EDUCATION — As a Supposed Solution to Unemployment Caused by Automation
See also:
DE-SKILLED JOBS
“Increased robot density [i.e. the increased use of industrial robots]
does not seem to raise employment among any group of workers, even those with university
education.” —“Free Exchange”, the Economist magazine, April 1, 2017, p. 70.
EDUCATION — As Correcting Deficiencies
“It doesn’t require any money to have an attitude change. That’s
why it is so hard. We don’t grow things, we fix them. So our idea about education is
that children are defective adults—they have to be ‘fixed’ in school—whereas more
enlightened people like [Jean] Piaget and Jerome Brunner think of children as
something you grow. They’re all right the way they are. What we try to do is grow
them in a certain direction. But there’s nothing deficient about them. And the
difference between those two attitudes is huge.” —Alan Kay, a bourgeois computer
scientist, Byte magazine, Sept. 1990, p. 232.
[Of course there is some truth
to that, especially with respect to younger children.
But Kay forgets that much
present “education” is mis-education. Thus even if children are born “ok”,
the adults they become are corrupted by a bourgeois society, to varying degrees.
Therefore in many respects people do become deficient and in dire need of “fixing”.
It is not wrong to recognize that we must fix both a deficient system and a deficient
humanity that is the product of this deficient system; in fact it is crucial
to understand this! And we must also fix that which is deficient in ourselves—as
we (or others!) come to understand that—as well as for us to help others understand
and fix what is deficient in them. Our standard of deficiency? It is simply any
attitude or action which goes against the real collective
interests of the working class (and thus ultimately
of humanity as a whole).
An essential point here is
that fixing a deficient humanity and fixing the present horrendous capitalist
society, including its ghastly “educational system”, are interpenetrating
processes, neither of which can occur in the absence of the other.
A second point (in direct
contrast to Kay’s view) is that one important means of growth and development
lies precisely in the correction of present deficiencies. This is true in general
and certainly in human society.
The third point to emphasize
here is that—to the extent that “fixing deficiencies” is a matter of contradictions
among the people—this changing of attitudes and mutual re-education must be entirely
voluntary and democratic. —S.H.]
EDUCATION — Positive and Negative
“A revolutionary party and the revolutionary people must repeatedly
undergo both positive and negative education. Through comparison and contrast, they
become tempered and mature, thus making sure of victory. To belittle the role of
the negative teacher is not to be a thorough dialectical materialist.” —Mao,
Nov. 6, 1967; SW 9:420.
EDUCATION — United States — 19th Century
Education by governments has a social purpose, and as society changes that social purpose also
changes. In the 1800s American education for the masses was designed to make them efficient and
content farmers and workers, who would cause no problems for the ruling class. And this same
basic purpose has continued ever since, except that the number of farmers has now dwindled to
tiny levels.
“Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive
tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don’t think people didn’t know it.
They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for
exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about
how we’re educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don’t educate them, what we call
‘education,’ they’re going to take control—‘they’ being what Alexander Hamilton called the
‘great beast,’ namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called
democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reasons. Because the freer the society
gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage
it somehow.” —Noam Chomsky, Class Warfare (Common Courage Press, 1996), p. 30.
EDUCATION — United States — Deterioration Of
In the capitalist-imperialist era, and especially over recent decades, education in the United
States has deteriorated alarmingly. The ruling class no longer seems to care whether most children
and young people receive much of a real education at all, though the need to “socialize”,
indoctrinate and pacify the population is more important than ever.
See also the 3-page letter “College the Easy Way”,
by Scott Harrison, commenting on the dumbing down of a college education in the U.S., and on the
decline of American education in general, at:
https://www.massline.org/Politics/ScottH/CollegeTheEasyWay-110305.pdf, and
GRADE POINT INFLATION,
HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING—U.S.
“The National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold-standard
federal test of fourth and eighth graders across the country, found that only one-third
of students were proficient readers.” —New York Times, Dec. 28, 2019.
EFFICIENT MARKET HYPOTHESIS [Bourgeois Economics]
1. The absurd bourgeois theory that capitalist “free markets” are maximally efficient from
an economic point of view (i.e., with respect to the appropriate allocation of goods and
services) since those who buy and sell are totally rational agents, and since the market
incorporates all the relevent information about both supply & demand and relevant risks
which goes to determine the appropriate prices.
2. The application of this theory to the stock market and similar sorts of gambling, where
it claims that the prices of shares on the stock market are the best available estimates of
their real value in light of their real levels of risk. Obviously this theory (at least in
its strong form) discounts the possibility of widespread inside information; the possibility
that some gamblers may have a better general sense than others of the real general direction
of the economy at a given moment; and so forth.
“By the 1970s the Efficient Market Hypothesis had become conventional
wisdom, preached from academic pulpits at the University of Chicago and elsewhere.
