Using Marx as the
Fountainhead in Secondary
Social Studies
Curriculum Organization: A Rationale
by
Greg Queen
A Masters Project
for
ED 7999
Submitted to the
Office for Graduate Studies,
Graduate Division of
Wayne State University
Detroit, Michigan
in partial
fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER OF SOCIAL
STUDIES EDUCATION
July, 2002
Abstract
This paper explains Karl
Marx’s understanding of the essence of humanity and his critique of
capitalism. A critique of
capitalism is necessary to deepen our understanding of the social context of
public schools in the United States and how they reinforce the social relations
that (re)create capitalist exploitation and oppression. Marx is used as a basis upon which to
critique the historical and current social studies curriculum organization and
methods of instruction. Lastly,
the paper offers an alternative philosophical basis for curriculum organization
and methods of instruction.
Chapter One
Introduction
Historically and currently, public education has used the capitalist/business model to assess the value of schools, teachers, students, communities in which the schools are located, and whole states. The most current model, Standards Based Education, is promoted by capitalists like IBM. In Standards Based Education, school districts and teachers are to align their instruction with a set of state regulated standards of knowledge and skills. Regularly, standardized high-stakes tests, tests that have “rewards” and “punishments” attached to the results, are administered to determine the value of the implemented curriculum, teacher instruction, and student acquisition of the standard knowledge and skills. This model is based upon the idea that all children are vessels to be filled, that children are the same everywhere, and that education is apolitical. However, the reality is that children are creators of knowledge, are different, and education is a partisan activity. Standards Based Education is being used to justify and/or mask social inequalities.
It is important that not only educators but parents, children and community members recognize that Standard Based Education is being used to increase elite (capitalists) control over schools in particular and society in general. In addition, students, our future adults, need to know that it is necessary to be an agent for change towards equality and democracy and a resister to inequality and authoritarianism. Secondly, it is necessary for teachers to read the social context in which they teach and question the content of their classroom to assess the political consequences implied in their curriculum organization and methods of instruction and assessment.
In this theoretical work, one should see that teaching in general and teaching social studies in particular necessitates a theoretical basis regarding how society works in the current historical epoch. It will explain the theoretical background that social studies educators should use in their classrooms. Also, it provides a rationale for why the social studies should be taught from the standpoint of a class struggle between those who own the social means of production and those who must sell their labor power as a means to life.
This analysis of the current state of education in general and social studies education in particular will demonstrate the importance of looking at historical change from the perspective of the struggle over control of the production and distribution of the means to life. As a result of reading this paper, the educator should realize their location in this struggle and recognize that their actions are partisan; they can take the side of the dominators (capitalists) who are fighting for increased inequality and authoritarianism or the resistors who are fighting for the expansion of equality and democracy. Students will benefit from this theoretical work because when teachers begin to realize that their natural allies are the students and not the elite, they will begin to treat students as equals who are struggling for an understanding of and control over their own lives. The teachers and the students will recognize they have mutual interests and that the object of education unites behind the development of the child and adult in their quest to determine the truth.
In summary, a Standards Based Education treats education as an object alien to most students. The value of a student is determined by how much of this alien knowledge she accumulates. To measure this value, the students and schools must complete standardized tests and their scores are ranked against other students and schools. In place of this model of education, it is suggested that teachers recognize that they are a unique teacher who is meeting a unique child in a unique community and have come together to interact and struggle for the truth, knowing that the truth is found in an analysis of the constantly changing material world (Gibson, 1999, On line).
Chapter Two
Review of Literature
Introduction
In the United States, at least one in five children live in poverty. In 1995, the poverty threshold for a family of three is $12,223, for a family of four is $15,662, and the threshold increases at about the same rate for each additional family member. However, this absolute definition of poverty hides the relative inequality between citizens in the United States. According to Shannon, twenty percent of Americans have as much wealth as the other eighty percent (1998). Most poor families have at least one member of the family working and twenty percent of poor families have one member working at least full time, year round (Shannon, 1998).
Conservatives say that the education system equalizes the opportunity of all citizens and the individual can achieve success through hard work, intelligence and creativity (Mclaren, 1994). Conservatives argue that inequality which results in an impoverished class is the result of the natural inferiority of the poor compared to the rest of society (Shannon 1998). The inequalities that do exist in our society are not the result of the social, economic and political institution of society, but the result of free and fair competition and those who succeed have more merit and deserve more social rewards than those who were unable to successfully compete. The children who are unable to rise up and fit into society suffer from cultural deprivations that they experienced in their impoverished childhood (McLaren, 1994).
This
review of literature does not accept the position that inequality is a natural
consequence of the genetic differences between humans but is the result of the
social relations of production. It
will explain that teaching in general and teaching the social studies in
particular necessitates a Marxist critique of capitalism and how capitalism
affects the socioeconomic structure of society and the school within it. It will take the position that a Marxist
critique of capitalism should be used to organize curriculum in the social
studies. It provides the rationale
for why the social studies should be taught from the standpoint of the struggle
between those who own the social means of production and those who must sell
their labor power as a means to life.
This chapter is organized in the following sequence. First, Karl Marx’s theory regarding the essence of humanity and his explanation of alienation will be addressed. It will be shown that the objective processes of capitalism result in alienation which gives rise to the fetishism of commodities and the reification of social relations. Alienation, fetishism of commodities, and the reification of social relations tend to mask the underlying social relations that are the foundations of capitalism. (See the appendix for a list of terms that will aid in using the correct meaning for specific terms used by Marx) . The second section will explain how the philosophical basis of the current model of education parallels the social relations that (re)create the capitalist mode of production. The third section of this chapter analyzes the historical and current models of education instruction and reform with the aim of demonstrating how they reinforce the social relations of capitalism. The last section will identify and explain the necessary philosophical basis upon which one can organize and implement a liberating curriculum.
Marx, the Essence of Humanity and Capitalism
Historical Context of Marxism. Karl Marx lived in Europe during the epoch making changes of the 1800’s. These changes provided Marx the opportunity to analyze the change in the mode of production from feudalism to competitive capitalism. Since Marx’s writings, the competitive capitalism that he was describing has been transformed into corporate or monopoly capitalism. “The new type of capitalism contains an almost irresistible tendency toward the universalization of alienation” (Brown, 1973, p. 13). Today, most people must sell their labor power as a means to acquiring the means to life. Along with the social changes came changes in the interpretation of Marx. In part, because some of Marx’s writings were not available particularly his writings on alienation, the dominant analysis was reduced “to a crudely mechanistic economic or sociological determinism” (Brown, 1973, p. 15) that ignored the human element in transforming social institutions. Many Marxist thought that social revolution would come, in time, simply as a result of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, as if the proletariat did not need to prepare or develop values and beliefs that challenged the existing socioeconomic structure and lay the basis upon which a new society could grow. The next generation of Marxist thought that the way to transform society was to replace those within the state with Marxist. In both cases, the analysis did not see the interpenetration of the capitalist mode of production into all spheres of life from the psychological structure of the individual to the structure of the family to the structure of a classroom. As Brown says “the maintenance of capitalist hegemony was based not simply on the physical coercion or ideological mystification but also on an internalization of capitalist rule within the very structure of the personality” (1973, p. 19). The New Left of the 1960’s and early 1970’s critiqued the Marxists tradition and pushed for a resurgence in recognizing the role of and facilitating the individual in liberating her consciousness. This paper follows in the footsteps of the New Left’s push in emphasizing the need for educators to not only work towards changing the economic and political structure of society but in liberating the consciousness of the individual through a Marxist critique of capitalism and education. In the next section the essence of Marx’s critique of capitalism and how it creates alienation, fetishism of commodities and the reification of social relations will be explained. It is explained as Marx saw competitive capitalism.
The Essence of Humanity. Marx believes that a person is a being for herself (and through this becomes a being for others). In other words, she is the object of her own being. Marx believes that to prove to oneself that she is a being, she must produce objects that have use in reproducing her being. Therefore, her being becomes the object of her labor and the sensuous consumption of this object affirms her being. A person’s conscious existence is affirmed through the sensuous contemplation of the object of her production, of her being. The subject of a person’s actions is herself. The person’s actions (labor) appropriates (through the available and historical means of production) from the natural world the objects whose subject is the one appropriating. In other words, the object of her productive power is herself. For her to know she exists as a whole human being, the object of her being must be herself. The unity in this relationship between the object and the individual (subject) is what affirms the essence of the individual. The individual is also a species-being (Tucker, 1978).
Through the production and reproduction of herself, she is contributing to the reproduction of the species and affirming her existence as part of the species. In addition, her production contributes to the production and reproduction of other members of the society. As a result, the individual recognizes that through the production process, others depend on her as she depends on others. Each individual recognizes that she is not only the object of herself, but the object of other individuals in the production and reproduction of society. Where there is this unity, or connectedness, between the production and reproduction of the individual and society, life is whole. In other words, both society and the individual affirm each other’s essence. Thus, the production process, or mode of production, largely determines the relations of the individual to herself and to others (Tucker, 1978). When there is a change in the mode of production, there is a change in the relations of human beings to one another and a change in the relation of the individual to herself. Other than slavery, two historical modes of production are primitive communism and European feudalism (Tucker, 1978).
Two
Historical Modes of Production: Primitive Communism and Feudalism In some Native American communities, the means of
production were held in common and each individual played a relatively equal
role in the production and consumption of material life. All, more or less, equally shared in
the ownership of the social means of production and in the material they
created to reproduce human life.
The object of communal production was the preservation of the community. Although in the communal mode of
production, the aim of the life
activity of the individual was the preservation of the community, she was
directly tied to this community both by the means of production and its
material results. Again, she was a
relatively equal producer and consumer of the objects of her activity (Tucker,
1978).
In the feudal form of property ownership, serfs were the property of land, extensions of the land rather than property of people. “The chief form of property during the feudal epoch consisted on the one hand of landed property with serf labor chained to it, and on the other of the labor of the individual with small capital commanding the labor of the journeymen” (Tucker, 1978, p. 153). The person who owned the land, owned the products of the land. The person who is master owned the products of the journeymen. In this mode of production, there was little division of labor. Because of the property relations during feudal times, the material objects created through production were appropriated by the owner of the land or shop. The object of her labor was not entirely herself. However, the person was able to see the product of her activity (Tucker, 1978). In addition, the person was more aware that the product was appropriated. The “domination of the proprietor” (Tucker, 1978, p. 189) took place through a personal relation instead of through a third material party like money or a commodity. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines alienation as “…separation of a person from an object of former attachment” (1987, p. 70) and as “a conveyance of property to another” (1987, p. 70). Marx would say that the serf is alienated from her essence because the object that affirms her being is separated from the object’s subject (Tucker, 1978). Capitalism is a different mode of production that intensifies this alienation.
Capitalist Mode of Production. In the capitalist mode of production, the goal is to create a commodity. In capitalist production, the means of production and the results of production (commodities) are owned by the capitalist. The goal, or objective, of commodities is to be sold to (re)create capital. The individual laborer becomes a means to create capital (a commodity). The individual is transformed into a commodity whose value is determined by her capacity to create a commodity that will be sold and transformed into capital. In contrast, in communal production, the individual is a means to create material objects whose purpose is to (re)create the individual and community directly (Tucker, 1978).
