This is Richard Wolff from Democracy at Work, responding to another Ask Prof Wolff question
from our Patreon community. And this one comes from Karahn, and Karahn asks the question: What
would a school system from the elementary all the way up to college, what would a school system look
like if we had a society in which production was organized in the form of worker co-ops rather than
in the capitalist top-down way that we are used to? What would it mean? And would it be different
in terms of what it aims to achieve? Rather than fitting us all into the capitalist system
as workers, or managers, or owners, what would be the alternative objectives of such a system?
Well, you know this question comes up often. And I'm very glad that Karahn asked it and that
I have a chance to sketch what an answer would look like. The most important thing is to say
that education would no longer be subordinated to the role of reproducing capitalism. And let
me explain briefly what I mean. It's not just teaching the idea that capitalism is the greatest
gift since sliced bread. And it's not just that capitalism is presented as efficient and fair,
and all of those obvious ideological things, which our education system in the U.S. certainly does.
It's not so much that. It's the more subtle ways that capitalism subordinates education.
Think how many times you've heard an official in the educational system talk about running
the school, quote, "in a business-like manner." What an awful idea. Or think about what it means
that we organize schools with the workers (the teachers, the clerks, the janitors) subordinated
to a tiny group of administrators at the top. Does that remind you of how most capitalist businesses
work? Mm-hmm. That's what it should remind you of. And think also of the number of times people have
advocated this or that educational policy because it's "better preparing our young people for the
jobs that are out there." What a way to serve capitalism. It's an organization to recruit and
train whatever they need. And we know that what businesses need is governed by the profit motive
that is uppermost in the minds of businesses: their bottom line. So how would it be different?
Very quickly, here we go. Number one: It would be different because it wouldn't be
organized (a school anyway) in that top-down business-like way. It would be organized as
a community with collectives working together. The collective of the teachers. The collective
of the other workers alongside the teachers. A collective of the students (even the youngest
ones). And then a collective of the public (the parents and the larger community).
The ones making the daily decisions would be the teachers and the other workers in the school.
Notice what I've left out: no administrators. The schools can and should be self-administrating.
They can work out who among them temporarily or permanently does administrative work. But
it comes out of the community. It is responsible to the community—democracy rules. Yes, there'll
be different kinds of participation. Young children will be limited in one way. Non-teachers
will be different from teachers. All of that is understandable and will be well understood in such
schools. But they'll be organized as democratic communities. And that's a far better way to
educate people to be democratic citizens than the very undemocratic way schools are organized now.
And will they be training everyone for a job? No. Jobs in a society of the short we imagine
are guaranteed. They're part of your human right, like going to a park and accessing a
beach or any of the other socially universal things we do. Guaranteeing a job and income
is one of the first things to make people truly free. Ask them; they'll tell you.
So it'll be a very different system. It'll be training people for democracy, for community,
for working out together in whatever institution (a school, a workplace, anything else).
Participate, democracy, cooperative work: that'll be the goal of creating new citizens
in a school system that was organized around worker co-ops as the basic idea.
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