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First, you can't just take the word "school", which has the established, conventional meaning of "an institution for educating children" or "any institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline", come up with some esoteric alternative definition for it, and then get mad that people are saying it's ridiculous to want to "abolish schools".
Second, the fact that something, under capitalism and colonialiam, functions to perpetuate capitalism and colonialism, does not mean that thing is essentially capitalist or colonial. The definititions right up there are what's commonly understand as "school", and they are extremely not inherently capitalist or colonial. Literally just a place where people go to learn things from teachers. If you're saying that that's inherently capitalist and colonial and should be abolished, that's fucking ridiculous and people should be ridiculed for saying it.
Third, if the problem is instead with some esoteric, alternative definition of "school", then:
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That thing that is bad that you are referring to as "school" should not be referred to as just "school" unless you're deliberate trying to confuse the vast majority of people on Earth.
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Please, in your post insulting people for not understanding what it is, provide that definition instead of demanding that everyone who is rightfully bewildered by the phrase "abolish school" read multiple books of political theory, including literal fucking French postmodernism.
Also, I coincidentally started reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed like three hours ago.
No, because the police are essentially, definitionally employees of the state who detain people or otherwise use physical force to enforce laws. Like, that aligns 100% with how people use the word, and that's inherently shit. Schools are just places where people go to be taught things, which will always be important for any large-scale society, and aren't necessarily oppressive.
a tool of the state emergent from organizations like the pinkertons and slave catchers used to protect property
Nuh uh. That is not what I said. You're describing the historical origins and function of the police under capitalism and colonialism. That is very specifically what I'm avoiding.
Here's Wikipedia, which I think would be a pretty decent look at a non-Marxist/anarchist/whatever radical definition that aligns with common use:
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder.
We can quibble over whether they're always or ever really for ensuring the health and safety of citizens or at least all citizens, but the gist of the conventional usage is right there.
Police exist in socialist states in the sense described there and as recognizable to the vast majority of people using the word police. What you described doesn't apply to them; they don't share a descent from the those precursors like slave patrols in the US and other settler colonies and don't exist to enforce capitalist property relations. But the police in the DPRK or Cuba or the USSR are still recognizable as police, because the essence of what "police" is in the conventional usage is the "empowered bodies of the state enforcing laws" thing (which necessitates the use of force).
The immediate concern as far as police abolition for everyone who supports it is at least the abolition of the police in capitalist society for the reasons you described and all the other reasons socialists have for why they're bad. But the eventual goal, at least to non-anarchists, is to do away with them eventually even in socialist society, since their function, plainly described by the conventional sense of the word "police", is always to oppress in some way or another in service to the state. Who is being oppressed and what kind of state the oppression serves is going to vary, but that's always there as long as any institution recognizable as "police" exists.
This should be abolished in its entirety for a bunch of different reasons, including: that their existence relies on the existence of the state which has a lot of issues, that society should not have to rely on people using violence to organize itself, and that even lawbreakers who do need to be threatened or subject to force (e.g., the bourgeoisie, imperialists, fascists) shouldn't exist and getting rid of them would eliminate any necessity whatsoever for police.
Under a revolutionary socialist state, the capitalist police should be replaced with a proletarian police (even everybody's favorite, Cuba got them) until communism is established and they're no longer needed.
Anarchists can subtitute all that for their own views on the roles of the police and the state or whatever; I'm not trying to sell this particular view of socialism and the state, just illustrating the point that the fundamental problems with the police align with the conventional use of the term, so even if you acknowledge the necessity of law enforcement under socialism, the idea of abolishing the police still makes sense from the perspective of a conventional sense of what the word "police" means.
Ok, a few more things:
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"People who help stop crimes" alone doesn't make most people think police, since most people don't think of vigilantes or regular civilians working with the police in some way (both would be helping to stop crime) as police. The state giving them some special power to enforce the laws, which means being able to to use some kind of violence, is clearly involved in the commonplace understanding of the term even if most people wouldn't use those exact words. Which brings me to:
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A definition that aligns with what people mean when they say and think and hear a word isn't necessarily the same as one that most people would give you. So, most people would probably have a hard time describing something really specific, like I dunno a fez or an archaeologist, but there is a description of what they would generally understand and identify as a fez or an archaeologist. Same with "police".
