Corporate Paradigm

What is going on with schools? Are they failing? Why are there so many different views and approaches? Quite simply, because so many people don’t want to face the facts about schools. They are succeeding. What a ludicrous statement to make? Look at how many kids are failing. Look at all the disruption. Look at the innumerable faults. And Matriellez says they are success. This guy’s crazy. So what is the purpose of schools? Is it to give an education for all the students attending? Or is it to maintain the current social structure? What is the current social structure being maintained? The huge corporations dominate the global landscape. They require a few executives who can work satisfactorily ignoring social injustice supporting corporation policy that might be damaging the environment impoverishing the Third World. They also require a labouring class willing to work in difficult conditions and be satisfied with this. Do they get this from education? Of course they do. Because there are so many students failing in education, when one of those students is actually offered a job on the factory floor they are so grateful they work well. They are also aware that there are so many failed students waiting in the wings that they make sure they keep their jobs. So what about all the initiatives strategies changing policies and whatever else? What is their purpose? They help keep everything confused so that a few become executives mostly from outside the state sector, and the majority are ready to supply the labour for cash reward. Is there any aspect of education that does not fit this corporate paradigm? Now is there education for all? Well all young people are expected to attend school except for a few Home Ed exceptions. But is that what I asked? Is there education for all? Quite obviously not. Beyond a seat in a classroom a school does not offer education for the majority of attenders. It is not education for all. What about all the attempts to make it better? These are either politically motivated or personally motivated but neither intend for them to work. The political motivation is clear. Margaret Thatcher’s backroom staff recognised that education was vote-winner, and ever since 1979 different politicians have used education for their own self-serving. And then there are the many educationalists, some quite genuine. They want to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear but how can they when the power of the corporations are behind the status quo – the existing system that fulfils their needs but fails the majority. But the corporations are too powerful. They are powerful, too powerful maybe, but there is much to be gained from recognising the reality of schools as they fit into the paradigm and seeking to benefit from seeing schools for what they are. Through this blog and online elsewhere Matriellez will attempt to show you how.