The central thesis of this book is that there are two major conflicting forces that dictate the purpose of school. The first, is to provide appropriately trained workers for the democratic workforce. These workers possess skills, attitudes, and behavior for efficacious production and capital accumulation. The second, is to provide opportunities for social advancement through the use of mobility, equality, democratic participation, and expansion of rights. This historical struggle between democratic versus capitalist reform has always played a vital role in shaping our educational system; similarly, the role of education in our society. In a perfect world, there would be parity, but of course, one side always prevails.On the one hand, capitalist want high school graduates with skills and attitudes to successfully perform jobs which require little or no further education and or training. Simply, they desire employees who will perform the required duties of the job for simply the satisfaction of income. "Because most employees no longer expect to receive much satisfaction from their work, they place their hopes in rising levels of consumption of goods and services. Work is looked upon as the drudgery necessary to obtain a meaningful life in the sphere of buying and consumption. It is the prospect of higher levels of consumption that provides the major motivation for work rather than factors inherent in the work itself." However disheartening this may appear, it is the reality of society; one we have created.
Similarly, school also functions as a means for children to break the cycle of poverty. Schools have traditionally reproduced the unequal, hierarchical relations of the nuclear family. However, they have also provided opportunities for subordinate groups to achieve economic and educational successes.
What is the role of education in our society? The structure and nature of schooling has been significantly shaped in not only preparing and providing the future labor force for the capitalistic workplace, but also providing opportunities for social advancement for subordinate groups. Where should schools focus their efforts? There is no simple answer for both of these questions. On the one hand, we have created a social reality in which a dominated labor force is required. On the other hand, educational reform justifies equality for all children. Is it possible to have both?
Social Class
"Virtually all the statistical studies attempting to determine the causes of achievement have concluded that most of the explainable variance in test scores is attributed to out-of-school influences rather than in-school ones. Though it is clear that children and young adults acquire many skills and cognitive proficiencies in school, they also acquire many of them outside school. The amount of such cognitive proficiencies acquired, and the nature of the non-cognitive socialization that takes place both in and out of school. seem centrally related to the social class origins of the child." This theme is ubiquitous in educational rhetoric; parents and home environment play an equally important, if not more important role in shaping a child's education.Food for Thought
"...failure, not mobility or success, was institutionalized in the schools for the mass of American children. The educational system taught children to accept failure as the logical result of their own inadequacy, and with that acceptance these children became conforming, passive adults, operating well below their intellectual potential in a social system that had little use for creative, self-aware, self-confident citizens and workers. Education was there for restricting rather than liberating, undemocratic rather than democratic." Is school still this way?"The educational system is not an instrument of the capitalist class. It is the product of conflict between the dominant and the dominated."
Martin Carnoy is Professor of Education and Economics, and Henry M. Levin is Professor of Education and Affiliated Professor of Economics, at Stanford University.
