27.9.24

Beneath the cobblestones, the beach!

Colagem: Against us | 2020

Education far from being in some ivory tower safely inured from the real world, is the engine room of the reproduction of social reality, directly confronting the inconsistencies of the capitalist social field. Teachers are caught between being facilitator-entertainers and disciplinarian-authoritarians. Teachers want to help students to pass the exams; they want us to be authority figures who tell them what to do. Teachers being interpellatd by students as authority figures exacerbates the boredom problem, since isn't anything that comes from the place of authority a priori boring? Ironically, the role of disciplinarian is demanded of educators more than ever at precisely the time when disciplinary structures are breaking down in institutions. With families buckling under the pressure of a capitalism requires both parentes to work, teachers are now increasingly required to act as surrogate parents, instilling the most basic behavioral protocols in students and providing pastoral and emotional support for teenargers who are in some cases only minimally socialized.

Lack of any meaningful employment opportunities, together with cynical encouragement from government means that college seems to be the easier, safer option. Deleuze says that Control societies are based on debt rather than enclosure; but there is a way in wich the current education system both indebts and encloses students. Pay for you own exploitation, the logic insists - get into debt so you can get the same McJob you could have walked into if you'd left school at sixteen...