A Definition of Schooling as We Know It: The Beginning of the End

• In Event: 34.096 - MTCC Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: 34.096-10 - Futures of Power and Resistance in Public Education

Abstract

This paper explores the connection between Capital and Capitalism particularly in United States education systems to ask if schooling is an analogy for the capitalist order, or a feature of late capitalism. Using Harvey’s (2014) Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism as a theoretical lens and drawing from McDermott’s (2010) recommendation to use literature as a form of political resistance, we analyze nineteenth century British and twentieth century American literature along with publicly available data to demonstrate how Capitalist forces in United States public schooling are neither sustainable nor sustaining. We seek to describe contradictions in schooling in order both to theorize how schooling as we know it might be challenged and imagine an alternative future for our schools.

Authors

• Dominic Terrel Walker, Columbia University

• Gail Buffalo, City College of New York

• Abigail Lopez, The Opportunity Network