>On Feb 6, 2011, at 10:02 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> > My guess is that his view is much like mine: who gives a shit? What
> changes once you find out, that, OMIGOD! colleges don't produce critical
> thinking skills because Capital doesn't want us smart enough to figure
> out we are enchained.
>
>Well yeah. I'm amazed at the implication you think I think otherwise. But
>isn't it a radical demand that colleges do produce those things, against
>the wishes of capital? Surely we have a lot of allies in the institutions
>themselves for making such a demand.
>
>Doug
so, are you answering my question or avoiding it? Is your strategy to improve schooling because this is a radical demand.
perhaps i didn't make myself clear: i don't think capital *wishes* anything. i think such vulgar functionalist metaphors and associated explanations were supposed to be what most of us here rejected. it's fine if chomsky wants to use such shit to get libertarians with a conspiracy theory bent with the socialist program, but i always thought lbo was light years beyond that simplistic crap.
no, i don't think improving schooling is a radical demand. it's survival in a crap world. nothing wrong with that, we all make do in this shitty world, but i'd never mistake it for a radical demand on the system. it improves the lives of a minority, so everyone can knock themselves out. but i can safely say that, at least for me, any critical thinking skills that i got out of my rigorous education (10 200 page books each class, approximately 50+ page of writing each class) meant nothing without 1. the life experience of growing un in a deindustrialized economy much like Flint, MI in Roger and Me and 2. people around me who demanded that I carry on the radicalism of the sixties (high school teachers and college teachers - all of whom demanded those things in social movement activities *outside* schooling. school became the place where I was, in effect, recruited to social movement activities that took place elsewhere. Now, if teachers do *that* - bring people into critical social action? - then they're doing something radical.