In the capitalist mode of production, the initiator of the laborer’s activity is not the laborer but the capitalist. The goal of the capitalist is to create a commodity and she does this by purchasing labor power and putting it into motion. The purpose for creating this commodity is to sell it and (re)produce capital, not necessarily to (re)produce the laborer (or actual producer). Hence, the reason for producing commodities is not to affirm humanity but to (re)create capital, and the capitalist. Labor power becomes a commodity in the reproduction of capital, rather than becoming the means and ends in the reproduction of humanity. All the means of production (laborers, machines, buildings, natural resources) become use-values (commodities) whose goal is the reproduction of capital. Thus, in addition to the individual relating to the products of her labor as alien products she relates to her own labor power as an alien power (Tucker, 1978).
Historically, for capitalism to become the dominant mode of production there had to be a complete separation between the laborer and her product. In other words, individual survival had to depend upon a person selling her labor power in order to get the means (money) necessary to live. Labor power itself had to become a commodity. To illustrate the contrast we can look at the difference between a serf and a free laborer. A serf belongs to the land and turns over the products of her labor. The free laborer, the laborer in the capitalist mode of production, sells her living activity. In the feudal mode of production, alienation consist of turning over the product of her labor whereas in capitalism, both the product and the person’s living activity are turned over. In addition to the person not controlling the product of her labor her actual living activity is largely determined by the capitalist. As a result of this social relation, the object of the person’s actions is appropriated and used by the capitalist to control those actions.
In capitalism, the individual, instead of being a producer of material goods intended to reproduce and affirm her and society’s being becomes a commodity to be bought and used. She becomes an instrument in the production of commodities for the capitalist to sell and recreate capital and the capitalist. The workers have little control over the methods of production. In communal life, the production of objects to be consumed were the end itself, but in the capitalist mode of production, the production of objects (including labor power) is used to create capital, and in the process one is to get the means to get the objects necessary to reproduce and affirm human life. Now, the end to life is creating a commodity to create capital and labor is it means. It is no longer production for consumption but production for the means (money) to consumption. The person is alienated from her life-activity and the objects of her activity. Her life activity is not wholly to create, reproduce and affirm her being and the species, but to create and reproduce capital (Tucker, 1978).
Because the laborer does not have rights to the means and products of production, she must submit to the capitalist who does. She must turn to the capitalist to get a wage that can be used to purchase the products that she and other workers produced. Because of this social relation, this mode of production, the laborer must submit to the needs of the capitalist and is being forced to maintain the existence of capital. Once labor and all products of labor are transformed into a commodity, the life of capital is created and reproduced “by sucking living labor and lives the more labor it sucks” (Tucker, 1978, pp. 362-363).
The Creation of Surplus Value: The Kernel of Capitalism. Like a commodity, labor also has a value. The value of labor power is the amount of material that society has determined it takes to satisfy the basic needs of the laborer (material to sustain the life of the laborer). At the root of the creation of capital is the fact that it does not take a person one day to maintain her existence. Because a person does not need a whole day to maintain or reproduce her own existence and because of the social relations explained in the previous section, capital exists.
The value of a commodity, including labor, is measured by its exchange value. Marx asserts that when a person sells her labor, she is not only exchanging value but handing over to the capitalist the use-value of the commodity, labor power. Like the seller of any other commodity, the seller of labor-power realizes its exchange-value by selling it and parts with its use-value. The owner of the use-value (the commodity, labor power) determines how the commodity will be used. Hence, in theory, although it may only cost the capitalist a half-days labor to pay for the labor, the capitalist can use that labor for a whole day. Because the worker receives a wage for hours worked, it appears to the worker that she is getting an equal exchange, but if this were the case, the capitalist would have nothing left, no surplus value (or profit). Surplus value exists because of the fact that a person labors beyond her exchange value and is not paid for the value she creates. The labor used beyond the exchange value is surplus labor (Tucker, 1978). For, “if the value of the commodities were merely equal to the value of the labor-time expended on them, the commodity producers would merely reproduce themselves, and their society would not be a capitalist society; their activity might still consist of commodity production but it would not be capitalist commodity production” (Perlman, 1972, p. 15).
In order for the capitalists to exist, the labor force must produce a surplus product, a quantity of goods which it does not consume, and this surplus product must be transformed into surplus-value (Perlman, 1972). This capital, or surplus labor, is embedded in the commodity and in order to realize its value, the commodity must be sold. The owner of the commodities, not the workers who produced those commodities, determine the share that the workers will receive, which is always less than the value of their labor otherwise capital would not exist. Capital consumes labor power beyond an equal exchange value. Through the exploitation of labor, capital not only seeks to reproduce itself but to expand. The goal of life in the capitalist relations of production is not the productive consumption of labor to (re)create the laborer (humanity). If this were the case, then we would not have people without the basic necessities (food, housing, education) in an age of abundance. The goal of life in the capitalist relations of production is productive consumption of labor to (re)create capital. Inter-capitalist competition intensifies the quest for surplus value (Tucker, 1978).
Because the capitalists are in a life or death competition for the expansion and control of surplus value, the capitalist must increase either absolute or relative surplus labor or value. To increase absolute surplus labor, the capitalist must force the worker to produce more in the same time or work more hours and receive the same wage. Increasing absolute surplus labor will more likely cause resistance on the part of the worker. Because of the increased likelihood of worker resistance, the capitalist seeks alternative ways to increase relative surplus value. In other words, she seeks ways to develop the means of production to increase the productiveness of the laborer while maintaining the current length of the working day. The capitalist wants to have less labor time being used to benefit the laborer and more time benefiting the capitalist. This is, in part, accomplished by an increase in the division of labor (Tucker, 1978).
As explained above, the need of capital to expand tends to cause changes in the means of production. Historically, capitalists have increased the division of labor so that the productive capacity of labor increases. This intensifies productive consumption and creates more surplus value (capital). (Scientific Management as promoted by Frederick Winslow Taylor demonstrates this phenomenon.) The capitalist who is able to change the means of production to increase the productiveness of her laborers realizes a short term advantage relative to her competitors producing the same commodity. The short term advantage for this particular capitalist results from her ability to sell the product at the average price despite a decrease in necessary labor-time to produce the commodity using the new means of production. In other words, her cost of production decreases relative to other capitalists but the price temporarily stays the same. Eventually, though, the other capitalists producing that commodity will change their methods of production. Eventually, the productivity of all individual productive units increases causing a decrease in the overall value of that commodity (Tucker, 1978). (At this point, the cycle begins anew.) These changes in the means of production by the capitalist is not intended to benefit the laborer in the sense of shortening the working day, permitting them more rights to initiate and control more of the process and product of life’s activity, or making life more whole but “the shortening of the labor time necessary for the production of a definite quantity of commodities” (Tucker, 1978, p. 383). These changes in production methods further alienates the individual from herself and society.
In the capitalist mode of production, individuals are not forming a social organization to produce something which they will contribute to and share equally. On the contrary, the capitalist is bringing these individuals together for her own benefit not for the benefit of the workers who are actually making the commodities. The capitalist does not distribute the benefits inherent in the social production of goods to the laborer, but keeps it as surplus labor, or surplus value (Tucker, 1978).
Because of the social relations of capitalism, the worker is forced to sell her labor to get the means to life. This situations leads people come together as a result of the capitalists rather then voluntarily. Because these capitalist social organizations are forced, capitalist production requires managers to make sure that the means of production are employed as the capitalist wants them employed (Tucker, 1978). In addition, because the worker does not directly determine the process and product of her labor activity, she subordinates her will to that of the capitalist. “The less it is part of his will, the more his attention will be forced” (Tucker, 1978, p. 344-345), says Marx. These mechanisms of control implemented by the capitalist increases as the number of people employed by the capitalist increases. Rising out of this capitalist mode of production is a radical division of labor and the use of machines, both used to strip the workers of any control they may have over the processes and products of work and to increase relative surplus labor. This social production, division of labor, and use of machines was a significant leap in the advancement of capitalist control over society because once workers were dominated by the capitalist, the latter could direct more and more of the worker’s actions. This increased control over the labor and products of others and the needs of capital to forever expand, lead capitalist to increasingly breakdown the labor process into its parts and replace workers with machines (Tucker, 1978).
The social division of labor (capitalist and workers) implies a division of the conditions of labor, the tools and materials. The division of labor and the collective working organism in the workshop is designed by the capitalist. Through the design of the working organism, the capitalist further divides the individual labor power into a one-dimensional processes that ignores the totality of individual capabilities. An example of this process would be when a complex series of production methods is divided into its simple skills. For example, rather than making a shoe from the formulation of the idea to the end product, the process is divided and one person does one part of the divided process all day, like an assembly line. This loss of totality on the part of the worker is concentrated as a gain in the hands of the capitalist. The worker appears to be a mere appendage to the machine, the capitalist incarnate (Tucker, 1978). This division of labor “in the workshop implies the undisputed authority of capitalist over men, that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him” (Tucker, 1978, p. 395). Adam Smith says this one-dimensional labor process “ . . . corrupts . . . the activity of his body and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigor and perseverance in any other employments . . . . His dexterity at his own particular trade seems in this manner to be acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial values” (Tucker, 1978, p. 399). This whole process, the division and social organization of labor creates a qualitative change in production and creates a more abundant material world. However, the abundance resulting from these production methods is attained by oppressing the full expression of the individual personality. Although it may appear that capital is dominant, capitalism contains contradictions.
Within this capitalist mode of production, there is an inherent contradiction. Theoretically, when a person purchases a commodity, they have the right to do what they want with that commodity. However, the nature of the commodity labor, which the capitalist is buying, has special limits to its consumption. The seller of this commodity (the laborer) maintains her right as seller to “reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration” (Tucker, 1978, p. 364). The capitalist and the laborer become two opposing forces. The struggle between the capitalist and the laborer is over the capitalist’s desire to create conditions of surplus labor (thus creating capital) and the laborer’s desire to control the process and product of her life activity. As Marx says, “between equal rights force decides” (Tucker, 1978, p. 364). Capitalist want to mask this reality and make it appear that the contradiction does not exist. The objective processes of capitalism facilitate in the creation of this mask. The capitalist mode of production and the relationship it creates between the worker and her product and other workers, brings to life a situation where it appears that capital is natural, but in reality it is a consequence of the everyday activities of people.
Fetishism of Commodities and Reification. The capitalist’s goal is to satisfy her need to reproduce and enlarge capital and she is indifferent to the specific properties of the product and people’s needs (Perlman, 1972). The capitalist is primarily interested in accumulating surplus value. This “surplus value is neither a product of nature nor of capital; it is created by the daily activities of people and it is a condition of survival…for the capitalist system and the capitalist” (Perlman, 1972, p. 18). As explained above, surplus value is the result of a forced, unequal exchange of value between the capitalist and the laborer. This relationship between workers and capitalists is not a thing which imposed itself on society at some point in the past, once and for all. There was no covenant signed between capitalists and workers in which workers gave up control over their living activity and all future generations in all parts of the globe (Perlman, 1972). The power of capital does not reside in money or commodities but it resides in the daily activities of living people; “this power consists of the disposition of people to sell their daily activities in exchange for money, and to give up control over the products of their own activity and of the activity of earlier generations” (Perlman, 1972, p. 22). The appearance that capitalism is a natural force results from alienation which is a real force. The alienation that results from this human made social-economic system is “neither a feeling nor an idea in the workers head, but a real fact about the worker’s daily life. The sold activity is in fact alien to the worker; his labor is in fact controlled by its buyers” (Perlman, 1972, p. 5). The capitalist mode of production results in the worker consuming and admiring the products of human activity passively. “He does not exist in the world as an active agent who transforms it, but as a helpless, impotent spectator…. The commodities, the spectacles consume him” (Perlman, 1972, p. 5-6). “By alienating their activity and embodying it in commodities, in material receptacles of human labor, people reproduce themselves and create capital” (Perlman, 1972, p. 6).
