FOR AN EDUCATION WHICH FILLS US WITH HUMANITY NOT CONSUMERISM
Today's society does not look at man as a thinking being but rather as the
raw material destined to be consumed by an economy that enslaves him and
looks upon him simply as a means for it to increase wealth.
This situation is largely held up by our education system which begins at a
very early age. We are forced to learn a code of good conduct. This code
does not give us rules of citizenship but rather a code for underlings. The
education system errases invividuality and the questioning mind. The first
diploma in good conduct is achieved at the end of secondary school and is
known as the baccalaureat. This diploma is also the means of entry to the
famous university system.
As for other people, they are 'parked' in technical training projects which
most often lead directly to unemployment or insecurity in jobs with neither
status nor rights.
Until very recently - the 1950s - university was a separate world where folk
lived out their separation. It enjoyed this pretentiousness. Those were
times when politics implied criticism, the critical mind. Today's elite
doesn't need to know how to think but rather how to manage, make money. Thus
the elite is formed in the specialised schools: HEC (High Finance School),
Ecoles Superieures de Commerce, ENA, private universities etc. In this
strange factory which never lacks funding some strange types are formed: the
technocrats.
The university has become the training ground for the middle classes and no
longer that of the elite and students, if they are lucky because both the
failure rate and graduate unemployment rate are high, will get small
managerial jobs above all in the state education system. The current
economic and social crisis explains the university crisis. It is no longer
possible or even necessary for the global capitalist system to guarantee the
future of 2 million students. That is why the funds have dried up which
would allow students to study in reasonable conditions. This is nothing
other than the outcome of the logic of liberalism and regional management.
And if the universities are in crisis the knowledge we receive is dead
already decomposing. The lecturer has become a small time trader and his
students undemanding consumers. They acquire a knowledge they cannot use.
Nothing is more important to the student than to acquire a vague learning
which he will then sell, if he can, on the labour market.
'Take notes', 'learn by heart' and 'regurgitate' these are the three
elements which define knowledge today.
Let us make of school - from primary to university level - a place of
blossoming, enrichment, criticism and action. This is one of our demands.
Emancipation as opposed to submission.
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To have a university or technical training no longer protects you from
unemployment. Universities are simple there to massage the unemployment
figures where you can wat before taking on an insecure job. The capitalist
production system has no room for people who think for themselves. It
prefers managers, money makers, good leaders and docile workers. To talk of
training problems, adapting education to the needs of business in order to
deal with the economic and social crisis is pure demagogy in a world where
mutations and evolutions allow for the production on mass of use value goods
which could be redistributed with equality and solidarity amongst
individuals and the peoples of the North and South allowing all to live with
dignity. It is for us to create the new future which will ensure that our
living conditions are satisfactory with or without work
(Extract from 'No Pasaran' special edition 14th December 1995)
FREEDOM PRESS
http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/Freedom