[news] Secondary Illiterates: The Crisis of Education in Western Industrial Countries

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 http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/2004/06/26898.php

Secondary Illiterates: The Crisis of Education in Western Industrial 
Countries
by Robert Kurz . 
<http://victoria.indymedia.org/news/?author=Robert+Kurz&comments=yes> 
Friday June 11, 2004 at 09:22 AM
mbatko at lycos.com <mailto:mbatko at lycos.com>

    "European literacy and the schooling of society were not generous
    civilizing gifts to people but part of that process described as
    `inner colonialization'.. Infrastructural institutions are not
    market enterprises but overall social conditions of the market
    economy.."

SECONDARY ILLITERATES

The Crisis of Education in Western Industrial Countries

By Robert Kurz

[This article originally published in: Folha March 2004 is translated 
from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.krisis.org.]

In the history of colonialism, the West represented itself as the 
superior civilization in relation to the rest of the world in the 
cultural sense and not only technically and economically. The western 
ideologues of the 19th and first half of the 20th century spoke of "the 
white man's burden" that he took on himself to delight the world with 
his blessings. First after the 2nd World War, a criticism of 
"eurocentrism" began in the western intelligentsia. The independent 
cultural achievements of the "others" were discovered after their 
accomplishments were thoroughly destroyed over several centuries. This 
was an acknowledgment for the museum and the guilty memory.

De-colonialization obviously did not bring any renewal of the old, long 
eviscerated cultures that are still instrumentalized today for an 
ideological identity. Instead the post-colonial social movements and 
states of the South oriented themselves in the western model in every 
way, beginning with the political category of the "nation" to the modern 
civil or middle-class legal form and administrative rationality. The 
campaign of literacy and the installation of a school- and educational 
system according to western standards were part of that emulation.

On first view the literacy and educational offensive were great 
emancipatory achievements. Who would deny that the elementary cultural 
equipment of reading and writing are indispensable prerequisites for 
civilizing progress? How can the mediation of knowledge and education be 
than positive? The substance of knowledge and the form of mediation are 
central. In this regard, the genesis of the western educational system 
was in no way completely emancipatory. European literacy and the 
"schooling" of society were not generous civilizing gifts to people but 
part of that progress described in the critical literature with the term 
"inner colonialization". The outward subjugation of the world by the 
West went along with an inner preparation of western people as 
"material" of capitalist exploitation. The intellectual training and 
conduct orienting all of life in "abstract labor" (Marx) and universal 
competition were important and went beyond forceful disciplining. Both 
the institutional forms of education "for the people" and the mediated 
themes served this goal of "internalizing" a capitalist job profile.

The "higher" education for the youth of the middle class elite is only 
seemingly different. The rising generation for the executive floors in 
the economy, politics and culture should receive the most universal 
knowledge and be encouraged to philosophical reflection beyond 
capitalism's immediate practical demands. In Germany, Wilhelm von 
Humboldt (1767-1835) even created a neo-humanist educational ideal that 
understood the universal development of the mind as an end-in-itself 
that should not be degraded to a functionalist "training" for pre-given 
goals. However educational ideals of this kind were not oriented to 
criticism but to the intellectual indulgence of a middle class that had 
not completely delegated its self-confidence to the functional 
mechanisms "of the system" or allowed itself the luxury of a supposedly 
"pure" education, research and cultural self-image.

The post-colonial states of the South reproduced the western ideals of 
education, both the functionally reduced education for the "people" and 
the higher, "pure" education for the elites. This occurred along with 
the rest of the capitalist institutions. The education offensive of the 
nations in the so-called 3rd world reached its limits just as the 
paradigm of "equalizing modernization" collapsed since the 1980s in the 
process of globalization and the world crisis of the 3rd industrial 
revolution. A modern education with respected schools, universities, 
research institutes and cultural institutions can only be financed when 
the corresponding national economy is competitive on the world market.

In expanding regions of the world, the school system and education 
dissolve together with the economy. As there are "ghost factories" that 
fall below the standard of the world market, only exist nominally and 
hardly produce anything, there are also "ghost schools" and "ghost 
universities" where there isn't real teaching and research any more. The 
rate of literacy declines not only in Afghanistan and Somalia.

Education shares this fate with most other infrastructures or public 
services. A certain economic logic underlies the problem. By their 
nature, infra-structural institutions like the postal service, water 
supply, public health system and education are not market enterprises 
but overall social conditions of the market economy. Seen economically, 
infra-structural institutions entail business costs, communal costs, 
dead costs or "faux frais" (Marx) of capitalist reproduction. Businesses 
presuppose certain qualifications including the most elementary ability 
to read and write for workers found on the labor market. This base 
qualification does not arise by nature (although it is treated like a 
natural, free resource by businesses). Social expenditures are necessary.

