Capitalism and/in the Classroom

All in the midst of discussing the rise of the institution of American public education, Starr mentions -- almost begrudgingly -- the idea offered by some "Marxist historians" that "the growth of mass public schooling ... served the particular interests of industrial capitalism ... Schools did not teach valuable cognitive skills so much as the compliant behavior required by factories" (106). He does not so much as pause, however, to consider the concept seriously, or its implications on his own argument: instead, he immediately jumps to what he calls the "overwhelming difficulties" of this theory, citing school enrollment rates, school expenditures in relation to industrialization, the "choice" of public education, and the fact that other capitalist countries had not witnessed the development of a similar system of public education (107).

I find his judgment -- and rationale -- here to be a bit hasty, though. Immediately following the paragraph in which he issues his dismissal of this notion, he admits that "American education left much to be desired ... although [it] was more practical and more broadly disseminated, than education in Europe, it lacked depth and richness" (107). Although Starr fails to explain what, exactly, might be implied by the terms "depth" and "richness", his comment here appears to corroborate the very claim he had been so eager to reject: that American education, in many ways, paralleled processes of industrial capitalism, if not authorship and formation, then certainly in content. The lack of "depth and richness" in American education, and it's substitutive emphasis on standardized output and models of measuring efficiency, have, in fact, figured prominently in the critiques of many. Richard Ohmann, for example, in works such as English in America (1996) and The Politics of Knowledge (2003), has emphasized the relationship between mass education and standards of complicity under industrialization. And I, for one, can't help but see Starr's last-minute admittance serving to corroborate Ohmann's ideas.

Additionally, Starr states, when turning to a discussion of public education in the American South, that this region "deviated from this pattern [of increased public education] in critical respects .. all but one of the states in the South rejected common schools before the Civil War" (108). Could not this fact be rather logically attributed to a less advanced stage of industrial capitalism in the South, though, a topic already discussed by Starr? Since the South was, at this time, still largely agricultural, and since it was the North that contained America's early factories, it is not surprising, with this Marxist historical perspective in mind, that the South might then also fail to develop a system of mass education.

This isn't to say that Starr is completely off his nut: I think he adds some valuable complexities to the theories offered by folks like Ohmann. I was nevertheless perturbed by his unwillingness to entertain the idea for more than a second. There are some very compelling connections between the American system of public education in particular and the "skills" required, used, and disseminated by processes of industrial capitalism. Afterall, I believe it was public school that first taught me the lifelong skill of "looking busy".