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I'm deliberately generalizing here; I'm criticizing the phrase "abolish school" because I think it's either absurd or doesn't have anything to do with the most basic thing people would recognize as school and so it's ridiculous to expect people to adhere to it or to chastise people for not knowing what the hell people even mean by that. I'm not trying to establish what a definition is or what the truest one is or whatever philosophy.
Summary: if you got rid of all the things about school that are bad overnight, you'd still be left with something recognizable as a school. If you got rid of all the things that are bad about the police overnight, you would not have anything left that would be recognizable to the vast majority as police.
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We’re not talking about the average person though.
Anyone who posts on this site would have something similar to “enforcing the will of capitalism through violence” as part of their definition of police.
The issues with school under imperialism and capitalism aren’t inherent to the concept of schooling, but violence is inherent to the concept of policing.
I think it’s silly to call people libs because they don’t want to abolish schooling while instructing them to read theory. It’d be a lot easier to get everyone to read theory if it was taught in schools.
People in Soviet Union were forced to learn about dialectical materialism in the university (and probably in high school too) regardless of their major and they developed an uncanny ability to pass those exams while having zero understanding of underlying topics. Like half of population had higher education and at best they straight up forgotten all the political education they had. At worst they channeled it into a galaxy-brain conception of communism that even an American boomer would think that's a bit much.
You say that as if "abolish the police" isn't a slogan that causes immense confusion. You say "we all understand" but who is "we all"? Because the issue comes up again and again and people have to have it explained over and over and over. People on this forum? Yeah, they understand it. People more generally? Nah. So perhaps people should start saying what they actually believe instead of confusing everyone if they want mass appeal.
The person you answer to isn't consistent and a bit shallow in their analysis. Not only are they not scientific - unlike OP who is close to education research about the school system (which was a thing even befor Focault started to say that schools are like prison).
But also the idea that you need teachers who (stand in front) and teach others is problematic. It also shows that the idea is that it is the individual position as teacher who enables education while most education happens by the people alone and precisely through the social relations and material experiences people have and make. That means a school is now described by the social relations within it (which are molded by the material conditions) and that means the teachers take a secondary role - and actually often are contraproductive to education.
That said I still believe that authorities or experts can and should play a role in education, but not as jailers like teachers currently do in any capitalist nation.
But also the idea that you need teachers who (stand in front) and teach others is problematic.
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A teacher isn't necessarily a specialized role. A teacher doesn't have to be a teacher by profession or only a teacher or whatever.
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What do you mean by "who stand in front"?
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How does having teachers who stand in front follow from "a place where people are taught things"?
also shows that the idea is that it is the individual position as teacher who enables education while most education happens by the people alone and precisely through the social relations and material experiences people have and make.
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When it comes to specialized subjects and subjects that people, especially young children, couldn't have learned yet, someone or some people who possess the knowledge that the students don't is necessary. You often do literally need people with specific expertise to teach things in order for them to be learned.
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Obviously teaching occurs through social relations and material experiences. Nothing I said contradicts that.
and actually often are contraproductive to education.
Elaborate.
First a question. Do you have any expertise in the field, in theory, practice or education?
No experience whatsoever in education. I don't know what you mean by expertise in the field in theory.
Keep in mind, I'm arguing that: "abolish school" is either ridiculous (because school is just "any institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline") or, if there is some other sense of the word I'm unaware of, can mean something else but relies on terminology so much at odds with the common use of the word "school" that it is naturally going to sound ridiculous to the vast majority of people and so shouldn't be used.
I am not critiquing (or weighing in at all on here, not that it shouldn't be critiqued) any particular aspect of contemporary or historical education, or schooling under capitalism and colonialism, because my point is that the particular qualities of school under capitalism and colonialism aren't necessary features of school in a way that the vast majority would find recognizable.
It's a semantic argument.
Basically: actually, "abolish school" doesn't make any sense; "radical school reform" does.
No experience whatsoever in education. I don’t know what you mean by expertise in the field in theory.
Cause it is important to judge which elements guide for position. Naturally you had experience in some kind of capitalist school system by either being forced to participate in it or being home schooled (at least it is true for 99% of the people).