Businesses can only calculate their immediate operational costs. By 
their nature, they are not competent for aggregate social costs. 
Therefore the state usually assumes the operation and costs of 
infrastructures including education. This is a secondary, derived 
financing. Capitalist market incomes (profits, wages, fees) are taxed by 
the state to carry on the public services with this siphoned-off money.

The development of productive forces produces a fatal connection that 
was hardly considered in the past. The more the production of businesses 
becomes mechanized and the greater the share of practical capital 
(technology), the higher becomes the degree of socialization and the 
greater the importance of the infrastructure, education and training. 
Under the aspect of private capitalist calculation, the actual goal, the 
operational production for profit, is frustrated so to speak by the 
overall social framing conditions. The communal social costs or "dead 
costs" (from an operational standpoint) increase disproportionally. In 
this way, a chronic financing problem arises for the growing and 
necessary infrastructures. In other words, the degree of socialization 
produced by capitalism opposes capitalism itself. This problem is a 
special manifestation of a secular crisis.

In the 3rd industrial revolution of microelectronics, this problem 
intensifies in the course of a structural crisis of the markets. On the 
operational plane, a large number of workers are made superfluous since 
no re-absorption is possible any more through expansion of the markets. 
The state can tax wages less and less and in addition must finance the 
unemployment. At the same time transnational corporations in the process 
of globalization escape the fiscal grasp of the state in the "oases" of 
countries that do not tax or hardly tax foreign investors. The long 
precarious indebtedness of the state machine explodes. Financing public 
services and infrastructures is put in question although the practical 
demands on these areas grow through the same 3rd industrial revolution. 
Thus we face an intensifying inner contradiction of the system.

In a quasi-natural course of this crisis, both capacities of production 
and public sectors are idle or shut down for lack of profitability or 
"financing". The state machine is increasingly reduced to a restrictive 
management of people and resources, to its role as a power structure. 
The costs for domestic and foreign "security" rise continuously while 
costs for infrastructure provisions are driven down. In other words, the 
anti-social, anti-civilization barbaric core of the modern age appears 
as the "civilizing surplus" like medicine, care, education, culture and 
so forth successively disappear.

While the West under the leadership of the US produces a new 
crisis-colonialism and ideologically invokes the "rescue of 
civilization" motif, it denies itself in its own inner conditions 
through an anti-civilizing development. Education and the cultural 
institutions decay in western countries today similar to the crisis 
regions of the South. Bearers of education, training and culture in this 
part of the world are mostly the communes and provinces. For these lower 
levels of state administration, the financial crisis in the West is just 
as advanced as for central states of the 3rd world. In the schools, the 
plaster falls from the walls and teaching aids are out of date. 
Resources for training are eliminated. Whole series of the cultural 
niche production are liquidated. The Sunday addresses of politicians on 
the necessity of an education offensive in the "global competition" 
stand in crass opposition to reality. Young persons are dismissed from 
schools and universities who cannot master the essential cultural 
equipment and the larger connections. They are "secondary illiterates" 
who read and write scantily while not understanding and using the 
contents. Despite universal compulsory education, primary or complete 
illiteracy is advancing even in the US and Germany.

Politics and administration react stereotypically to the crisis 
contradictions with paradigmatic measures. As in all other areas, the 
first paradigm is called "privatization". However private schools, 
private universities and other private educational institutions active 
in marketing are obviously not public infrastructures but are oriented 
in a minority of a solvent clientele. Student fees are raised in public 
schools and universities and teaching aids are no longer free.

The second paradigm is closely related to this tendency, namely 
intensified propaganda for an elite education. Practically this means 
that normal schools and normal universities go to seed to concentrate 
state resources on a few elite institutions. These conditions that have 
long been usual in the US are now spreading in the whole western world. 
Nevertheless the intellectual level of the whole society inevitably 
falls when education depends on ability to pay. Private stipends cannot 
compensate for the loss in universal public services. The social 
reservoir in intellectual gifts is wasted.

The third paradigm disables the apparent crisis management, namely the 
functionalist reduction of education and research to immediate economic 
commercialization. Schools and universities are allied more directly and 
strongly to "the economy, guided by operational criteria and adjusted 
substantively to market conformism. The motto - Whatever you study is 
always business management - is seemingly true! Economic totalitarianism 
has come to education. This means that the cultural self-indulgence of 
the capitalist elites disappears together with the last remnants of the 
Humboldt educational ideal. The capitalist elites reduce themselves to 
"functional idiots of the system". The intellectual capacity for 
distance, the prerequisite for governing complex processes, dissolves. 
The new "elite" denies itself.

What happens to the fallow intellectual potential of society that can no 
longer be recalled? When education for the great multitude is crassly 
driven down, its past function of disciplining also becomes defunct. A 
"secondary illiteracy" occurs along with a "subversive intelligence" 
that no longer follows the demands of economic totalitarianism. The 
capitalist crisis management of education and knowledge could 
unintentionally bring about a new intellectual counter-culture.


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