Enforcing Rat-Race Conformist Individualism
November 21st, 2009 by SocProf and tagged Education, Ideology
So, I’m guessing parenting and early education are now all about “preparing” children for the credentialist rat race:
Except that, of course, tests prepare for nothing other than taking other tests whose values is based only on the fact that people believe in their value. They are not good predictors of anything.
Has anyone noted that big complaints about education in the US have started ever since the corporate ideology was imposed on the school system? Personally, that’s the way I see the correlation: the more corporatized the schools become (more administrators, fewer teachers, declining budgets, more “schools should be run like businesses” ideology), the lower the quality of education.
Part of that ideology, as I have said before, education is not about critical thinking, citizenship, etc.. It is about skills acquisition for the job market. Education is not about educating students, it’s about training workers. As Foucault taught us, proficiency and self-discipline are what matters with easy assessment of skills with zero predictability, but that does not matter. This is also part of the culture war as the focus on marketable skills through certifications is seen as bypassing the need to take general education courses where one might be exposed to these awful, awful liberal professors of the Bérubé kind that might “indoctrinate” children and young adults in thinking!
Oh, and if the early toddler training / taming does not work, and if they still don’t comply…
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