Workers rationalize structural compromises that the system itself teaches as realism.
Evidence
Compromises in work habits and attitudes are rationalized as reflecting workers’ greater maturity, their appreciation of practical and political realities, or their more realistic assessment of the nature of the problem. But these rationalizations only summarize the prevailing structural constraints on human service bureaucracies. They are not “true” in an absolute sense. The teacher who psychologically abandons his or her aspirations to help children to read may succumb to a private assessment of the status quo in education. But this compromise says nothing ahout the potential of individual children to learn, or the capacity of the teacher to instruct. This potential remains intact. It is the system of schooling, the organization of the schooling bureaucracy, that teaches that children are dull or unmotivated, and that teachers must abandon their public commitments to educate. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 38
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Economic institutions perpetuate themselves through reproducing workers’ consciousness — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1130; Loathed-but-complied systems typify capitalist realism; Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 63
Broader Connections
- Workers internalize capitalist values and accept precarity as deserved
#expands(0.90) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 63 - Economic institutions perpetuate themselves through reproducing workers’ consciousness
#expands(0.85) — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 1130 - Loathed-but-complied systems typify capitalist realism
#exemplifies(0.85)