[lbo-talk] job satisfaction

Alan Rudy alan.rudy at gmail.com
Sun Sep 12 09:26:04 PDT 2010


Wojtek, I couldn't agree more about schools as agents of socialization, individualism, competitiveness and the neoliberalization of everything... it makes you wonder, however, Carrol allows himself to make this critique since it can't help but feed that very neoliberalization.

And, you know what, it turns out that it is possible to make just exactly this argument in the classroom. He never told them ahead of time but Jim O'Connor almost always cooperated with students who organized to resist his syllabus, or collaborated to make a counter-argument... it taught me a lot. At the same time, it is irresponsible not to simultaneously warn students about the dangers of doing this sort of thing without great subtlety in the workplace.

When I teach socialization in my classes the very first thing I work to do is to get them to see the power of institutionalized and ideological agencies of socialization and the second is working to get them to question that received knowledge and to see some of its unintended individual and social consequences. It's not rocket science, though many students resist it as if it were...

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 11:51 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:


> Carrol: "When "teamwork" is taught in college that is _real_ capitalist
> propaganda: it fits right in to what the corporatins want."
>
> [WS:] Exactly. "Teamwork" is just a code word for ganging up to beat up
> another team and defend elite privilege against society at large.
> Fraternities are perhaps the best training ground for that kind of
> "teamwork." It certainly does NOT mean "collaboration" as most lefties
> understand it - as inclusion of everyone, cooperation with everyone and
> sharing benefits with everyone.
>
> A broader point - I do not understand why some people on this list find it
> difficult to accept that schools are agents of socialization into selfish
> individualism and competitiveness that defines the mainstream US society.
> They are not the only agents, but certainly one of the most important one.
> My wife, who is a schoolteacher, tells me horror stories about
> administration pushing the "business model" as the future of the public
> school system.
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 10:09 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> > One learns to work with others by working with others. If that happens
> > in college, fine. If not, so what.
> >
> > When "teamwork" is taught in college that is _real_ capitalist
> > propaganda: it fits right in to what the corporatins want.
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
> ___________________________________
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>

-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319



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