The social relations of capitalism creates a non-productive elite (capitalists) who control the means and ends of production. The goal of this numerically small yet powerful group is to create a social system that reproduces and maintains its elite position. This is done, in part, by creating a social division of labor where a large group of people must sell their labor power as a commodity to an elite group who purchase and put it to use to create commodities not only of an equal value but a surplus value (Bottomore, 1991). “This set of social relations which create surplus value also causes people to confuse relations between people with relations between objects” (Gibson, 1999, On line).
The capitalist mode of production, its alienation of the worker from the process and product of her life activity creates conditions where workers “do not directly witness the contributions of others to the creation of value, the human relations that underpin everything. Instead, people see the objects themselves, products, and link their fate to possessions rather than people” (Gibson, 1999, On line). Although it may appear that it is the commodity itself when exchanged that regulates the magnitude of value, it is not the commodity itself that determines the value but the average units of labor-time socially necessary to produce the commodity. Thus, the form, or commodity, does not determine value, but the content, or labor time, determines the value of a commodity (Bottomore, 1991). The social relations of capitalism contributes to the appearance that the commodities themselves determine the value of commodities (including labor power) not the social conditions of the workers producing the commodities. Marx named this phenomenon the fetishism of commodities. He says:
A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of the labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour….The existence of things qua commodities, and the value relation between products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom. There it is a definite social relations between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things (Bottomore, 1991, p. 102).
Unlike religious fetishism, the powers that people grant commodities are real. However, these powers are not natural to the commodity but are the result of the social relations of capitalism. Bottomore (1991) says the fetishism of commodities transfers powers that are normally in the hands of people to the objects of production. Because of the transference of power, the products tend to dominate the workers. “The appearances that mystify and distort spontaneous perception of the capitalist order are real. They are objective social forms, simultaneously determined by and obscuring the underlying relations….Thus the reality of social labor are concealed behind the values of commodities” (Bottomore, 1991, p. 191).
According to Perlman (1968), the objective social forms of commodity capitalism is not directly regulated by people but is regulated indirectly through things. The production of material goods is not democratically decided but is decided by capitalists and the connections between the capitalist are made through commodities, things, products of labor. In capitalism, the technical-material aspects of the commodity determines the production relations and the commodity being produced moves from one producer to another on the basis of production relations but the movement does not create the production relations (Rubin, 1972). In other words, the process of production and the production relations that develop as a result are determined in advance for the purpose of producing a thing, a commodity. Rubin says that,
The agents of production are combined through the factors of production; production bonds among people are established through the movement of things. The independence of the factors of production which is based on private ownership, makes possible their matierial-techinical combination, indispensable for the production process, only by establishing the production process of exchange among their owners. And, inversely: direct production relations which are established among the representatives of the different social classes (the capitalist, worker and landlord), result in a given combination of technical factors of production, and are connected with the transfer of things from one economic unit to another. This tight connection of production relations among people with the movement of things in the process of material production leads to the ‘reification’ of production relations (1972, p. 19).
In capitalist society, individuals come together as “owners of determined things, as ‘social representatives’ of different factors of production” (Rubin, 1972, p. 21). “Thus in the commodity-capitalist society people enter direct production relations exclusively as commodity owners, as owners of things. On the other hand, things, as a result, acquire particular social characteristics, a particular social form” (Rubin, 1972, p. 22). Consequently, “value seems to become a property of the thing with which it enters into the process of exchange and which the thing preserves when it leaves. The same is true of money, capital and other social forms of things” (Rubin, 1972, p. 23). This “reification of production relations among people is now supplemented by the ‘personification of things’” (Rubin, 1972, pp. 23- 24). In the process of (re)production, the social form of things (capitalist, worker, landlord) appears as a necessary condition for the process of production but are really the result. The social forms of things, the personification of things, lies at the surface level and can be directly observed. Whereas the reification process, or the crystallization of the production relations among people is more difficult to trace (Rubin, 1972). In contrast to the social relations of capitalism, in feudal society “production relations among people are established on the basis of the distribution of things among them and for things, not through things.” In the capitalist mode of production, “production relations among people are not established only for things, but through things. This is precisely what gives production relations among people a ‘materialized,’ ‘reified’ form and gives birth to commodity fetishism, the confusion between the material-technical and the social-economic aspects of the production process…”(Rubin, 1972, pp. 29-30). In the feudal society, it is obvious that people produce things and then distribute them based upon their exchange value. If somebody is producing beyond their exchange value, it is more transparent to them that they are forced to labor for another and that it is a direct result of a social relation. In contrast, in capitalist society it seems that people come together because they contain things, commodities that can be sold and engaged in production. All individuals are free to exchange their commodities, such as labor power, for the means to life (money). Thus, it does not appear that a capitalist is forcing you to work but you are simply exchanging commodities. Yet as demonstrated earlier, capital (surplus value) can not exist if there is not a forced unequal exchange between the capitalist and the worker. Thus, it appears that one’s existence is determined by the objects they are and/or produce rather than the social relations created and enforced by the capitalists.
Rather than humans being the subject and objects of their own lives, they become the objects to the subject, capital. Instead of the goal of production being the affirmation of humanity, the goal of production becomes the reproduction of capital. Humans become the means of production whose object is to create commodities for the reproduction of capital. Rather than human production affirming humanity it affirms capital. This relationship causes humans to take on the characteristics of capital in its objective form, the commodity. As a result, humans tend to think of products as separate things that have powers which control their existence in contrast to it being a relation between people, where the person controlling capital, the capitalist, is deciding the value of life and its activities. The goal of the capitalist is to expand her share of value and one primary way is to decrease the value of labor by lowering the standard of socially acceptable living conditions or by decreasing the quantity of labor time embedded in the commodity. By decreasing the value of labor, the value of the commodity, or capital, increases (temporarily). Reification and the fetishism of commodities mystify this dialectical relationship. Because of the inverse dialectical relationship, capital takes on the form of life and human life takes on the form of capital incarnate, the commodity. Thus, it appears that capital has the capability to recreate itself when in reality the creation of capital is the difference between the value of labor and the amount paid for that labor.
Traditional social studies education denies this critical perspective of capitalism. This lack of critical perspective helps to perpetuate an ideology that focuses on the directly observable facts and removes them from their context which would give them a more complete meaning. Curriculum in history classes should work toward the unveiling of capitalist ideology and illustrating its material basis. If students are given an opportunity to see how the processes of capitalism work in the historical and contemporary struggle for control over the processes and products of labor, they will begin to develop an understanding of what makes history move and their role in creating that history. This understanding will tend to develop citizens who see themselves as participants or actors in the drama of life, as potential agents of historical change. In the next section of the paper, the current structure of public education will be analyzed to illustrate how it parallels the social relations of the capitalist mode of production.
The Capitalist Mode of
Education; The Production of Knowledge
Marx’s analysis was based upon the belief that things do not exist independently but interpenetrate. Thus, in order to understand the role education plays in a society, it is necessary to understand the dominant mode of production because it is the needs of production and those who control it that are met through the production of knowledge and skills. In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire (1993) critiques the dominant form of education. In his critique, Freire names the dominant form of education “the banking concept of education” (1993, p. 52) and argues that this form of education is intended to domesticate and control thinking to produce humans with a particular ideology and disposition towards authority. The banking concept of education is the dominant form of education because it reinforces and reproduces the social relations of capitalism within schools and classrooms.
Rather than the teacher seeing herself as equal to and an ally of the student with the similar goal of trying to make sense of the world, the teacher who practices the banking form of education “present himself to his students as their necessary opposite [and] by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence” (Freire, 1993, p. 53). The goal of the banking style educator is to mold the child’s thinking so that she fits into the society, not necessarily to understand its underlying dynamics. In the banking form of education the teacher's methodology is simply releasing communiqués to the students who are to store, file and categorize them until they need to be withdrawn. The student who is able to accumulate the most information and is best able to demonstrate the magnitude of accumulation through completed assignments and tests has value. Freire (1993) claims that this form of education, despite its content, tends to create children that are passive spectators rather than active transformers of their world. This mode of production of knowledge has significant parallels to the capitalist mode of production.
Because of the social relation of capitalism where the individual must sell her labor power to the capitalist, the worker, from a teacher to a machine operator on an assembly line, who fears losing the means to life will tend to adopt the ideology of the capitalist. Thus, in a society dominated by capitalists, the dominant ideology tends to be the ideology of the capitalist. The education system in a capitalist society is intended to make humans into objects for another. In this case, humans become objects that create and justify the capitalists’ existence and are willing to submit and be capital (commodities) for the capitalist rather than be for herself. For the student in the capitalist mode of education, the production of her knowledge is an alienating experience; more frequently than not, the student does not see herself as the initiator and/or owner of the product of her activity during school. Like the production of the material goods that sustain society, the subject of labor (life activity) is not the laborer but capital (commodity). As explained in the first section of this chapter, the object of capital is not the laborer but the creation of a commodity which is appropriated from the worker by the capitalist. This commodity is used to control the laborer. The initiator of a student’s labor to complete assigned activities is not herself but the teacher. The teacher appropriates the products of labor from the student and assigns it value, the grade. Many teachers then use a student’s grade as a control mechanism manipulating pupils into behaving (Sarup, 1978).
Sarup (1978) argues that in a capitalist society education is regarded as a thing to be accumulated. This model of education is an expression of alienated production. “Education has become fetishized and is attributed with powers usually given to man. Education thus comes to be reified…[and] comes to be seen as a power over and above man (Sarup, 1978, p. 136).” To demonstrate this idea, Sarup (1978) says that it may be useful to look at schools through the model of a factory.
In schools, the three directly related participants (factors of production) are teachers, pupils and knowledge. Pupils can be seen both as workers and commodities. Like the worker who exchanges her labor power for money which she uses to buy the objects necessary to live, the pupil exchanges her objectified labor (completed assignments) for the means (grades) to get a job. In the capitalist mode of education, pupils are “transformed into products, commodities to be sold on the market” (Sarup, 1978, p. 140). The teacher in the factory model of education is both a capitalist and a worker. As a capitalist, she determines the content and methods in the production of knowledge. When the students (re)produce this knowledge, the teacher, like a capitalist, appropriates the objects of production from the students and returns to them a wage, or grade. The teacher is a worker whose product of production are pupils. As an employee, she works for people whose wish is to reproduce society as it is. This places the teacher in a contradictory role; it is contradictory because as a worker, she should be creating individuals who have a critical capacity to understand the capitalists system, but as a capitalist, she needs to transform the pupil into a commodity whose goal in life is to sell herself to a capitalist to (re)create capital and the capitalist (Sarup, 1978).