With theory I mean a framework or background in theory of - for example - education or the organization and history of the school system. Reading Paulo Freire or Focault or something like that, or even contemporary anarchist zines might do it, as would writing your PhD dissertation within that topic (lol as if the both of us could finance that). Academic education about school would also work - unlike academic education to become a teacher I guess.
Part of the questions about expertise were also to see if your point is something you came up individualistically or which was part of a collective exchange so that you sounded your ideas of various speaker positions (or if chapo's comment section about a - in my opinion quite good post by OP - is the place to do the sound boarding).
That said, I appreciate that you establish common ground by saying the sentiment here that school under capitalism and colonialism is bullshit compared to the utopist ideal of what you would call school - and what you imply is "common sense understanding of the word school for the vast majority".
What would interest me further more what your specific class position and social relations to generational wealth would be, what intersecting attributes determine you (e.g. gender or neurotypicallity etc.) - but lets skip those - even though they might lead to a situation in which you might think that your perspective is the singular true one e.g. telling others they should abolish the abolishment of school in favour of using terms like "radical school reform".
A white old liberal philospher - I believe it was Quine - said that you ought only to argue with people who actually hold believes and who argue about their believes, as speaking with people without a care in the world argue a position they don't believe in and switch it around is nothing but a waste of time (which is why on
chapohexbear we waste a lot of time), therefore I will try to write with you guessing that you want to write about important stuff that you believe in.I believe talking about semantics in this case would be worth little and I think within your exclusion of the relevant parts of the material and social conditions of what school is, what the history of school is etc. you have a logical argument you believe in, which doesn't have much effect though as the debate isn't bound in that nice pond, but it is bound by the real existing conditions and history of what school is.
Therefore I rather not argue about that. Instead I say the recommended books and such are good and they make good arguments (also with regards to the history of school etc.) and say that it is right to say "abolish school" - even if we want to collectively educate children and enable them to grow. I believe it is hard to see that schools are as much a prison and system of oppression as the police sometimes, but redefining what words ought to mean in your opinion doesn't quite solve the real conditions our comrades are kept in. It doesn't describe how the unhoused kids and our punk friends who aren't in schools are educated and educate themselves - quite often actually with a more objective assessment of capitalism and society than that some random petit bourgeoisie kid would have, that goes to posh schools for 12 years before studying at a posh university for 6 years acquiring a PhD in telling the unhoused and working class how they are stupid and how they don't know things (but could, cause there is the promise of rising up classes by being educated!).
When you and your working class buddy sit in a bar and talk about how work sucks, that is education! When you talk about how the system is rigged cause the profit the workers generate goes to the class who doesn't work (but is living from the profits of their investments and the rent of the houses) that is education - and which liberal would say pubs are schools?!
When you are at your wage labour and you are forced to sell your body and lifetime to have food, that is education about the capitalist system - and who would call their work place a school!?
Is that enough, that randomly being educated about things of life? In my opinion not, in my opinion there ought to be collective concepts of educations, I wouldn't call the places those happen in schools though. I would rather have social centers and experts who are able to guide the learning processes and such. A word of warning though: What my wishes are doesn't mean those are a necessary result of changing the status quo.
What I tried to do is to say: There are people who looked at what school actually is and it isn't what we commonly associate with it. That abolish school is good and that when you abolish school you open up the perspective about what education - especially working class education - actually is.
Bonus obligatory Parenti about education in Cuba and his Dad
A video about Freire which doesn't quite get his dialectis but is animated like south park
Is your chair a school when you watch youtube or post on chapo?
That said, I appreciate that you establish common ground by saying the sentiment here that school under capitalism and colonialism is bullshit compared to the utopist ideal of what you would call school - and what you imply is “common sense understanding of the word school for the vast majority”.
That's not quite what I'm saying. Again, my point is semantic. I'm saying that the capitalist and colonial elements of contemporary schooling are not essential features of school. This isn't envisioning a utopian form of school, but looking at the different kinds of things that are classified as school and looking for the most essential elements. What is it that makes people recognize something as school as opposed to something else? That where the “common sense understanding of the word school for the vast majority” is relevant. What things, if you got rid of them, would mean you'd need a new term to describe what's left. Semantics.
