'The Book' - Blog 7

Hello fellow classmates,

According to the two question above at the end of the last post, the authors state that inequality in the capitalist system still exists. Later on I will get into why this is happening.

Modern liberal views then get into the idea that work has become dehumanized and that the only way to combat this is to, according to Dewey, is to have the proper education that would then have individuals who are well balanced entering into the work force. If this is not done then there is not enough people who will tend to the human factors of the work world. Again, as you can see there is a trend to put all of the responsibility on education to solve the issues that exist in the work force. These ideals were the basis for educational reformers in the progressive era. (Early 1900's) Dewey thought that education could promote the movement of the industrial society towards more fulfilling work. As we will see later on that is not the case due to the actual structure of the industrial and the capitalist societies.

So the liberal theory, based mostly on Dewey's writings, believed that personal growth and democracy is a part of social development. (The development of the whole of society for the better.) and that this would occur automatically if every one had access to free education. (The book gets into why this is not so due to the fact that racism, sexism, and social classes exist into society, but more on that later.) The technocratic version looked at what Dewey was discussing, and believed that social order is not done automatically through the egalitarian (equalizing) power of the education system. That it does not occur naturally, equal access to education is not good enough, there actually needs to be enlightened policy - job training and education of the poor, and this will pick up the slack and everyone will then be on a equal playing field when entering the work force. Poverty and inequality that exist under this view are based on individual choices and not issues that stem from the way the capitalist society and the economics behind it are structured. What they (the technocratic view) was getting at was that we really need to fix people and not the economic structures that regulate their lives. (This is what the 'social power' of school means in this context and how schools can promote social equality.)

The book then states that the founders of the modern school system understood that the capitalist economy produces a gap between the rich and the poor which undermines the two view points mentioned above... but school reformers of the time (mid 19th century) were committed to the emerging industrial order even though they understood and could see the glaring inequalities of factory life. During the industrial revolution, industry feared a great social unrest due to the obvious exploitation that was occurring of employees of the time. A quote from Horace Mann who was involved in the education system at the time stated: "Education does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich (which is not the point of education in my view) it prevents them from being poor. The reformers of the time saw education as a means of keeping individuals docile while not redistributing wealth or power at the time of the industrial revolution. The authors understood that this is not possible and that the leaders of the time believed that education had almost magical powers!

To be continued...