{"id":6167,"date":"2022-04-19T22:14:42","date_gmt":"2022-04-20T02:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=6167"},"modified":"2022-04-27T09:32:30","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T13:32:30","slug":"capitalism-and-the-changing-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2022\/04\/capitalism-and-the-changing-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism and the changing classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tempest<\/strong> is proud to present the second chapter of Lois Weiner\u2019s<\/strong> forthcoming book. The bulk of analysis and writing on this topic, especially on the Left, focuses either exclusively on important questions of pedagogy or the dynamics and functioning of\u00a0 teachers unions.\u00a0 <\/em>In the course of her work, Weiner ignores neither, but additionally situates the classroom itself as a work-place, an aspect often ignored. In this chapter, Weiner explains why critically examining changes in education and teachers\u2019 work is a powerful lens to detect what\u2019s happened and planned in capitalism. The first chapter is published in New Politics as \u201cEducation Reforms and Capitalism\u2019s Changes to Work; Lessons for the Left<\/a>.\u201d Chapter Three will be published in Workers\u2019 Liberty.<\/em><\/p>\n

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E<\/span>ducational reforms in the past three decades have reflected and reinforced tectonic shifts in capitalism and refashioning of work that started well before this process or period was widely named as \u201cneoliberalism.\u201d1Commercialisation and Privatisation in\/of Education in the Context of Covid-19<\/em><\/a>.<\/span><\/span>Developing a narrative and analysis that explain the \u201cnew normal\u201d is extraordinarily difficult because of the scope and breathtaking pace of cultural, social, political, and economic change since the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the pandemic that followed. In fact, the most significant changes happening in the educational work environment actually began after the 2008 financial collapse.2Digitalisation, Labour and the Pandemic: Working Life in the Post-COVID-19 City<\/a>\u201d (2021) argue the global financial crisis of 2008 was a turning point in both accelerating and creating clarity about restructuring in the following decade. In education this periodization fits with the loss of profitability in educational software \u201cplatformization.\u201d The article also observes how conditions are metamorphosing as we identify and study them, a factor that makes publishing timely peer-reviewed research extraordinarily difficult.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As we think and organize about what comes next, I think it\u2019s useful to recognize a huge contradiction that frames our challenge. Despite fatigue and demoralization after Donald Trump\u2019s election and during the pandemic, we have witnessed extraordinary challenges to social injustice. Inequalities embedded in power relations and our economy are more apparent to more people\u2014and more clearly articulated\u2014than they have been before in my lifetime.<\/p>\n

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The author, Dr. Lois Weiner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While vast numbers of people have experienced personal trauma and loss, tens of thousands of people, many young, have taken to the streets for the first time, demanding racial and gender justice, democracy, and protection of human rights, including freedom to immigrate. These social movements have educated millions of people about the systemic nature of social oppression, stripped away illusions about capitalism\u2019s ethos of competition and individual advancement, and suggested the potential of collective struggle, including the power workers can have at the workplace.<\/p>\n

The bad news is that gains from these struggles, as well as rights won in the past century, are endangered, perhaps as never before. A significant swath of the wealthy, powerful elite that control this country have clearly revealed that political norms of democracy, especially elections, are dispensable to them.3CREW<\/a>, the watchdog group that has been exposing contributions to the GOP, is aligned with the Biden\/Obama wing of the Democratic Party, not the Clinton \u201ccentrists.\u201d CREW\u2019s interlocks and funding are not primarily with informational technology companies though connections to the Democratic Party make the groups overlap<\/a>.<\/span><\/span>While most working people have been struggling to survive, the ruling class has enriched itself\u2014at our expense.4

WHAT\u2019S NEW\u2014AND WHAT\u2019S NOT?<\/h4>\n

A complete explanation of how changes in education reflect the ways capitalism has altered work globally with information technology goes well beyond the scope of this essay, but I will offer a brief summary of the dynamics characterizing the reciprocity between education reform and changes to work during the past thirty years. In the 1990s unions were pressured to adopt changes to work, in particular \u201clean production\u201d intended to make U.S. industry competitive. This shift was endorsed by U.S. unions and both political parties. Education reforms reflected this shift in pressures to teach the \u201cnew basic skills,\u201d which were linked to international assessments of students\u2019 work.5Workers in a Lean World. Unions in the International Economy<\/em><\/a>, New York: Verso (1997) explores these changes. I applied his ideas to educational reform in a book review, in Fall, 2001<\/a>, in Educational Studies, 32, 351-357.<\/span><\/span> As U.S. unions in the private sector accepted downsizing and concessions as the only way to keep jobs from being off-shored, the rationale for public education became increasingly coupled to the economy, with curricular changes that were purportedly designed to make individual workers as well as the economy more competitive. Both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) accepted this rationale for curriculum change and pushed reforms in how locals negotiated, to replace \u201cindustrial unionism\u201d with \u201ctrust agreements,\u201d which many researchers and social justice activists in education argued was more progressive.6the article<\/a> by longtime education activist Joel Jordan explains why teachers unions must defend members\u2019 rights on the job and the error of progressives endorsing teachers unions\u2019 adoption of policies to reduce conflict with employers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

International standards, ostensibly reflecting altered demands of work, assessed with standardized tests, were central to these reforms. Expropriating the Left\u2019s historic role and rhetoric of fighting for equality, both Democrats and Republicans adopted policies in the name of equal educational achievement to break the \u201cmonopoly\u201d of public education, that is, democratic control over schools. Standardized tests were defended as not only the best but the only valid, reliable measures of student, teacher, and school performance. Curricular standards, set far away from schools, based on what international finance organizations determined was needed for economic prosperity, were accompanied by market reforms, introducing new ways to make education a profit center and fragment public control and oversight. Fundamental aspects of this project persist: Education is being further privatized, regulation dissolved, through expansion of charter schools and funding policies that are vouchers in all but name. Activists\u2019 tenacious resistance to commercialization and privatization in these forms has continued. However more recent forms of privatization and control are mostly under the radar of activists, unions, and researchers.<\/p>\n