I'm sure we're both opposed to 99+% of the same material phenomena that are a part of the contemporary capitalist educational system - the propaganda, the school-to-prison pipeline, the institutionalized abuse, its use as a mechanism of genocide, the class, racial, national, gender and so on disparities in education, etc. I commented for three reasons: to clarify what exactly OP was talking about when he says "school", because it's clearly different from what I understand it to mean, without being directed to an entire book, and to push back against two things: what I see as the terrible communication built into the terminology of school abolition that relies on some grounding in anarchist/socialist theory, and the OP being condescending and insulting to people who don't immediately agree with a statement - "abolish school" - that seems on its face ridiculous to basically everyone who isn't already in the know.
My motivation for the last one is obvious: "Shut the fuck up, people here are making fun of it not because they're liberals who are incapable of thinking structurally about education, but because it sounds fucking ridiculous."
But what I think is wrong with the concept on the level of communication is not only that is sounds ridiculous and is thus alienating to normal people (i.e., not the small subset of socialists who are down with it), but that it sounds completely disconnected from their material needs. Not everyone cares about education, but most people do for themselves or their families. A school isn't the only or always the best means of education, but, especially for very complex subjects that aren't usually the most interesting to learn and that are extremely important practically or professionally, they're an extremely useful and reliable one. You couldn't replace all of what's taught by contemporary schooling with just self-education or unplanned or informal lessons, which happen to be really useful to organize on a community or societal scale. Now I'm gonna break off to clarify as much as I can what I think the conventional sense of the "school" is - or more like senses.
First I mentioned “an institution for educating children” and “any institution at which instruction is given in a particular discipline”, which I think are pretty good approximations of the things that make people think of schools, that differentiate them from non-schools. But then I brought up place, and used "institution" and "place" interchangeably, which was inconsistent. They're distinct senses of the word "school", in the same way that "socialism" can refer to socialism as a mode of production or as a social and political force in pursuit of that thing. There's school as institution, the particular social organization within which children are educated or instruction is given in a particular discipline, more specifically by other people (the teachers), and there's school as an environment in which that schooling is held. When I take online classes, I am "in school", but not "in a school". So:
Is your chair a school when you watch youtube or post on chapo?
If the educational content on YouTube or
chapohexbear is taught by someone (e.g., not just a pdf link) and is a part of some kind of educational institution (e.g., a group putting together an educational program, a class of some kind), it is going to be recognizable as "school". If a teacher posts lectures on YouTube as part of some kind of institution, that would count. Just watching a Hakim video would not. The difference is readily recognizable. A chair is not a school. My apartment could be if it actually housed the school as opposed to just myself. There are going to be boundary cases, and perceptions are going to vary here and there, but there's a consistency to what people regard as school and schooling. The harmful features of contemporary schooling, if they were stripped away, would still result in an educational program that would be readily recognizable as "school". Because that thing is, at its core, a very simple social arrangement.When you and your working class buddy sit in a bar and talk about how work sucks, that is education! When you talk about how the system is rigged cause the profit the workers generate goes to the class who doesn’t work (but is living from the profits of their investments and the rent of the houses) that is education - and which liberal would say pubs are schools?!
No, because they're not educational institutions.
Why is this relevant?
Back to the other thing, when revolutionaries build classrooms and train and distribute either professional teachers or their own party members to educate the people, they're bringing school. The revolutionaries in Cuba weren't just doing one-on-one tutoring, they were building schools. They built schools. They have school with buildings and desks (which maybe suck, I dunno) and teachers. The same was true of the USSR and China from the beginning, the same is true of Vietnam and the DPRK and so on with other Marxist states. The Zapatistas have created and operate schools. These revolutionary movements are meeting the educational needs of the masses of largely colonized proletarians by creating these "institution for educating children or giving instruction in particular disciplines". That's how they teach people to read. These schools, which I'm sure vary wildly and have varied wildly in every way, aren't something that's been forced on the proletariat. Most people want good schools, for themselves and their families. The task of revolutionaries, as has been carried out in the global periphery for decades, in providing education is to create schools with decolonized curricula, stripped of the capitalist and imperialist propaganda, stripped of the racial and class and ethnic and national and gender boundaries that previously existed, equipped with all the material resources they need.
These revolutionaries aren't "some random petit bourgeoisie kid ... that goes to posh schools for 12 years before studying at a posh university for 6 years acquiring a PhD." And it's real convenient how you assume the hypothetical opponent of "school abolition" is a petit bourgeois grad student.
