Curricular form and the Logic of Technical Control

Abstract

Because of the current crisis in the accumulation process, within the last few years there have been significant attempts in many industrialized countries to influence the educational process directly in ways that will meet the needs of capital accumulation. However, while such overt attempts at capitalist intrusion into education are important, the logic and ideology of capital have entered into schools in more subtle ways. This article analyzes the ways the commodification process has acted on the form which curricula take in schools, ways which reinforce the system of technical control of the labour process, culture, and the state. It argues that a complex process of deskilling and reskilling exists at the level of day-to-day practice in schools today. This can signify important changes in the school's role as a site of ideological reproduction. Given the contradictory class position of teachers, and given the history of class, gender, and race resistances to the logic of capital, these changes will have contradictory effects which will open up the possibility of progressive action within the state apparatus.