Education aims to form autonomous citizens, not just skilled workers

Evidence

The common school, or school of humanistic formation (taking the term “humanism” in a broad sense rather than simply in the traditional one) or general culture, should aim to insert young men and women into social activity after bringing them to a certain level of maturity, of capacity for intellectual and practical creativity, and of autonomy of orientation and initiative. The fixing of an age for compulsory school attendance depends on the general economic conditions, since the latter may make it necessary to demand of young men and women, or even of children, a certain immediate productive contribution. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 337

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘common school’ as humanistic formation toward autonomous citizenship, a key Gramscian concept.
• XREF: connects to: Higher education now produces skills instead of ideals or emancipation. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 359; The human-capital concept entails that education is a consumer good, not transformative experience — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 168; Mass higher education was meant to cultivate knowingness and humility for democratic citizenship — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 380 (+2 more)