Class, Capital, and Education in this Neoliberal and Neoconservative Period
Dave Hill
2010
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76
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Full text
Semantic Scholar
Key Takeaway Key Takeaway: Neoliberal and Neoconservative policies aim to reshape public institutions, such as schools, universities, and libraries, to produce passive worker/citizens with just enough skills to be useful to capital.
Abstract
In the aftermath of “the Bankers’ Bailout,” the 2008–2009 crisis of Neoliberal Finance Capital (and its subsequent impacts on Industrial Capital), the political response to “the credit crunch,” by parties funded by Capital, such as the Democrats and Republicans in the United States and Labour, Liberal, and Conservative Parties in the United Kingdom, and conservative and social democrat parties globally, is not to blame the capitalist system. Not even to blame the neo- liberal form of capitalism. Instead they promise—indeed, threaten more severe forms of neoliberalism—and control. The current neoliberal project, the latest stage of the capitalist project, is to reshape the public’s understanding of the purposes of public institutions and apparatuses, such as schools, universities, and libraries. In schools, intensive testing of pre-designed curricula (high-stakes testing) and accountability schemes (such as the “failing schools” and regular inspection regime that somehow only penalizes working class schools) are aimed at restoring schools (and further education and universities) to what dominant elites—the capitalist class—perceive to be the schools’ “traditional role” of producing passive worker/citizens with just enough skills to render themselves useful to the demands of capital.