The value of a teacher’s and student’s actions or products of labor is assessed through measurable things. In many schools, what is considered a legitimate product, or legitimate knowledge, exists outside the control of or is alien to the teachers and students. The value of how well teachers can teach this body of knowledge and how well students can demonstrate or reproduce this body of knowledge is determined through quantitative methods. Students and teachers look upon themselves as appendages to the knowledge and measure their value in terms of how much of the knowledge they possess and can express (Sarup, 1978). Because the dominant ideas of society tend to treat capitalism as a given, the knowledge taught is usually less useful in understanding the essence of capitalist society as described in the first section of this chapter. Thus, both the form and content mirror and support the capitalist mode of production helping to mask the underlying exploitation and oppression.
This form of education reinforces behavior that divides people who should normally work together in the production process and turns them against each other. The reason they turn against each other is because the goal in school is to accumulate more knowledge, or cultural capital, then others. Students learn that by doing this, they are empowered and elevated in status and value. She learns that their level of cultural capital can be used to sell her labor capacity to a capitalist as a means to get the necessary material goods to survive, that is, a job.
If knowledge can be seen as the pupil’s product…that knowledge is …both the result and the cause of alienated labor .…It is the product, knowledge, that determines what the pupil-worker does. The power of any of the worker’s products over the worker, Marx wrote, always reflects the power of the people who dominate it and use it as an instrument. …. The more teachers and pupils spend themselves working on knowledge, the more powerful and coercive this reified knowledge seems to become. The pupils knowledge is taken away from him…he dissociates the knowledge from himself because the pupil’s needs or individuality is not considered. This is not difficult to understand because the knowledge did not belong to him in the first place but was set up for him by others (Sarup, 1978, p. 142).
Sarup (1978) says that those who are in control of the things people need to survive have interests that are hostile to the person in need of those things. Thus, capitalists who control the products needed to survive and teachers who control the grades needed to pass school have interests that are hostile to the workers and students in need of those things.
Many people think that knowledge is private property and hence capital. The possession of knowledge attained through the methods of education in capitalist system is not an enhancement of the person who owns it but is rather the negation of personality. It is a negation of personality because the dominant view of knowledge flip flops the relationship between the human subject and the world of objects (Sarup, 1978). As explained above, the student and knowledge are separated and the actions of the learner “is …transformed from an object of the will into a master” (Sarup, 1978, p. 144) and the student has become a “predicate of knowledge” (Sarup, 1978, p. 144). This parallels Marx’s idea that the worker has become an appendage to the product, or capital. Freire expands upon this idea.
Freire (1993) says that through oppression, the oppressor’s consciousness has a desire to transform everything- earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time- into objects of domination. Because oppressors see humanity as a thing (a commodity), they think that the more things they have the more human they are and it is their inalienable right to possess more. They can not see that through their efforts to possess more, they are exploiting and oppressing others to enrich themselves. Freire claims that the “tendency of the oppressor’s consciousness to ‘in-animate’ everything and everyone it encounters, in its eagerness to possess, unquestionably corresponds with a tendency to sadism” (Freire, 1993, p. 41). In any situation where a person objectively exploits or hinders a person from affirming their humanity as a responsible person is oppression. Because oppression interferes with the development of a person and prevents somebody from doing something responsible that would not only benefit themselves but society and/or is forcing somebody to do something for the enrichment of another person, it is violence (Freire. 1993). In the process of dominating and transforming life into objects to be possessed, the oppressor kills life. The object of the oppressed is not herself, but whatever the oppressor has prescribed for her. To no longer be prey to acts of oppression, the oppressed must “emerge from it and turn upon it” (Freire, 1993, p. 42). This requires an understanding of capitalist ideology and its material basis and a different education based on different philosophical principles.
Freire says that “one can not conceive of objectivity without subjectivity” (1993, p. 32) and objectivity and subjectivity can not be dichotomized. The denial of subjectivity when analyzing reality is objectivism and denying the role of the objective world upon subjectivity leads to “solipsistic positions” (Freire, 1993, p. 32). The paradigm created by a dualistic world view places the subject (people) in the position of spectator who sees the changing world as a self-contained object that is governed by natural laws. Freire says that change occurs through the internal relationships between the objective world and the subjects who create that world. He says the transformation of life occurs dialectically. If humans and the accumulation of decisions (history) produce social reality, then the transformation of that social reality is an historical task for humanity (Freire, 1993). However, as will be argued in the next section, the movement towards Standards Based Education Reform and high-stakes testing reinforces the banking concept of education and reinforces the capitalist social relations of society.
American
Education: Past and Present
A Very Brief History of Education. From the time of the Civil War, American capitalists have significantly influenced the policies of not only their individual companies but public institutions as well. Much effort is not required to recognize the interpenetration of business and government in terms of national policy in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The role played by the United States Government in the defeat of striking workers during the great railroad strikes of 1877, the Pullman strikes in the 1890’s, and the destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialists during and immediately following the World War One clearly suggest the tendency of the American democratic government to side with the capitalist in protecting that group’s right to control and be enriched by the production of the material needs of society (Brecher, 1997). This same line was drawn in education during the first quarter of the twentieth century and has continued to impact not only industry but public institutions like schools as well. The work of Fredrick Winslow Taylor in industry impacted institutions beyond the manufacturing of pig iron.
Frederick Winslow Taylor developed the idea that came to known as “scientific management” or the “Taylor System.” Scientific management became well known and manufacturers were using it to redesign the production of railroads, steel plants, bleacheries, cotton mills, and more. During a 1910 hearing by the Interstate Commerce Commission regarding the railroad system, Taylor’s ideas were used as a defense to keep the price of transportation down while increasing profit margins. The merchants who opposed the price increase had their lawyers use witnesses such as engineers and industrial managers who argued that if railroad companies used the principles of scientific management, they would be able to keep prices at their current levels while increasing their profit margins. Scientific Management proved itself and subsequently hit the popular press. Callahan (1962) says scientific management was “magic indeed, or at least a panacea for the economic ills that beset America. Here was a means whereby production could be increased, wages raised and prices lowered” (Callahan, 1962, p. 19-20). Enthusiasm swept the nation and people encouraged others to apply the principles of scientific management to all aspects of life from the “army and navy, the legal profession the home, the family, the household, the church and …education” (Callahan, 1962, p. 23).
The basic elements to improving efficiency using scientific management are time and motion studies, standardization, task assignments, identifying a functional foreman, and using a planning department. In general, the scientific manager would inspect a manufacturer’s production process using time and motion studies. The inspector would analyze the totality of the production process identifying the separate motions and measuring how many motions can be repeated in a given amount of time. Secondly, the inspector would identify the most efficient method (motion) of production and all workers would follow that method (motion). Thirdly, the worker would be assigned a definite task(s) that must be accomplished within a particular time frame. An additional part of the task assignment was a bonus for the individual surpassing the specific task requirement. The final step in the scientific management process was the implementation of a planning department (Callahan, 1962). This department would be responsible for “establishing rules, laws and formulae to replace the judgement of the individual workman” (Callahan, 1962, p. 28-33). By 1912, the promoters of scientific management were questioning the productiveness of education institutions.
In such publications as American Magazine and Educational Review, critics demanded that schools prove their efficiency or face budget reductions to more accurately reflect the value added to human commodities, as measured by increased profits for the capitalist. One writer asks “why should the public support inefficient school teachers instead of efficient milk inspectors? Must definite reforms with measurable results give way that an antiquated school system may grind out its useless product?” (Callahan, 1962, p. 47). Schools were challenged to prove their effectiveness by “showing results that could be ‘readily seen and measured’” (Callahan, 1962, p. 48). Consequently, administrators started using records and reports to demonstrate their school’s efficiency in the production of human commodities (Callahan, 1962).
Superintendents and other administrators of public education implemented annual reports that applied the principles of scientific management. The purpose for these reports was to “justify expenditures and to educate the public in case additional funds were needed” (Callahan, 1962, p. 156). Secondly, they were used to demonstrate that schools were implementing the values of business by applying cost analysis and accounting. For example, a superintendent who led the movement towards applying scientific management to education said that “he didn’t know whether music was more valuable than Greek, but Greek was more expensive and so from a financial stand point it was less valuable” (Callahan, 1962, p. 159). This concept was pushed to the point where administrators said such things as “if English costs $8 per course in one school and $12 in another, or Geometry cost 4 [cents] per pupil hour in one school and 12 [cents] per…” (Callahan, 1962, p. 177). The point is that educational decision making became based upon the business model of efficiency versus the needs of the children or society in general. To this day, these scientific management principles and the business model of education adopted by the educational administrators some four generations ago continue to impact schools, teachers and students.
The Business Model of Education. Michael Apples (1993) says that for the past decade there has been a rightist resurgence in education policies. The right-wing is attempting to redefine whose methods and knowledge is considered legitimate. They have been promoting the needs of business and industry as the primary needs of society and purpose of education and they have been attacking teachers and curriculums as the forces resisting this ideology. Peter Mclaren explains that over the past two decades the scientific management style has been quite pervasive in schools and is producing a “mechanistic cognitive style within classrooms that appears at times to conform to Henry Ford’s rust proofed assembly lines” (1994, p. 219). Many district administrators have decided to make their teachers use teacher proofed curriculums. This move parallels the bosses of factories who have attempted to devalue and de-skill workers and place decisions making power into a planning department. This type of teaching, in the end, tends to emphasize practical and technical knowledge in contrast to productive or transformative knowledge. “A particularly serious problem with the technocratic mentality is its appearance of objectivity and value-neutrality. What its adherents don’t tell you is that a hidden political agenda oftentimes informs new policy and program directives” (Mclaren, 1992, p. 220). It is imperative to place education reform within the confines of the social relations created by the capitalist mode of production.
Shannon (1992, 2001) says that capitalists desire predictable, value-free factors of production (people, raw materials, and man-made objects) so as to more simply and rationally organize production. “Capitalist logic promises that if all of society could be organized in a similar fashion, then society would run like a business, creating the best conditions for production, technological advance and accumulation. The allure of this promise drives the efforts to rationalize more and more aspects of public and private live” (Shannon, 2001, On line). This includes schooling.
Through the rationalization and specialization of teaching functions, “Teachers’ work, teaching, and students’ work, learning,- once the very expression and incorporation of their generic being, now confronts them as things apart, indeed as things that command them as property” (Shannon, 2001, On line). For example, textbooks, standardized, and/or commercially driven curriculums tend to confront the teachers and test scores confront the learners. Marx calls this alienation - the subordination of the worker to the reified product of her labor. This scientific management of production, a logical outcome of capitalist production, as applied to schools, creates a context where the justification for standardized lessons and high-stakes testing become necessary. When science is invoked (teacher proof curriculums and testing), it creates the appearance of objectivity. The promoters of scientifically managed schools claim that the standardized programs are produced objectively without regard for the emotional and social context of any particular classroom, “far from the daily practices of teachers and students.” This is considered fair and equal. This total rationalization of the education process causes it to appear as though these methods of knowing the world are natural and inevitable, hence unchangeable (Shannon, 2001, On line). Shannon says that it is an accepted immutable understanding that science should be used as “the major form of evaluation of social institutions and customs” (Shannon, 1992, p. 190). Shannon (2001) says that this is problematic because many people see just the results of science and tend to de-emphasize or ignore the human process of scientific inquiry. Consequently, many people focus on the material results that measure quantity, standard means and efficiency. In addition, this role of measurement and efficiency has come to be the primary measure of our social institutions rather than qualitative arguments. Standardized programs become necessary to the overall system of production because they “provide the division of function with teachers becoming factors in the implementation of the curricular designs of others; they fix the actions of teachers across classroom, schools, and districts; and they synchronize the actions of teachers and students toward the abstracted exchange value of student test scores” (Shannon, 2001, On line). The test scores are used to determine the efficiency of teachers, to measure the degree of cultural capital attained by the student, to legitimizes administrators plans and to potentially raise the relative value of property.
