Abstract
American schools are working exactly the way they are intended to work. The modern public education system developed to serve the managerial needs of industrial capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century. It reached maturity along with the economic system as the factory-model in the 1920s and has changed very little since. As education became more regimented to meet the workforce needs of industrial capitalism, high schools became key areas for indoctrination and sorting, especially for urban immigrant populations. In recent decades, as automation, robotics, and globalization have decreased the need for unskilled and semi-skilled labor, three trends have added to the capitalist nature of miseducation in the United States—zero tolerance criminal justice, high-stakes testing, and charter schools. American schools do however allow some space for promoting progressive change. Marxists can support the development of students from disadvantaged backgrounds as Gramscian organic intellectuals of the working class.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press.
Althusser, L. (1969). For Marx, Verso.
Bennett, W., Finn, C., & Cribb, J. (2000). The Educated Child: A Parents Guide from Preschool Through Eighth Grade. New York: Touchstone.
Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education. (1918). Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bulletin, 1918, No. 35. National Education Association, Department of the Interior Bureau of Education, Government Printing Office.
Cremin, L. (1961). The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957. New York: Knopf.
Dickens, C. (1973). Hard Times. London: Penguin.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Script. (1986). http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/f/ferris-buellers-day-off-script.html. Accessed Online on April 4, 2017.
Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. Santa Barbara: Praeger.
Goldfarb, D. (2006). The American Constitution and the Debate Over Originalism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gray, K. (1993). Why We Will Lose: Taylorism in America’s High Schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 74 (5), 370–374.
Harris, M. (1969). Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture. Palo Alto: AltaMira Press.
Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Hirsch, E. D. (1996). The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’t Have Them. New York: Random House.
Hoare, Q., & Smith G. (Ed.). (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. New York: International Press.
Hoppus, J. (1847). The Crisis of Popular Education: Its Historical, Internal, Statistical, Financial, and Political Relations. Including a Consideration of the “Minutes of the Committee of Council on Education”, and of the Educational Controversy, in General. London: J. Snow.
Kleibard, H. (1987). The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958. Boston: Routledge.
Kohl, H. (1991). I Won’t Learn from You: And Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment. New Press: New Press.
Lukács, G. (1972). History and Class Consciousness. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mirel, J. (2006, Winter). The Traditional High School: Historical Debates Over Its Nature and Function. Education Next, 6(1), 4–21.
National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983, April). A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Reform. National Commission on Excellence in Education.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keep Tracking: How Schools Structure Inequality. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Obama, B. (2009, July 14). President’s Remarks in Warren, Michigan. The White House. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/the-press-office/excerpts-presidents-remarks-warren-michigan-and-fact-sheet-american-graduation-init. Accessed Online on March 27, 2017.
Poulantzas, N. (1979). The Political Crisis and the Crisis of the State. In J. W. Freiberg (Ed.), Critical Sociology. New York: Irvington.
Public School Society of New-York. (1850). A Manual of the System of Discipline and Instruction. New York: Egbert, Hovey & King.
Ravitch, D., & Finn C. (1987). What Do our 17-Year Olds Know? A Report on the First National Assessment of History and Literature. New York: Harper & Row.
Reigart, J. (1916). The Lancasterian System of Instruction in the Schools of New York City, Issue 81. New York City: Teachers College, Columbia University.
Shapiro, H. S. (1980, August). Education and the State in Capitalist Society: Aspects of the Sociology of Nico Poulantzas. Harvard Educational Review, 50(3): 321–331.
Singer, A. (2014). Education Flashpoints: Fighting for America’s Schools. Abingdon: Routledge.
Singer, A. (2016, November 28). Trump Moves to Destroy Public Education. Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/trump-moves-to-destroy-pu_b_13277736.html. Accessed Online on March 3, 2018.
Spring, J. (2013). American Education. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Toffler, A. (1970). Future Shock. New York: Random House.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Singer, A. (2020). What If Our Schools Are Working? Base, Superstructure, and Hegemony in Education. In: Silver, M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13639-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13639-0_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-13638-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-13639-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)