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> Mark wrote: > > It's not just that she wants the space between the immediate needs of > business and schooling, but she sees education as an essential feature of > the infrastructure that makes capitalism work as it has in the past. Hi Mark Ok. So I see her as a traditional intellectual while you are seeing her as an organic intellectual for a period of capitalism which has passed. You are probably right. Certainly in her 2001 article* A different kind of education for black children* she does talk of the need for an education which prepares students for a changing economy. Still for me there is still a strong whiff of the Matthew Arnold about her. If one reads carefully the black children article then one can see a very interesting dialectic at work I think. Ravitch is classically liberal and non-racist in her analysis of the problem in the first pages of the article. She also gives a useful distinction between education for social adjustment and education for social advancement. The former provides an education for low paid jobs. She is for education for social advancement clearly, but she does not spell this out or think through what it would mean in the real world of contemporary capitalism. So it becomes a kind of cliche, like something you would find in a fortune cookie or like something the Dalai Lama would say. Yes we all clean our teeth every day and we are all for education for social advancement. However the bourgeoisie will die in a ditch (hopefully) before they will let any class advance beyond them, so education for social advancement has unstated but very powerful limitations set around it. Liberals have nothing to say here. It is when Ravitch comes to talk of the "Counter culture in the 60s" that her link to the Arnoldian tradition becomes clearer. Like Arnold in Hyde Park she is terrified of the *jacquerie*. That is probably what drove her to the Reagan camp. Whatever the case now she is faced with the triumph of those forces she worked for. The radical libertarian right could not give a damn for the cultural heritage. Ideologically they also cannot recognize the existence of such as thing as a 'public good'. There is only private profit and that is the alpha and the omega of their interest in education. Can a conservative liberal like Ravitch lead the counter attack? Capitalism needs an education system based on the premise it is a public good. But it is highly doubtful if capitalists can be brought to see that need. There is a distinction of levels here and as Lou has pointed out we do seem to have a dearth of capitalists who can even begin to think of the notion of a public good. comradely Gary T > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