Many teachers, administrators, and taxpayers reify the many possible ways of teaching others to learn as the systematic application of standardized commercial materials and programs. Although much of what Shannon (2001, 1992) describes is observed in the practice of using standardized lessons to teach reading, the same principles apply to teaching the social studies. Reading the social context in which one lives becomes imperative in creating individuals who can become agents of change toward the expansion of equality and democracy and effective resisters against inequality and authoritarianism.
Traditional Social Studies Instruction. Wayne Ross (2000, On line) has analyzed Traditional Social Studies Instruction (TSSI), that is standardized, textbook driven social studies curriculum, in the context of the social relations of capitalism. His critique reflects his desire to create individuals who perceive themselves more as actors and less as spectators in life.
The primary methodology of social studies teachers using Traditional Social Studies Instruction (TSSI) sets up a duality that separates the mind/body and subject/object. The teacher who uses TSSI typically sees history as an immutable object that just happens and believes that knowing history means possessing historical facts. History is not seen as an ongoing dialectical relationship between opposing social forces- capitalist and workers- and the student is not directly made aware of her position in this relationship. In TSSI, the teacher releases information to the students, the students grasp the information, organize and file the information, hold it there for a while and then send it back to the teacher in the same organization in which it was sent. The students and the teacher do not interact, dialogue, or integrate themselves with the objective information but rather exchange it. Ross says that “this bipolar conception of knowing a situation does not work well in a world of interaction mutually influencing affairs” (2000, On line). It is based upon the idea that a subject (spectator-knower) confronts an object (that which is to be known, in this case the content of social studies education) and the spectator-knower’s primary task is the “construction of a mental image that corresponds to an ordered and absolute external world” (Ross, 2000, On line). The order of this world is defined by the standardized textbooks and curriculum materials. This theory of knowledge is more about taking in the world out there rather than world making (Ross, 2000, On line). Teachers who use TSSI, do not typically define their work in terms of creating individuals who can grasp the dynamics of historical change, have the capability to read her current social context, and integrate themselves into the historical process, but they define their work in terms of how efficient they can deliver the curriculum and increase student test scores.
In terms of content (politics), the social studies teachers using TSSI “view their work in school as apolitical, a matter of effectively covering the curriculum, imparting academic skills, and preparing students for whatever high-stakes tests they might face” (Ross, 2000, On line). Her curricular decisions are based upon what is in the textbook. She uses lectures and assignments created by the textbook publisher and is reluctant to engage in dialogue over controversial subjects. However, she does perceive herself as a patriotic American who wants to help kids develop an “appreciation of our nation’s history, its form of government, and the values upon which society is based” (Ross, 2000, On line). The traditional social studies teacher’s methods and its ideological biases go unquestioned. In fact, it is believed that the conventional wisdom is not ideological but is reality itself. TSSI is not interested in problematizing the social world by looking at life from the vantage point of a particular issue. “TSSI accepts the lines as drawn and deflects questions about how education is used as a means of social control and to what ends” (Ross, 2000, On line). In TSSI, social studies content is treated as an object that is to be absorbed without interference of ones subjectivity. In order for the picture or object to make sense, the viewer must just look harder not look at it from a different or particular angle. This spectator-knowing method of teaching predictably leads to spectator citizenship.
TSSI promotes spectator citizenship because it sets up a body of knowledge that situates students outside of it rather than constructing it from within. According to TSSI, the way to make social change is through voting and one is not to question the nature of capitalist democracy but accept it as given. Ross says that “TSSI is a critical element within an ideological system constructed to ensure that the population remains passive, ignorant, and apathetic” (2000, On line). Topics that are frequently studied in social studies classes are slavery, the movement of Native Americans, a foreign policy to expand American-style democracy through subversion and overt overthrows of governments, but what is not examined in these topics are the interconnections and threads that weave through them like capitalism, fascism, racism and class domination. This is because the goal of TSSI is social control and the production of knowledge can occur only from the angle of the capitalists, who see the world dualistically and deny the internal relations between the objective and subjective worlds.
In the capitalist way of knowing, all things exist separately and do not interpenatrate; there is no connection between the subjects who make and are made by the objective world (Ross, 2000, On line). The philosophical basis of TSSI is similar to the forced separation between the subject and object of production pointed out by Marx and the separation between the subject and object in the banking concept of education pointed out by Freire. Just as it is important to analyze methods of social studies instruction in the context of social relations, it is important to look at the current trend in Standards Based Education Reform and its enforcer, High-Stakes Testing, in its social context.
Standards Based Education. In a Personal Report from the Education Summit: What Does It Mean for Education Reform?, Denis Doyle says that “CEO’s are interested parties, not parties-at-interest, and they come as close to being disinterested as any reformers can. They are the ultimate consumers of the schools’ product and have a real stake in school performance” (1996, On line). According to Achieve.org, an organization promoting standardized curriculum and high-stakes testing, we must have tests because “you can’t achieve quality if you can’t measure it” (Achieve.org, 2002, On line). This harks back to the days of scientific management. As an example of the degree of control exercised by the decision to implement standardized curriculum programs in the name of Standards Based Education and High-Stakes Testing, we can look at the New York City Public Schools.
In the New York City Public Schools, teachers use prescribed programs in reading and math and, according to a master teacher and teacher evaluator, the beauty of these programs is “everything is spelled out for you” and “you don’t have to think about it” (Goodnough, 2001, On line). When a teacher wanted to bring in some of her own stories regarding weather, she was warned against using the books. The teacher’s manual includes scripts and “specifies how much time to spend on each activity, from 30 seconds to 40 minutes” (Goodnough, 2001, On line). Each teacher is required to post on her classroom door a daily schedule so officials can make sure the teacher is following the scripted program (Goodnough, 2001). This line of thinking has lead some education officials and businesses to not only micromanage the classroom but to profit from Standards Based Education.
The degree and efficiency to which a teacher implements the commercially produced curriculum and their submission to the powers that be can be assessed, relative to other teachers, using a computer database program being offered by a computer software company. The software company (located in Houston Texas) has created a program that is “a tool called value added assessment” (Higgins, 2002, On line). “The program tracks student scores over a period of time” and “more clearly captures the quality of instruction” (Higgins, 2002, On line). According to its potential profiteers, the program is capable of assessing whether a child has had a “year of growth for every year in school” (Higgins, 2002, On line). These folks think that teachers are the single biggest factor in a child’s education and is “more important than socioeconomic status, class size, racial composition, and location” (Higgins, 2002, On line). In fact, “it makes all those other factors trivial” (Higgins, 2002, On line). This factory style education is intended to hold educational institutions accountable. However, critics claim that this form of accountability is really a disguise for increased capitalist and government control over educational institution.
In their critique of Standards Based Education, Mathison and Ross say that “specifically, accountability is an economic means of interaction whose goal is to enforce a complex hierarchical system of power” (in press). Although the appearance is that teachers, professors, public schools, and universities are accountable to the public, the essence is that accountability in the form of standardized curriculum and testing is a tool used to promote the interests of the capitalist state, “an extricable conglomeration of business and government interests” (Mathison and Ross, in press). In addition “much of the impetus and continued support for standards based education reform comes not from educators, educational researchers, nor the public, but rather from corporate business. In fact, a main current in the history of education in the United States is the effort of corporate leaders and their allies in government to shape public education to the ends of business” (Mathison and Ross, in press). Hursh (2001) says that not only is there collaboration between corporations, government and education but this collaboration has intensified.
Promotion of accountability has been exemplified by the National Education Summits in 1989, 1996, and 1999 where “no students, teachers, or parents were invited” (Ross and Vinson, 2002 p. 45). The goal of the latest summit was to increase pressure on “states to expand testing for high school graduation, grade promotion and ‘accountability’” (Ross and Vinson, 2002 p. 45). Ross and Vinson say that these summits are “key elements in the bipartisan strategy of elite stakeholders to achieve more direct means of corporate/state regulation and administration of knowledge in public schools” (2002, p. 45). The National Education Summits “represents our hierarchical society, where citizens are made to be passive spectators, disconnected from one another and alienated from their own desires, learning and work (Mathison and Ross, in press).”
“The objective appearance of standards-based reforms, which aim to reform schools by focusing on test scores, conceals the fact that these reforms are the result of the deepening economic inequality and racial segregation, which are typically coupled with authoritarianism” (Mathison and Ross, in press). Gibson adds that “regulating knowledge foments an employee mentality, a passive acceptance of the directions of others, who decide what is important and how it can be decoded” (Gibson, 1997, On line). The why to learn is “owned by the regulators, not the student and not the classroom educator. Hence, external regulation is disguised as self-regulation. This is a nice ploy for those who want to create an employee who identifies her interests with an employer. . . .” (Gibson, 1997, On line). Lipman says that increasingly education is seen as a commodity and the “regulation, control, accountability and quality assurance is determined by national and state testing of standardized curriculum” (2001, On Line). Corporate America is not interested in creating individuals who have more knowledge or skills than basic literacies, capitalist friendly knowledge, the ability to follow directions, and certain dispositions toward work (Lipman, 2001). Ollman adds that these standards are not just knowledge or skills but a way of thinking and behaving which match the needs of the capitalist. The tests prepare “people to come to work on time,…to take orders without questioning,…to have the right attitudes towards their superiors” and to view their lack of success as a personal failure rather than being caught up in a system that controls the number of successes (Monchinski, 2001, On line). Those humans who have successfully passed the standardized tests have passed industry standards (Lipman. 2001).
In summary, “the definition of learning as test scores separates students from the totality of their learning. Reducing teachers and students to factors in the scripted [standardized] system of test score production requires that they lose, at least officially, emotional, cultural, and social attachments to the process of teaching and learning and to each other” (Shannon, 2001, On line). These social control methods create the necessary conditions for the easiest path for capitalist to accumulate surplus value. In the last section of the paper, it will be argued that social studies teachers not only need to have a grasp of the philosophical underpinnings of the capitalist mode of production and methods of teaching but must also have an understanding of an alternative philosophical basis in order to educate kids to create a more egalitarian democratic society.
What We Need to Know to Change
It is important that the oppressed come to realize that the objective social world is not one which is reified into a concrete, unchangeable thing but is the result of relations between humans. Since the objective social world is the result of relations between humans, these relations are under the control of humans and can be changed. However, overcoming oppression is more than recognizing the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Liberation is more than simply realizing that the oppressed are the anti-thesis of the oppressor and that if the oppressor is eliminated, then oppression ends too. The oppressed must struggle to free themselves. The oppressed must struggle towards changing the existing social relations that control them for the enrichment of the oppressing class (Freire, 1993). This can be achieved by not only recognizing the source and the methods of domination but the source and methods for liberation (Freire, 1993).