Please inform me if there are significant revolutionary movements around the world that have sought to "abolish school". I'm sure there are plenty of punks who want to abolish school, and I know that loads of punks are good comrades, but they're not universal representative of the poor and oppressed, especially if you're thinking of the ones in the imperial core, and what they want is not some special insight into the desires of the global proletariat. What the vast majority of people, besides most of the bourgeoisie and extreme reactionaries, everywhere in the world, is "good schools". Telling everyone else, "No, you fucking liberal moron, you imbecile, we're going to abolish school." is a bad fucking look, to say the least. You can say, "We're going to radically reform school [with X, Y, and Z relevant issues fixed], available to everyone, free of charge, free of institutionalized oppression, because we can create and have good things and a decent society", and I think this thing that just about everyone will just call "school" will look awfully similar if not identical to whatever alternative to social education school abolition proponents have in their heads, but we're not going to say "We will ABOLISH. SCHOOL." because 99.99+% of the people we're trying to establish solidarity with are going look at us like we're saying we're going to abolish healthcare, because there's no material difference whatsoever once we get down to actually effecting things in material reality, and because we're not actually "abolishing" schooling in any meaningful or useful sense.
Anyway:
Bonus obligatory Parenti about education in Cuba and his Dad
Cuba made schools. Cuba has schools. Cuba is unabashedly pro-school.
A video about Freire which doesn’t quite get his dialectis but is animated like south park
This is literally just a video critiquing the concept of philanthropy. All true but irrelevant.
And I'm also gonna say that it would be really swell if you could just respond to my arguments and share your ideas and maybe recommend reading or viewing materials and not spend so much of your post trying to dissect me on a personal level.
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strangely enough our reports showed 100% lib free til you logged in
u gotta lemme know next time ill shoot them with my 9mm beretta
I am begging you on my hands and knees to stop taking differences of opinion or weird "you haven't thought of this thing the specific way I have" to complain about people being libs.
Keep the good faith, people here aren't libs or so far as they are, the entire leftist movement is still lib.
I thought complaining about people being libs was the entire point of Chapo
weird “you haven’t thought of this thing the specific way I have”
His compaint is straight from the critique of the Gotha program though
Not sure if this is a joke or not. If not, I would lump the Gotha program into weird specific things. I've literally never heard of it. You can't assume everyone has read or watched the things you have.
Everyone here is conflating “schooling” with “education.” They see “abolish schools” and people on the dunktank thread, and I am not joking here you all are being this fucking obtuse, are actually saying that means anarchists want people walking around without knowing math or history.
I'm not communicating clearly and I'm mad about it
This is entirely the fault of people saying "abolish x" when they don't actually mean "abolish x", unless they actually do mean "abolish x" which is stupid. It's a standard althusserian take that school does these things except never has anyone thought they wanted to end schools because, and I know it is shocking, they don't say "abolish schools". Neither does Foucault tbh, he doesn't really say what you "should" do with anything.
standard althusserian take
what year is it? :dale cooper:
School (with a focus on socialization over test scores) good, capitalism bad
Shit, I wouldn't want to be mandatory socialized by the state even if it's a nice state.
whining about cringeposting aside i am actually gonna read Pedagogy of the Oppressed i s2g
it ain't long
once I finish Trans Liberation maybe I'll run a book club on it here
Got through that one in like 5 hours. There's an audiobook link read by your fellow comrades on this site.
This looks like it would be better suited to the struggle session comm
This is actually very interesting. I think the point of saying "abolish x" when we more accurately mean "radically reform x" or "replace x with a better alternative" is that the former is near impossible to be co-opted by liberals. But this shows that even us leftists can be tricked into thinking what is being proposed is something absurd, just by presenting the slogan in a different context.
I don't think chapos (hexers? bearers?) are entirely to blame here, even though more should have picked up on the pattern. At the end of the day, the success of communicating is mainly the responsibility of the person who is speaking, and not the one who is listening. I guess the main lesson here is to know when something you are saying could be misconstrued and to communicate extra carefully around that.
We can abolish the police though.
We can also abolish schools.
The people of Haiti did after all abolish slave plantages for a bit (and anyone saying that '"slave plantages" are only places were work is done, so we obviously don't want to abolish that!' ought to be punched).
Bunch of libs making stuff up instead of reading what school abolition is about
