Capitalist-class objectives, not reformer ideals, have actually shaped US schooling

Evidence

More fundamentally, the contradictory nature of liberal educational re­ form objectives may be directly traced to the dual role imposed on educa­ tion in the interests of profitability and stability; namely, enhancing workers’ productive capacities and perpetuating the social, political, and economic conditions for the transformation of the fruits of labor into cap­ italist profits. It is these overriding objectives of the capitalist class— not the ideals of liberal reformers— which have shaped the actuality of U.S. education and left little room for the school to facilitate the pursuit of equality or full human development. When education is viewed as an as­ pect of the reproduction of the capitalist division of labor, the history of school reforms in the United States appears less as a story of an enlight­ ened but sadly unsuccessful corrective and more as an integral part of the process of capitalist growth itself. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 569

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: US educational reform responded to the social unrest of new wage laborers — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 617; Capitalism, not technology, limits what schools can reform. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 289; US schooling founders aimed at social control amid capitalist inequality, not equality — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 363 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Differentiated schooling reproduces rather than abolishes class divisions #corroborates (0.85)
• Vocational schooling advocated as democratic actually crystallises class differences #exemplifies (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 364
• Classroom decorum rules covertly enforce bourgeois values on working-class students #exemplifies (0.82) — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, 353
• School curricula depict slavery as an aberration rather than a foundational institution #exemplifies (0.82) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 29
• A school’s social character comes from which class it serves, not its teaching method #corroborates (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 365
• A school’s social character comes from perpetuating a group’s class function #corroborates (0.80)
• American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history #corroborates (0.78) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352
• Schools serve as the machinery that manufactures differentiated intellectual strata #expands (0.78)
• Reproducing capitalism requires family, schools, church, and media, not just production #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 909