Through the process of oppression, the oppressor loses her humanity. Thus, the struggle for human liberation does not lay in the hands and minds of the oppressor but in the hands and minds of the oppressed. During the transformation process, it is critical that the two poles are not reversed: the oppressed should not become the oppressors. However, it is also important to realize that by stopping the oppressor from being able to reactivate their oppression does not constitute oppression because it is only an act of oppression when it stops another from being human. Because she is liberated from the inhuman act of oppression, it would not be oppression when the oppressor is stopped from oppressing and losing her humanity in the process (Freire, 1993).
The roots of the struggle for liberation exist in understanding dialectical thought, where the world and action are intimately interdependent (Freire, 1993). People are not only in the world but are with the world. They engage with the world through organizing themselves, choosing the best responses, testing themselves, acting and changing in the very act of responding. By engaging in the world with a critical and reflective eye, people discover their temporality and recognize the dimensionality of time. Through this process, people realize they are not imprisoned within a permanent today but can emerge and become temporalized (Freire, 1973). This is possible because the normal role of human beings is to be creative and want to participate and intervene in reality with the intent of changing it. Freire says that the distinctly human activity is to integrate oneself within one’s context in contrast to just adapting to the context. Being able to integrate oneself implies not only the ability to adapt to the existing context but the ability to use one’s critical capacity to intervene in that context to change it. An individual who loses this ability to make choices in life and follows pre-scripted choices is no longer integrated in life but has simply adapted to the context of life. The person who is integrated becomes the subject in life rather than the adapted individual who is an object, a thing, in life. The educator can facilitate in the creation of individuals who can successfully integrate themselves rather than adapt to reality (Freire, 1973).
Freire’s suggestion to the educator is to generate themes by problematizing the current historical epoch. Each historical epoch is characterized by “a series of aspirations, concerns, and values that want to be fulfilled” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). It becomes imperative for the educator to engage in dialogue with her students to facilitate observations that illustrate the epochal aspirations, concerns and values and the obstacles to achieving them. Of course, one of the major themes of our epoch is capitalism. Thus, problematizing and critiquing capitalism through dialogue becomes essential. Hence, it becomes the teacher’s role to facilitate a critical examination of the dominant ideology of the current historical epoch helping to reveal the material connections between the dominant ideology and the needs of the capitalist mode of production. Secondly, it should be argued that the acceptance of and acting upon the dominant ideology is, in part, the cause of their own oppression. Freire adds that not only should people realize that the dominant ideology is the ideology of the oppressing class, but the oppressed should be “producing and acting upon their own ideas- not consuming those of others” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). Whether or not people “can perceive the epochal themes and above all, how they act upon the reality with which these themes are generated will largely determine their humanization or dehumanization, their affirmation as subjects or their reduction as objects” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). “For only as men grasp the themes can they intervene in reality instead of remaining mere onlookers. And only by developing a permanently critical attitude can men overcome a posture of adjustment in order to become integrated with the spirit of the time” (Freire, 1973, p. 5). In summary Freire says that
The education our situation demanded would enable men to discuss courageously the problems of their context-and to intervene in that context; it would warn men of the dangers of the time and offer them the confidence and the strength to confront those dangers instead of surrendering their sense of self through submission to the decision of others. By predisposing men to reevaluate constantly, to analyze ‘findings,’ to adopt scientific methods and processes, and to perceive themselves in dialectical relationship with their social reality, that education could help men to assume an increasingly critical attitude toward the world and so to transform it (1993, pp. 33-34).
As stated above, the problem posing education suggested by Freire, having students read the world’s epochal themes, should lead the social studies teacher to learning the dominant theme of capitalism. In History and Class Consciousness, Lukacs (1971) suggests that the worker, not the capitalist, is best able to understand the totality of an issue and, as a result, is able to become the subject in the transformation of society. Bourgeoisie ideology necessarily sees the social relations of capitalist society as eternal, objective laws whereas the proletariat (as a commodity) can see society from its center and is able to unite theory and practice. The proletariat can throw its weight on the scales of history choosing the side that sees people as the creator of life rather than the side that sees life as being governed by eternal objective laws (Lukacs, 1971).
In our current social context, we live under the rule of capitalist social relations. In this social context, we see bourgeois class consciousness struggling towards total control of society. It is important that the proletariat recognize that “the hegemony of the bourgeoisie really does embrace the whole of society,…attempts to organize the whole of society in its own interests [and] is exercised not merely by a minority but in the interest of that minority, so the need to deceive the other classes and to ensure that their class consciousness remains amorphous is inescapable for a bourgeois regime” (Lukacs, 1971, pp. 65-66).
We can not depend upon bourgeois historians to unveil the causes of historical changes and their influence upon modern capitalist social relations. The reason we can not depend upon them is because they begin uncritically with the idea that social changes belong to nature, or eternal objective laws, rather than seeing humans as the cause of social changes. In other words, capitalism is put forth as the next natural phase in the spiraling progression of human perfection. The bourgeois historian explains the results of historical change rather than analyzing the current social institutions and using history to determine their cause. The bourgeois historian accepts the reified social forms. Hence, it “ceases to be possible to understand the origin of social institutions” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 48) and secondly it transforms “into the irrational rule of blind forces which is embodied at best in the ‘spirit of the people or in great men’” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 49). The bourgeoisie see their behavior as actions which are responding to the objective evolution of society and they “understand the process [which it is itself instigating] as something external which is subject to objective laws which it can only experience passively” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 63). As Marx says “to them [Bourgeoisie and uncritical workers] their own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them. This fetishism of commodities and reification of social relations can only be unveiled to the proletariat” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 49).
Lukacs says that the historical knowledge of the laboring class must begin with the present and an “elucidation of its genesis (Lukacs, 1971, p. 159).” He says that when we ask why a particular principle emerged in a particular century, we must examine the “relations between man and man which resulted from …[the] conditions of existence” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 160). If this goal is achieved, the proletariat will ultimately see themselves as the authors and actors of their own history. In the capitalist social relations, Lukacs (1971) says that for workers to become a force of historical change, they must become conscious of their total existence not just what is immediate.
The worker can only become conscious of his existence in society when he becomes aware of himself as a commodity. As we have seen, his immediate existence integrates him as a pure, naked object into the production process. Once this immediacy turns out to be the consequence of a multiplicity of mediations, once it becomes evident how much it presupposes, then the fetishistic forms of the commodity system begin to dissolve: in the commodity the worker recognizes himself and his own relations with capital. Inasmuch as he is incapable in practice of raising himself above the role of object his consciousness is the self-consciousness of the commodity; or in other words it is the self-knowledge, the self-revelation of the capitalist society founded upon the production and exchange of commodities (Lukacs, 1971, p. 168).
As stated in the quotation above, the proletariat have a special position in society. Unlike the capitalist who sees the world dualistically, the proletariat can “function as the identical subject-object of the social and historical processes of evolution” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 149). When the worker’s consciousness emerges as the consciousness of the commodity, she becomes conscious of herself as both the subject and object of the economic process. As a result, she no longer sees capital as natural but as the result of an unbroken process of production and reproduction created and put into motion by the worker. Hence, for the proletariat the way is opened to a complete penetration of the forms of reification. It achieves this by starting with what is dialectically the clearest form of reification (the immediate relation of capital and labor). It then relates this to those forms that are more remote from the production process (education) and includes and comprehends them into the dialectical totality (Lukacs, 1971). “From this standpoint alone does history really become a history of mankind. For it contains nothing that does not lead back ultimately to men and to the relations between men” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 197). Thus it becomes obvious that for the continuation of the capitalist system, “reification is, then, the necessary, immediate reality of every person living….It can be overcome only by the constant and constantly renewed efforts to disrupt the reified structure of existence by concretely relating to the concretely manifested contradictions of the total development, by becoming conscious of the immanent meanings of these contradiction for the total development” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 197).
Marx demanded “a historical critique of economics which resolves the totality of the reified objectives of social and economic life into relations between men” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 49). Lukacs quotes Marx as saying that capital is “not a thing but a social relation between people mediated through things” (1971, p. 49). “The superiority of the proletariat must lie exclusively in its ability to see society from the center, as a coherent whole. This means that it is able to act in such a way as to change reality; in the class consciousness of the proletariat, theory and practice coincide and so it can consciously throw the weight of its actions on the scales of history—and this is the deciding factor” (Lukacs, 1971, p. 69). And what social studies teachers do counts!
Chapter Three
Reflections
Personal History
It was in my first year of college that I came to understand history the way I do today. History has helped me make sense of the world because I am able to use my knowledge of the past as a tool to understand the present and to effect change in the future. The insights and sense of empowerment I gleaned from history made me want to be a history teacher. Through the study and teaching of history, I have developed and continue to expand my understanding of how society changes and how to intervene in the historical process to move society into a direction that is more equal and democratic.
When I looked at the world around me in my early adult years, I use to think that technology was the culprit in causing negative social forces like pollution, suburban sprawl, and poverty. However, since looking at the world through the eyes of Karl Marx and Marxists, I have concluded that I was misreading the world. Marx has helped me realize that it is not inanimate objects that cause the negative social forces but human decisions to use particular things in particular ways. This changed the focus of my thinking and the questions I ask.
Since high school I recognized that the wealthy have an exceptional amount of power in society. However, until quite recently, I failed to understand how the dynamics of capitalism contributed to the dominating role of capitalist in the social, economic and political process. In addition, I have studied the role education plays in maintaining this capitalist domination (as explained in chapter two). Seeing society and my position within it through a Marxist prism has provided me a compass to use when analyzing and making decisions about curriculum organization, when implementing the curriculum, and when interacting with my students.
My Community, My School
I teach in a working-class community. The students I teach are in a position in the social-economic structure that lends itself to them developing a better understanding of the capitalist system from its organizing principle-the commodity. They are in a position to see their family’s labor as a commodity that is bought and used to enrich the capitalists. They are able to recognize this truth because it is their reality. As Jean Anyon (1980) has pointed out, as one moves closer to the socioeconomic position of the owners of capital, they tend to adopt the ideology of the capitalists. Thus, if I were teaching in an upper class school, the students would be less able and/or less willing to understand and/or agree with my point of view because it is believed to be less their reality despite the fact that they, too, must sell their labor to a capitalist to survive. In the strict Marxist interpretation, this makes both groups laborers because they do not control capital. When selecting material to teach, I start from the primary mover of history which I think is the struggle between labor and capital.
In the district where I teach, the administration has not been exceptionally demanding that I adhere to an absolute prescribed curriculum. They have promoted a non-textbook driven curriculum, which saves them money and gives me freedom to organize and implement my curriculum as I see fit. The only perceived curriculum constraints in my history classes are that I stay within an historical time frame. How I distribute the time and what I choose to emphasize has not become an issue.
The Curriculum and the Classroom
Environment
To teach against oppression and exploitation, Paulo Freire (1973, 1993) suggests that the teachers generate epochal themes to use as topics of discussion. In my United States History classroom, I use the themes of power, racism, sexism, truth, and capitalism. Bringing these issues forward creates a common reference point for us through the semester, facilitates discussion and helps to introduce kids to the concept of history. Although one would think that teaching the concept of history is a straightforward endeavor, it is not. For me, history is a tool to help me understand our present conditions and provides insight into its directions and ways to move it into a direction that leads to more equality and democracy. However, ones interpretation of history is influenced by their position in the socioeconomic structure. Since I am dissatisfied with the current social conditions, I use history to help develop an understanding of the causes of those things which I am dissatisfied. Through this investigation, I begin to learn of and see ways to effect social change. If I were satisfied with the status quo, I may search for and explain historical events that support it. Generally, I think, the capitalist are benefiting from the status quo whereas many working people have seen their lives and future become more insecure (State of Working America, 2001). I use various methods and materials to teach against oppression and exploitation.
