[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Feb 15 09:49:48 PST 2012


On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:27 PM, Sean Andrews wrote:


> On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:12, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> For now though, the only thing worse than going to school is not going to
>> school.
>
> I don't know if you've followed the conversations on Twitter with
> Malcolm Harris,

He's acting out an Oedipal drama on Twitter. (His father is a politically connected intellectual property lawyer in the Silicon Valley.) It's remarkable. Sometimes I can't stop reading, and sometimes I want to avert my eyes. But his stuff about school reflects some personal issues, shall we say?

During that notorious Jacobin debate, Harris likened free college tuition to "a reading room in a prison." That's what prompted me to make the jerking off gesture captured on video. (As the Goldman Sachs elevator tweeter said recently: "Nothing is more succinct and articulate than just doing the jerk-off hand motion.") Fucking easy for him to say. As Christian Parenti pointed out to me after the event, Malcolm X educated himself in a prison library. But Malcolm H is too busy hating old people to give a shit about that.


> The book "Class Dismissed" for
> instance, makes the argument that education is a poor lever for
> correcting social inequality. It's true that even this lever seems to
> be under attack, but perhaps its worth letting it go if we can strike
> closer at the goal of eliminating inequality.

Let it go in favor of what?

Doug



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