this is richard wolff from democracy at
work
responding to another ask prof wolf
question from our patreon community
this one comes from elsa rechtman
and she asks the question
can we have
cooperative worker co-op democratically
won
enterprises
in our schools in our universities in
our colleges in short
is the education enterprise academia
broadly defined
a place where we could organize
the collective democratic
work activity
of teaching
and my basic answer is absolutely we
could
absolutely we should
and the basis for doing so already
exists
let me explain
for the many centuries that we've had
universities in the world
it should be noted that on many
occasions and in many settings
those universities were run
very democratically
in which all the teachers
got together and worked out
the curriculum
the methods of teaching
and all of the rest of the academic
enterprise
sometimes they also
did the management the administrative
work
sometimes they
farmed that out to others
often the teachers were the dominant
decision maker
and the
administrators were secondary
hirelings of the teachers considered to
be much less important than the teachers
to the whole enterprise and so on
so there have been all kinds
of efforts to collectively organize
the education process
then we have also had all kinds of
theoreticians
of academic activity
that have been very critical of
hierarchical top-down ways of organizing
teaching
and education and have opted
for much more democratic
arrangements not only among the teachers
and the teachers and the administrators
but also interacting with the students
in the case of younger people with
parents and community members of
students and so on theoreticians like
john dewey and paolo frere from brazil
have been notable among others
in making theoretical arguments
why we should prefer
democratic cooperative organizations of
schools
here in the united states today
that is scarce
it is rare
but that's not surprising either
schools have been deeply affected and
shaped
by the dominant organization
of the production of goods and services
elsewhere in the economy
capitalism is the name we give to the
particular organization
of the production of most goods and
services
and this involves a tiny group of people
at the top
who make all of the key decisions the
owner of the enterprise
the family that owns and runs it or if
you look at the corporation the board of
directors a very small number of people
put there by the major shareholders who
own the bulk of the shares of the
business this tiny minority at the top
makes all the key decisions
what to produce what technology to use
where to carry out the production and
what to do with the results
that organization that top-down
hierarchical organization has been
copied and mimicked and brought in
to the schools often
after they have been run in a very
different much more democratic and
cooperative way
so yes the majority of education
is now organized as a capitalist
enterprise
that means a tiny group of people at the
top
administrators
tend to have all the power
they are selected and put into place
by
the hereditary owners of the university
and if it literally doesn't have owners
then by a
self-selecting board
i remember my years at yale university
being struck by the fact
that the people who ran that university
chose the name
yale corporation
which indeed it was
when anyone died or resigned from the
corporation the remaining members picked
another person
if any election was involved it would be
the alumni
who elected
not the people who go to school there
not the teachers not the workers no no a
very different group much like
shareholders in a corporation
the question is asked by elsa could such
institutions exist
as public institutions not privately
owned and operated and therefore free of
the logic of private capitalist
corporations and here my answer is to
say of course that's possible
germany
as well as six or seven other uni uh
countries in western europe
already take care of that
in germany and in these other countries
it is a public service there is no
tuition students have to pay there are
no fees to the institution students have
to pay
they do have to take care of their room
and board which they would have had to
do anyway but going to school is not
something they have to pay for and
therefore it would be quite easy
to say if we're not going to make them
pay
and therefore they're going to be unlike
buying a hamburger or a shirt or a car
then we don't need to organize the
process
in a capitalist way either
and we can
set up education as a cooperative
venture
among the teachers
the rest of the staff
working in ways they can collectively
decide to do
rotating activities among them
giving the non-academic
real power alongside the academic
recognizing their different competencies
etc etc
so the answer is yes we could have a
radically different educational system
one that would prepare people to go out
into the world and operate
democratically too and there's the
reason we don't have it
because the capitalist system doesn't
want to prepare young people for a
collective democratic
run it yourself
mentality they want them to be docile
order takers in a strict hierarchy and
in order for them to fit into the
capitalist production system the
schooling they go through beforehand
should get them ready for that
and that's the topic to be criticized
before closing let me remind you that
producing these videos and taking
society in a different direction is what
democracy at work is all about if you
find these conversations useful please
consider supporting us financially as
well you can do it via patreon you can
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in that way
thanks