During the first few weeks of the school year, we do this by reading a short story, listening to music, watching a film, looking at the social-economic organization of a meat-packing industry in North Carolina in 2000, and rethinking Christopher Columbus (See Appendix B). I use these to get kids to explore both their own and other’s ideas about the generative epochal themes. However, I do not want kids to think that one opinion is as valid as the other, but I do not want kids to disrespect another person because she thinks her opinion is invalid. Everybody has the right to develop and express their own opinion but that does not mean the opinion is the truth. I try to teach kids that truth does not live in somebody’s head (just because you believe it does not make it true) but must be substantiated through argument, through abstracting facts from the material world to support an opinion. I realize that my definition of truth excludes many religious ideas and this is the general bias of the classroom. This is a dilemma and trying to create a structure where my position does not seem more valuable than the students’ opinions is an ongoing project where my understanding results from both successes and failures.
A goal for me is to have kids realize that just because I am a teacher does not mean I have all the knowledge and understandings in the classroom and universe. Of course, this does not mean I relinquish my authoritative position in the classroom. I try to resolve this dilemma three ways. First, we read about the dark side of Christopher Columbus. Although the kids are quite familiar with the story of Columbus discovering America, they are less familiar with his original objectives and the methods he used to achieve them. As Zinn quotes Columbus’ journal:
The do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane. They would make fine servants. . . . With fifty men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want. . . . the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. . . . There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals (1980, pp. 1-3).
We discuss reasons why their past teachers may not have talked about Columbus’ original objectives and the methods she used to achieve them, whether I might also teach ideas and information that are partially true creating an inaccurate image, and ways in which we can come closer to the truth. Secondly, I admit the things I do not know. Lastly, I think that by valuing dialogue in class, the kids’ life experiences are valued as a source of knowledge as well as books, videos, and other instructional material. Because these topics bring out multiple interpretations of the generative epochal themes and because the kids learn democratic behaviors like listening, respecting, dialoguing, I think these first few weeks in the semester are the most important because of their impact upon the rest of the semester. The rest of the semester is used to explore specific historical changes using the generative epochal themes to provide focus and deepen our understanding.
The organizing theme of the subsequent units of study, analyzes the relationship between capitalists, labor, and the political process. For example, we look at the Civil War and the Reconstruction as a struggle between the rising capitalists who desire more control over the levers of decision making power in the government to meet their need of capital accumulation and the desire of the Planters to resist this transfer of power. We trace the Reconstruction period through the eyes of the freed people and the desire of the plantation owner to reestablish her control over them. Hence, we see the implementation of racist black codes and Jim Crow laws enacted by white southern governments. Following the unit on the Civil War and Reconstruction, we look at the struggle between the expansion of big business and their desire to establish absolute control over labor and how labor responds to big business’ increase in power. In addition, we question the idea whether government is neutral by determining if the national, state and local governments took sides in the struggle between labor and capital and why they may or may not have taken sides. Our last unit of study in this particular semester is recognizing the interrelationship between capitalism, imperialism and war and how labor, race and ideology factored into this interrelationship.
One goal I have as a social studies educator is to break down the reification of social relations and to penetrate the fetishism of commodities. This, of course, is an ongoing project in the classroom. It is part of a process as well as particular curriculum decisions. Dialogue is important in achieving the goal, but the content choices play a role by shaping the nature of the conversation. When selecting curriculum material, I think it is important to focus upon significant historical changes and looking at how people caused and responded to these changes. An example of a significant historical transformation is the change from a primarily rural, non-industrial society into an urban, industrialized society, commonly known as the Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution can be taught from many perspectives but I think that many textbooks and teachers emphasize the idea that the use of machines caused the Industrial Revolution as I did until reading Marx’s argument. Of course, it appears that machines caused the Industrial Revolution. Without the machines the Industrial Revolution would never had happened. However, to say that the machines caused the revolution would be saying that machines control people which is giving human powers to inanimate things (fetishism). More accurately, the process and direction of the Industrial Revolution was controlled by human decisions. For example, many people say that the new farm machinery created a situation where fewer workers were needed. This is only partially true. It is more true to say that machines created a situation where less labor time was necessary to create the same amount of goods. How the machines were going to be used is a social-economic question where power, class, race, and gender are a factor. Would farmers use the new technology to create the necessary goods in less time opening up more leisure time for society, or would the technology be used to enrich the few? Would this decision be made by all affected parties or just the owners of the machines?
Another example where social studies teachers tend to reify social relations and think that inanimate things control people is the Great Depression. In textbooks, authors rarely state that the primary cause of the Great Depression was the inherent contradiction of capitalism. According to Marx, the inherent contradiction of capitalism is the fact that the capitalists always produce more goods than what the worker can afford to consume. If there was equality between production and consumption, then there would not be capital and capitalists. At any rate, because of the lack of organized worker resistance during the 1920’s (Brecher, 1997; Zinn 1980), the capitalists were able to keep down the average wage relative to the overall value of production. This caused the capitalists to not only have the capacity but to actually overproduce. Not that citizens did not necessarily want the products, but that the capitalist had more goods than what the workers could afford to purchase. Many teachers reify the social relations of capitalism and do not seek explanation that question its underlying principles. Of course, many folks would disagree with my analysis and claim that by emphasizing one interpretation I am engaging in indoctrination. I consistently struggle with this issue of indoctrination and look for kids who may be blindly accepting my teachings.
One particular resource that I think has been valuable in breaking down reification and the fetishism of commodities is a curriculum on the history of work and workers in the United States titled Power in our Hands. The curriculum materials encourage those who experience the lessons to reflect “on our power, our ability to make and remake society- to see everything about our lives as changeable” (Bigelow and Diamond, 1988, p. 15). The lesson that has the most impact is the Organic Goodie Simulation. In this simulation, the teacher plays the role of the capitalist who owns a machine that creates Organic Goodies. The students start off playing the role of the workers or the unemployed. To increase her profits, the capitalist begins to lower the cost of production by offering jobs to unemployed individuals for wages lower than what she is currently paying. When an unemployed person agrees to work for this wage, the teacher finds a worker who is willing to lower her wage to keep her job or else be replaced by the unemployed person. Of course, this causes the workers to become restless. Thus, with the surplus being created by the workers, the capitalist hires a couple individuals who she thinks are loyal to the system to police the restless workers and protect property, particularly the capitalist’s Organic Goodie machine (Bigelow & Diamond, 1988). A student who experienced the Organic Goodie simulation said he learned a lot about being controlled or having control over people, especially with the Organic Goodie activity. Later in this curriculum, students learn how workers resisted the power of the capitalist through strikes and made demands for more control over their work. As a student concludes, When the strikes stopped . . . the strikers went back to work and the demands of the strikers fought for [sic] changed the relationship between the workers and the owners.” Another students says that I think the hidden idea behind what we learned is that unless your organized and have the power to control your actions then you can [not] overcome the problems you face.
Students Responses
In order to function in this world, I have to believe that my core assumptions about how society and history changes are true. At the same time, I think it is important to doubt, and be willing to have my core beliefs questioned and challenged. Therefore, I encourage kids to question themselves, me and any authors used in the curriculum. I feel uncomfortable when kids are able to answer or analyze situations in the manner I do. Of course, my ego says that this is good and illustrates that kids are listening and interested in the topic. However, it is potentially dangerous because kids may not be coming to these particular conclusions because they understand the generative epochal themes but are coming to them because they have learned the rules of the game. I try to counteract this tendency by not placing too much emphasis upon getting a good grade. Kids basically earn either credit or no credit for regular classroom activities and assignments. My cumulative assessments consist of factual questions where kids can use all of their materials and have open ended questions where kids evaluate and respond to the content. Quality is emphasized over quantity. Content is emphasized over form. Below are some samples of student responses to the opened ended question of how the student’s experience in my classroom has helped her understand the world better. During this particular activity, kids were not required to focus upon their English proficiency skills and this is reflected in some of their responses. I think their responses demonstrate that the class content and methodology is, to some degree, achieving the explicit and implicit goals in chapter two.
This class has helped me understand my life better by comparing my thoughts to the other students in the class.
I am thinking of being a carpenter when I grow up and now I know what to be aware of…I have to be careful that they don’t take advantage of me and take what I worked for to build up their fortunes
Even if a person does not agree with another person’s ideas they should still listen to it so they can see how someone else sees things.
History is also in the making so don’t mess up.
If one person is not happy with the way she is being treated at work or is not getting paid enough, this person might just go on strike. If she goes on strike, there is a good chance other people might agree with him and join him.
The unit titled The People Fight Back taught me the most about history and why it is basically the same way today. Such as there is still a regular eight hour workday and the main thing a capitalist is out for is to have the biggest and richest business. For example, my mom is always complaining that she cannot stand her boss (capitalist) because he keeps trying to bring her paycheck down. Which if he does it will be very hard for her to pay bills, put food on the table and to buy clothes for everybody.
I now see how history changed. It seems for things to be fair to everyone there must be war, killing and hate. For example, the eight hour day, people had to fight for that, go on strike. All because the rich is greedy and does not think of the people breaking their backs, they’re replaceable. While the rich were at parties the workers were killing themselves to eat every night. They have money for houses, cars, and a good time. The poor barely have enough to survive . . . . In conclusion, I have learned more in this twenty weeks than in my twelve years of history.
In a way, learning of all the strikes and rebellions and things that these people would do for equality, makes me respect those who fought even more than I already did. I mean these people sacrificed so much and willingly risked their own lives to better theirs and others situations….They probably didn’t even realize it then, but they were actually changing not only their world but also the generations of people who would follow after them.
By far the most important thing I learned this semester is what the other side thinks . . . . I thought I knew how today’s issues appear to a left-wing person. I had a general idea but before I took this class I really never thought why people have their viewpoints . . . .Now I look at issues and think ‘what does that politician stand to gain from that resolution.’ . . . .The curriculum . . . has reinforced my thoughts that academics blame everything on white males and the United States of America. The true elitist are liberals. The academics. The Hollywood crowd. Recording artists. They’ve never worked a day in their pathetic lives….They cry about working class people and how they are being exploited. Marxist hypocritical claptrap….Oh well. The class was fun, sir. I hope I didn’t cause you too much trouble. Go easy on those kids next semester. I won’t be there to deprogram the thoughts you put in their heads.
The many classroom conversations that were held between Mr. Queen and the class
. . . kept providing an equal view by giving both sides of the argument.
I actually had to think and do something to pass this class. You weren’t just going to pass me. I started turning in my work, reading your handouts, and I believe that I even opened up to group discussions. I had to pay attention and think clearly about my answers not just guess.
These
student comments indicate the degree of freedom experienced in the classroom
and suggest that dialogue occurs and kids are integrating themselves with the
curriculum rather than simply absorbing the information. They are being responsive rather than
reactive. They are actively
constructing knowledge rather than passively absorbing it. My ability and the ability of the kids
to do this improves as the age of the student increases. I think this is the case simply because
older kids have had more life experiences to integrate with my curriculum. In the end, relevance, or being able to
identify with the curriculum, is key.
