On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Keith Hudson wrote:
> In quoting the figures the only two important points I was making was that
> long before the government stepped in, education was pretty well universal
> in England, and secondly, that the motivation for State education was not
> educational but to do with nationalistism and what they saw as the
> "productivity" byproducts of education.
I would agree with the first point although we may possibly mean different
things by "universal education", which I would take to include non-formal
instruction in non-academic forms of knowledge. I agree about the
motivation for state eduction having to do with nationalism and
industry. In some unspoken (and unspeakable) fashion the school system is
still motivated by 19th century ideas of nationalism and 19th century
ideals of industry. And when I say "school system" I wouldn't exclude the
higher learning and its evalgelistic zeal for high tech innovation and
graduate employability. From what Mike Gurstein has told me about their
priorities and modus operandi, Tech BC could as well be the HMS Pinafore.
> We cannot possibly know what would have happened if the government had not
> stepped. I suspect we would have a better education system now.
This is an intriguing speculation. There should be a genre of
"evolutionary fiction" that elaborates the details of such institutional
alternatives. Assuming that we might well have had a better education
system, doesn't necessarily imply that we could get there today by
dismantling what has actually evolved. For one thing there have been
enormous sunk costs that people will be unwilling to write off. A
tug-of-war between special interests would determine what is preserved and
what is abandoned -- which, come to think of it describes what has been
happening since the 1980s and the Reagan/Thatcher impulse to
"deregulate". Old shackles (e.g., high taxes, trade union rules) have
been selectively removed from the most influential, new shackles (e.g.,
workfare, credential inflation, NAIRU) have been devised for the less
fortunate.
> historical fact is that all developing countries at around the 1870s were
> being swept along in a tide of nationhood (which then produced one of the
> most savage centuries in history).
I would take exception only to the word, "savage", which after all is
Europe's projection of its own dark side onto the other. All that is
most vile about the 20th century was the product of an erudite
and vain calculation. The creme de la creme perpetually schemed their own
immortality at whatever cost and whenever catastrophe struck moaned
disingenuously about their impotence in the face of
"savage" nature. Imperialism was/is not simply an undertaking of nations
competing against each other but also of ruling elites within nations
seeking to mobilize the "lower orders" (who otherwise might become
truculent) to some "higher purpose" (the elites').
I don't think one has to fantasize some inherent virtuousness to the
"proletariat" to postulate that the utilitarian mechanicisms of domination
(Blake's dark Satanic mills) inevitably grind out a result that is best
characterized by the old biblical term -- evil.
Temps Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
