The education system is essentially a mass child-minding service, a disciplinary institution, or "incarceral habitus" to coin a sociological term - aka, a prison. Its function is less to educate, than to accommodate children to ensure workers are maximally available as labour.
This is where the pressure arises, to "liberate" children from the domestic habitus, regardless of risk, in order to reintegrate control over labour and reassert the claim that only work matters. If too many realise they have other options, and haven't we witnessed...
...an upsurge of inventiveness and dare I say, play, among adults suddenly allowed the freedom to reconsider how they spend their time, other than immersed in employment, at the command of corporations, their every moment "managed" for ends not entirely of their own choosing?
Market consumer capitalism thrives on maintaining a constant illusion of uncertainty and scarcity, thus driving citizens to aspire for more by being more productive, this despite the fact that productivity never fully returns sufficient material to those doing the producing...
...to allow them to ever slow down. Thoughtfulness, contemplation, simple inactivity, are asserted as detrimental to acceptable participation in the social project. Kids at home are beyond the control of the state.
Parents "not at work" are suddenly thrown on their own devices. This could - or should- allow for some small radicalisation of thought. Why do I work 80 hours a week? What am I doing with my life?
This might become dangerous stuff for those who can otherwise only retain social and economic control -hence guaranteeing their wealth and power - through maintaining labour outputs at near exhaustion level. #mettatheory
@threadreaderapp unroll please
There may well be many parents reconnecting with their children in ways that radicalise the entirely artificial norm of mummy and daddy going to work while baby spends her days at boring school. It is carrot and stick capitalism that is driving the back to school demands.
The best educational outcomes arise from intensive learning experiences in a seminar format, at most around six hours a week, and not from a seven hour day, five days a week, of back to back tedium, where knowledge retention is minimal. Schools are daycare prisons.