Conclusions
As a professional, I have recognized the importance of taking a role in union business, professional organizations like the National and Michigan Council for the Social Studies, and taking a public stand on other education-related issues such as state controlled standards and high-stakes testing. For example, in and outside the classroom, I regularly talk about the MEAP and standardized curriculum. Kids are particularly interested in the idea that a teacher would be opposed to the MEAP. I think kids are interested because they tend to think teachers are all on the same page (as the saying goes these days). I have discovered my stance against the MEAP, the content of my class, and the methodology I use have opened the door of trust to some of the more difficult to reach students. These kids who have not been particularly successful in their schooling hate the tools such as the MEAP which are used to devalue their way of knowing and their knowledge of the world by measuring their worth using means they are less proficient in and knowledge that is less meaningful to them. I do not mean to suggest that they are uninformed or stupid, but just do not care to compete academically using somebody else’s standards or are not good test takers. Through my curriculum, methods and actions outside the classroom, kids begin to realize that as an adult, I am truly their ally. My goal is to illustrate to them that in many cases social forces, like school, frequently dehumanize kids and make their experiences less valuable. By teaching working-class history, in contrast to the traditional social studies content, kids begin to see themselves in the story and realize that they need to be more conscious of their world. My hope is that this increased consciousness leads to actions that promote equality and democracy.
Future
In the future, I would like to do a few things differently. The curriculum that I have put together does not offer enough opportunity for students to explore their own particular interests. I have struggled with this fact. My philosophy is not completely child-centered (Shannon, 1990). The child is valued in the classroom but I do not believe that kids are completely capable and should determine for themselves what is necessary to know in order to understand the world in which they live. The problem with this belief is that the child may not have enough opportunities to experience freedom and teach themselves how to make sense of the world. In the community where I teach, I see kids having an extremely difficult time determining their interests and how to research and explore the nuances of issues. At this point in time, I think many kids I teach need an excessive amount of direction. I have tried several approaches to resolve this dilemma between freedom and control. I have created near absolute freedom. In that particular experiment, about half the kids squandered their time and I do not think they were better off because of it. I have tried near absolute control, and kids resist being controlled. I have found a balance that seems to work for most kids most of the time. The problem is that it does not fit my preconceived notions of freedom. My notion of freedom is for the individual to decide what she wants to do and how she is going to do it. I think the individual should seek suggestions from the teacher but the teacher should not push her views upon the student. Also, the teacher should not expect the student to blindly accept the teachers views and suggestions. At any rate, this dilemma and its nature will change over time as I and the students change.
References
Achieve.Org (2002). Call To Action: Why Standards. Internet. 1 May 2002. Available: Achieve.org
Apple, M. (1993). Official Knowledge: Democratic Education in a Conservative Age. New York: Routledge.
Anyon, Jean. (1980). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education.
Bigelow, W. & Diamond, N. (1988). The Power in Our Hands: A Curriculum on the History of Work and Workers in the United States. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Bottomore, T. (Ed.). (1991). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers LTD.
Brecher, J. (1997). Strike. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Brown, B. (1973). Marx, Freud, and the Critique of Everyday Life: Toward a Permanent Cultural Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Callahan, R. (1962). Education and the Cult of Efficiency. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Doyle, Denis. (1996). A Personal Report from the Education Summit: What Does It Mean For Education Reform? Internet. 1 May, 2002. Available:
http://www.achieve.org/achieve.nsf/WhyTests_Facts?openform
Economic Policy Institute. (2001). State of Working America.
Freire, P. (1973). Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Gibson, R. (1997). The Michigan Social Studies Standards: Beware of the Dream Censors. Cultural Logic, 1.
Gibson, R. (1999). Political Economy for Critical Educators. [Brochure] Detroit, MI: Renaissance Community Press.
Goodnough, A. (2001, May 23). Teaching by the Book, No Asides Allowed. New York Times. Internet. 1 May 2002. Available: nytimes.org
Higgins, L. (2002, January 18). Education Experts Dig in on Test Data: A New Tool Could Aid in Evaluating Kids’ Success. Detroit Free Press. Internet. 1 May 2002. Available: freep.com
Hursh, D. (2001). NeoLiberalism and the Control of Teachers, Students, and Learning: The Rise of Standards, Standardization and Accountability. Cultural Logic, 4.
Lipman, P. (2001) Bush’s Education Plan, Globalization, and the Politics of Race. Cultural Logic, 4.
Lukacs, G. (1971) History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Rodney Livingstone, Trans.). Great Britain: Merlin Press Ltd. (Original work published 1968)
Mathison, S. & Ross, E.W. (in press). The Hegemony of Accountability in Schools and Universities. Workplace: The Journal for Academic Labor.
McLaren, P. (1994). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (2nd ed.). White Plains NY: Longman.
Merriam-Webster, (1987). Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc.
Mishel, L., Berstien, J. & Schmitt, J. (2001). The State of Working America. Cornell University Press.
Monchinski, T. (2001). Capitalist Schooling: An Interview with Bertell Ollman. Cultural Logic, 4.
Perlman, F. (1968). Introduction: Commodity Fetishism. In I.I. Rubin Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value (pp.ix-xxxviii). Detroit, MI: Black and Red.
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Ross, E. Wayne.
(2000, March). The
Spectacle of Standards and Summits:
The National Education Summit. Z Magazine, 12(3), 45-48.
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(pp. 43-63). New York: Falmer.
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I.I. (1972). Essays on
Marx’s Theory of Value (M. Samardzija & F. Perlman, Trans). Detroit: Black and Red. (Original work
published 1928)
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M. (1978). Marxism and Education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.
Shannon,
P. (1990). The Struggle to Continue:
Progressive Reading Instruction in the United States. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Shannon, P. (1992). Commercial Reading Materials, a Technological Ideology, and the Deskilling of Teachers. In P. Shannon (Ed.), Becoming Political: Readings and Writings in the Politics of Literacy Education. (pp. 182-207). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Shannon, P. (1998). Reading Poverty. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Shannon, P. (2001). A Marxist Reading of Reading Education. Cultural Logic, 4.
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Bibliography
Anyon, J. (1980) Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Internet. 1 May 2002. Available: http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/hiddencurriculum.htm
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. United States: Basic Books.
Gibson, R. (1993). Dialectical Materialism for the Earnest: A Very Short Course. Internet. 1 May 2002. Available: http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/diamata.html
Carr, E. (1961). What Is History? New York: Vintage Books.
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Ollman, B. (1976). Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Shannon, P. (1995). Text, Lies and Videotape: Stories About Life, Literacy, and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Appendix A
The
following terms are used throughout the text and may be helpful in better
understanding some of the concepts being discussed. The source for the definitions is the Encyclopedia of Marxism:Glossary of Terms. It is available online at http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/index.htm.
Alienation--Alienation is
the process whereby people become foreign to the world they are living in.
Bourgeoisie--The
class of people in bourgeois society who own
the social means of production as
their Private Property, i.e., as
capital.
Commodity--A commodity is
something that is produced for the purpose of exchanging for something else,
and as such, is the material form given to a fundamental social relation
— the exchange
of labour.
Division of Labor-- The
division of labour is a specific mode of cooperation wherein different tasks
are assigned to different people.
Labour Power--[The combination] of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.
Lumpenproletariat--Roughly
translated as slum proletariat, the term covers the outcast,
degenerated and submerged elements that make up a section of the population of
industrial centers. It includes beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers,
swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables,
persons who have been cast out by industry, and all sorts of declassed,
degraded or degenerated elements. In times of prolonged crisis (depression),
innumerable young people also, who cannot find an opportunity to enter into the
social organism as producers, are pushed into this limbo of the outcast. Here
demagogues and fascists of various
stripes find some area of the mass base in time of struggle and social
breakdown, when the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat are enormously
swelled by ruined and declassed elements from all layers of a decaying society.
Means of Production--The tools (instruments) and the raw material (subject) you use to create something are the means of production. If we examine the whole process from the point of view of its result, the product, it is plain that both the instruments and the subject of labour, are means of production, and that the labour itself is productive labour
Mode of Production--The method of producing the necessities of life (whether for health, food, housing or needs such as education, science, nurturing, etc.).
Object and Subject--Subject
and Object are crucial concepts in Epistemology, the study of knowledge.
‘Subject’ refers to the active, cognizing individual or social
group, with consciousness and/or will, while ‘object’ refers to
that on which the subject’s cognitive or other activity observes.
Petit-Bourgeoisie--
lit., “little city-folk”
— the small business people, sometimes extended to include the
professional middle-class and better-off farmers.
Profit--Profit is the unpaid
labour expropriated from workers by a capitalist and distributed by various means among the capitalist
class, measured in proportion to the total
capital invested.
The
notion of profit is closely related to that of surplus-value.
Production and Consumption--Production
and consumption are two inseparable aspects of the production and reproduction
of human life, but in modern society these concepts have become separated.
Proletariat--The
proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labour power and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose
weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand
for labour.
Reification--The transformation of social relations into an objective existence. Reification is often used derivatively, as imagining that abstracted relations exist in Nature, rather than being products of human thought.
Relations of Production--The objective material relations that exist in any society independently of human consciousness, formed between all people in the process of social production, exchange, and distribution of material wealth.
Surplus-value—Surplus value is the social product which is over and above what is required for the producers to live.
Appendix
B
Below is a list of some of the
films, songs, print and websites that I use which may or may not have been
mentioned in the project.
Films
Salt of the Earth.
(1987). Oak Forest, IL :
MPI Home Video
Matewan. (1996). Los Angeles, CA : Evergreen Entertainment.
Escape from Sobibor. (1987). Zenith Productions: A Blum Group-Jordexx television release
Musicians/Song(s)
Ani Defranco. Every State Line and Coming Up
Talking Heads. Democratic Circus.
John Lennon. It’s So Hard.
Bob Dylan. Masters of War and Last Thoughts on Woodie Guthrie.
Rage Against the Machine. Take the Power Back
Woodie Guthrie. This Land Is Your Land and Jesus Christ.
Gil Scott Heron. The Revolution Will Not be
Televised.
Utah Phillips. Unless You Are Free and Dump the Bosses.
Printed Resources
Zinn, Howard. (1980). The People’s History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins.
History Alive. (1997). Civil War and Reconstruction. Teachers’ Curriculum Institute. Palo Alto, California.
Johnson, Charles. (1984). Managerie, A Child’s Fable. Scribner.
LeDuff, Charlie. (2000, June 16) At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die: Who Kills, Who Cuts, Who Bosses Can Depend on. The New York Times. Internet. 1 May 2002.
Available: nytimes.com
Galeono,
Eduardo. (2000, May) A World Gone
Mad. The Progressive. I
have found The Progressive to be a readable resource of current events for high
school students.
Rubenstein, Richard. (1975). The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. New York: Harper Torchbooks.
World Wide Web Resources.
Rethinking Schools. www. rethinkingschools.com
Anti-Imperialist League. http://www.boondocksnet.com/ailtexts/wgsumner.html
History Matters. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/
Znet.
http://www.lol.shareworld.com/weluser.htm. This is both a magazine and website with a wide range of
topic and writers.
Jay’s
Radical History Links. Many
links to websites that look at history from a leftist point of view.
Zinn,
Howard. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zinn. This website contains a list of articles and selected
chapters by and from books written by Howard Zinn.
Gibson,
Rich. http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson.
This website is a resource to educate the educator and some resources
that can be used in the K-12 classroom.