On 2011-12-05, at 11:45 AM, Michael Smith wrote:
> What I very much object to is the credentialling sector's
> gatekeeper role, and the idea that everybody has to submit to
> it for, what, sixteen to twenty of the best years of their
> lives. Unfortunately that seems to have become the essence of
> the thing in the world we actually live in.
>
> It's a bit like the police and prisons, isn't it?
I invite Michael to test his proposition on past and present inmates and their families.
When I was in the Canadian section of the Trotskyist movement in the late 60's/early 70's, our high school comrades circulated a broadsheet to their fellow students notoriously entitled Jailbreak, which was very much in keeping with the tenor of MS's remarks above. The university as prison-like factory of the military-industrial complex was also a familiar New Left trope. This overheated rhetoric has been around for a while.