A school I visited three years ago in Columbus, Ohio, was littered with "Help Wanted" signs. Starting in kindergarten, children in the school were being asked to think about the jobs that they might choose when they grew up. In one classroom there was a poster that displayed the names of several retail stores: J. C. Penney, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sears, and a few others. "It's like working in a store," a classroom aide explained. "The children are learning to pretend they're cashiers." At another school in the same district, children were encouraged to apply for jobs in their classrooms. Among the job positions open to the children in this school, there was an "Absence Manager" and a "Behavior Chart Manager," a "Form Collector Manager," a "Paper Passer Outer Manager," a "Paper Collecting Manager," a "Paper Returning Manager," an "Exit Ticket Manager," even a "Learning Manager," a "Reading Corner Manager," and a "Score Keeper Manager." I asked the principal if there was a special reason why those two words "management" and "manager" kept popping up throughout the school. "We want every child to be working as a manager while he or she is in this school," the principal explained. "We want to make them understand that, in this country, companies will give you opportunities to work, to prove yourself, no matter what you've done." I wasn't sure what she meant by "no matter what you've done," and asked her if she could explain it. "Even if you have a felony arrest," she said, "we want you to understand that you can be a manager someday."
Now do need to consider that if this is how we want all the children educated then all the children should be educated this way. But of course we only want other children, especially colored children to learn this, and keep the universities open only to the privileged white kids, boys for sure. Consider these two comments:
from Jonathon Kozol's essay in the September Harper's(as is the large quote above):
Admittedly, the economic needs of a society are hound to be reflected to some rational degree within the policies and purposes of public schools. But, even so, there must be something more to life as it is lived by six-year-olds or six-year-olds, or by teenagers, for that matter, than concerns about "successful global competition." Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself.
Very few people who are not involved with inner-city schools have any real idea of the extremes to which the mercantile distortion of the purposes and character of education have been taken or how unabashedly proponents of these practices are willing to defend them. The head of a Chicago school, for instance, who was criticized by some for emphasizing rote instruction that, his critics said, was turning children into "robots," found no reason to dispute the charge. "Did you ever stop to think that these robots will never burglarize your home?" he asked, and "will never snatch your pocketbooks. . . . These robots are going to be producing taxes."
from my friend Terry Flanagan's email last night(he is retiring this year after 35 years of teaching in the innercity of LA):I may wait until June. This will be the last year before our school is completely roboticized, thus ending the need for teachers as we know them.
What?! We are roboticizing our educational systems? Well only for the poor and underprivileged which is translated as black and hispanic. We are choosing, as a nation, to destroy our public education system, enslave the masses through their enforced ignorance, and then retain the best and brightest for the white males. The underlying racism and classism can no longer be ignored. As a nation, led by the corporate fascists, we are embarked on a path that promotes a white aristocracy ruling a multi-cultural slave class. No wonder the Federalist Society, encouraging the appointment of one of their own to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, demands that the only interpretation of the Constitution is a pure originalism based on the slave holding, indian killing, property owning, moneyed elites' opinions of self governance under which all else are slaves and powerless without rights.
