Democratic Autocracy
Dec 1st, 2007 at 8:24 am by Maya
Here’s an enlightening tidbit from my Foundations in American Education textbook:
If correct, the hegemony theorists’ analysis has many implications for education, two of which are fundamental. First, it appears that society is educating in deeply contradictory ways. On the one hand, citizens are taught in the schools and through the media that they live in a democratic society. On the other hand, they are taught through daily experience not to expect participation in fundamental decisions affecting their lives. Finally, they are not educated by either school or society to examine and question such contradictions between rhetoric and reality. Instead, citizens learn from an early age to tolerate the contradictions if they see them at all. It requires nothing less than indoctrination to convince people in a hegemonic, nondemocratic society that democracy is working well. If the hegemonic theorists are correct, in arguing that American education contains a stiff dose of indoctrination, we should not be surprised that the literate classes are the most convinced.
This education thing is fun! Especially when you learn about education from people who read Chomsky.
Didn’t somebody just write a book about ordinary people in Nazi Germany called, “They Thought They Were Free?”
I use Tozer’s book for one of the teacher ed. classes that I teach! May I inquire as to why you’re reading it? It’s not something that most people would just pick up… Hell, some of my students don’t seem all that interested in it!
We often loose sight of the fact that the socio-political issues we face are intertwined with education. Might I recommend Foucault’s Discipline and Punish…? The connections that he makes between military discipline, prisons and schools are ‘powerful’.
I’m in school to be a teacher - the book is for my foundations in american education class. I think it’s a fantastic book, I’ve really enjoyed reading it.
Mayer, Milton They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45. 368 p. 1955, 1966
University of Chicago Press
Paper $24.00sp ISBN: 978-0-226-51192-4 (ISBN-10: 0-226-51192-8)
The book’s been around for a while. Nobody learns anything. The power of self-deception is one of the greatest forces in the universe.