On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 9:19 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> This is quite good. The "dot-like existence of the mere free worker" gets
> its ultimate emphasis in the totalitarian state. In a way Thatcher was
> consistent: If you see each person as an isolated -- abstract -- atom,
then
> 'society' has to be created by force.
And Ian adds: Coercion free societies are one of the oldest fantasies, right up there with the fantasies of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence.
-----------
Coercion, however, need not (and frequently has not) been carried to the extent of the fascist/Nazi regimes of the '30s or the repressive machinery established in the Clinton-Bush-Obama administration. No Child Left Behind & Race to the Top are generating what might be called a "Peaceful Reign of Terror" over the nation's teachers -- with consequent smashing of solidarity among teachers, their reduction to the dot-like existence ("individuality") of the mere free worker. That is part of what I was, awkwardly no doubt, trying to get at in my contrast of the (legitimate) use of "Education" in _The Education of Henry Adams_ and its purely ideological use in Whitehead's _The Aims of Education_. Each person's "education" is unique to that person: to speak of an educational system, the aims of education, the need for educational reform, is to be on the threshold of totalitarianism of one form or another. "Schooling," "Warehousing," or "Credentialing" leave _some_ room for each person to craft his/her own "education." "Education" as a system brings to culture (in the widest since) a one-size-fits-all perspective. I attempted, again no doubt awkwardly, to get at that by speaking of "literacies" rather than "literacy." And in this thread I was trying to get at the same contrast in my assertion that "anti-individualism" (moral sense) was quite compatible with "individualism" (social theory of capitalism). It is only in the religious realm of neoclassical economics (a purely ideological realm) that "self-interest" figures in capitalist ideology. Outside that realm capitalist culture is radically anti-"individualist" (as in Kennedy's slogan).
U.S. 'education' has since the late 19th-c been charged with the primary task of molding a heterogenous population into "Americans"; the current school "reforms" seem to be an intensification of that process. The proper way for leftists to analyze and meet that threat is not to agonize over "the kids" and possibly bad teachers but to focus _outside_ the schools to identify the political needs of the bourgeoisie driving those reforms. Clearly one of those needs is the need to atomize ("individualize") the teaching force. If that is true, then leftists should be particularly anxious to defend "bad" teachers -- a category that has no other point than to divide the work force.
Carrol