utterly captured by various sectors of capital. But for all that state agencies are formally undemocratic, the expansion of the state in the 20th century - far far far beyond education - generated opportunities for social movements to mediate capitalist development. It coopted movements, it repressed resistance, it forestalled revolution, it bought off many and forestalled the hopes of others, sure, but it is under attack infinitely more widely than in education and, just like in education, the majority of the folks working for the state do so - however ideologically and to whatever contradictory extent - in the name of fostering environmental sustainability, extending public health and building livable communities. The majority of the folks working in public education and higher education dream of doing their job better, resist cost cutting in a million ways, and still teach as if the neoliberal mainstream was beyond critique, still teach as if schooling was about job skills, still teach inflexibly, are still blind to the difference between themselves and their students and still they deserve our support - but not uncritically, and not silently.
Public and higher education needs more money, not because they do a great job but in order to do a better job but the goal is not the education my parents got in the 40s and 50s or the one I got in the 60s and 70s, the goal is to generate a situation where faculty and students collaborate to generate one that students have never received. I don't stop my arguments - in public or in the classroom - with criticisms of public and higher education and it's a sign that you'd rather rant at us in the most patriarchal ways than respect us that you assume it's possible that I'd be so apolitical as to do so.
You want me to lay off education, you have to give me a reason not to lay off all public sector employees... I know who signed your paychecks and who signs mine and w/r/t mine its the same institution who pays my wife the librarian, my friends in the public health sector, the closeted radical social workers I know and the road crews I drive by en route to Mount Pleasant on Tues and Thurs each week.
My students NEVER come away from my discussions of the role of public education in society and its changing characteristics, relationships and dynamics with anything other than the idea the problems do not lie with the state workers and that the more widely accepted it is that state workers are the fount of the problems, and the more they are disciplined, underfunded and fired, the worse its going to get for just about everybody. You gotta tell me how that fits with the under-fund, over-test, super-supervise and crush creativity programs of NCLB and RttT.
On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> Alan Rudy wrote:
> >
> > Well, hell, I guess if I shouldn't make negative remarks about schools
> then
> > I shouldn't make negative remarks about government agencies
>
> I don't have time now for a careful response -- but I suggest you
> rethink your identifcaion of "schools" with "government agencies."
>
> Carrol
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319