[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

Eric Beck ersatzdog at gmail.com
Wed Feb 15 11:06:44 PST 2012


On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> 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.

I think you are entirely too touchy about this, purposely not acknowledging the carceral roots and intents of modern education. Even someone as decidly nonanarchist as David Levine is clear on this:

"Schools were carceral institutions -- they were frequently justified as the best source of crime prevention, designed like prisons with high walls, and organized along the principles of subdivided labour found in the proto-typical industrial establishment. This strategy of social reproduction drew its inspiration from the struggle between classes, not from the tidy platonism of educational reformers. In fact, there was no education reform in Victorian England but rather an elaboration of older systems of control which had their roots in the charity schools and Sunday schools of the eighteenth century. The major accomplishment of Victorian education was the extension of this method of social policing so that by the end of the century all children were nominally under its authority. The educational system was never much more than a bureacratic nightmare but its aims were remarkably fixed in their intent and hardly changed in theory, if resisted in practice. One can understand the Victorian model of education within the same paradigmatic framework as the period's missionary activities -- just like their religious brethren, teachers and administrators were primarily concerned to pacify lesser breeds without the law."

http://books.google.com/books?id=b4g6AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PR1&ots=pe4Y525rza&dq=david%20levine%20reproducing%20families&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q=schools%20&f=false

Also, without hating on old people, I thinks it's a good idea to listen, since young people have fresher educational experiences than us oldies.



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