“However, not everyone bought
into it. A popular joke among economists neatly captures its logical absurdities. An
economist and his friend are walking down the street when they come across a
hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground. The friend bends down to pick it up, but the
economist stops him, saying, ‘Don’t bother—if it were a real hundred-dollar bill,
someone would have already picked it up.’” —Nouriel Roubini & Stephen Mihm, Crisis
Economics (2010), p. 41.
“I’d be a bum on the street with a tin cup if markets were always
efficient.” —Warren Buffett, billionaire stock market investor. Quoted in the Wikipedia
entry on the “Efficient Market Hypothesis”.
EGYPT — Oppression of Women
“A United Nations study in 2013 found that 99 percent of women in Egypt
had experienced sexual harassment or violence.” —New York Times, “The 22-Year-Old
Force Behind Egypt’s #MeToo”, Oct. 3, 2020, National Edition, p. 3.
“EIGHT IMMORTALS”
The “Eight Immortals” (or in a more literal translation, the “Eight Great Eminent Officials”)
were the leading Chinese capitalist-roaders, or revisionists, who from 1977 into the 1990s
completed the transformation of China from a socialist country back into a capitalist country.
(The phrase “Eight Immortals” is actually an allusion to a group of Taoist deities known by
that name, and is sometimes viewed as being sarcastic in this context.) These despicable
individuals are all now dead, and good riddance to the lot of them! The members of what to us
Maoist revolutionaries were a very notorious group of traitors to the proletariat were:
Deng
Xiaoping (1904–1997), the ring-leader, or “Paramount Leader”, Politburo Standing
Committee member 1977–1987, Political Consultative Conference chairman 1978–1983, Central
Military Commission Chairman 1980–1989, and Central Advisory Commission chairman 1982–1987;
Chen Yun (1905–1995), Politburo Standing
Committee member 1977–1987, Central Advisory Committee Chairman 1987–1992, Central Discipline
Inspection Commission first secretary 1979-1987;
Li Xiannian (1909–1992), Politburo
Standing Committee member 1977–1987, President of the PRC 1983–1988, then Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference chairman;
Peng Zhen (1902–1997), National People’s
Congress Chairman 1983–1988;
Yang Shangkun (1907–1998), President of
the PRC 1988–1993;
Bo Yibo (1908–2007), Central Advisory
Committee Vice Chairman;
Wang Zhen (1908–1993), Central Advisory
Committee Vice Chairman;
Song Renqiong (1909–2005), CAC Vice
Chairman.
It is said that under Deng Xiaoping’s
“paramount leadership” all important Chinese government and CPP decisions were made in Deng’s
own home by this group of eight leading revisionists.
In today’s capitalist-imperialist regime in
China those known as privileged and powerful “Princelings” are primarily descendants of these
“Eight Immortals”. In the fashion of any feudal/bourgeois nobility, they are presumed to
outrank other individuals within the now bourgeois “Communist” Party of China and have amassed
huge family fortunes (as has been reported in detail by news sources such as the New York
Times and Bloomberg). The families of the “Eight Immortals” are now the core of the
capitalist class dictatorship in China.
“EIGHT REVOLUTIONARY MODEL PLAYS” [Chinese: Ba ge ge ming yang ban xi]
This refers to eight revolutionary model plays produced under the direction of Jiang
Qing during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, consisting of
six Beijing (or Peking) Operas: The Red Lantern, Raid
on the White Tiger Regiment, Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, The Dock, Ode
to the Dragon River, and The Azalea Hill; and two ballets: The Red Detachment of
Women, and The White-Haired Girl.
EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
A famous thought experiment in physics originated
in 1935 in an article in Physical Review by Albert Einstein and two co-authors,
entitled “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete?”.
According to the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle quantum states of particles (e.g., their precise momentum or position) are
supposed to be indeterminate until they are measured. At the same time, it is postulated in
quantum mechanics that two particles can be “entangled” so that when one is measured the
status of the other in the relevant respect will also be determined. But suppose, the EPR
thought experiment proposes, we separate the two entangled particles so that in measuring
the property of one there is no time for communication from that particle to its complement
to occur even at the speed of light! In that case, the only way to make sense of the
situation is to assume that both particles did in fact have determinate complementary states
before the measurement, even though we had no way of knowing what those states were
before the measurement. In short, the initial premise of the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle, of indeterminate states until measurement must be wrong.
This conclusion, though pretty straight
forward, has caused endless consternation among idealist physicists like Heisenberg, and
a huge literature has developed to try to show that the EPR thought experiment does not
prove what it appears to prove. However, it seems pretty clear that the “indeterminateness”
of particles is not really an aspect of reality itself, but only a limitation on what can
be known according to the mathematics of quantum mechanics before measurements are
made.
EISENACHERS
Members of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, founded in 1869 at the Eisenach
Congress.
“The leaders of the Eisenachers were August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebnecht,
who were under the ideological influence of Marx and Engels. The Eisenach programme
stated that the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany consdered itself ‘a section
of the International Working Men’s Association and shared its aspirations’. Thanks to
the regular advice and criticism of Marx and Engels, the Eisenachers pursued a more
consistent revolutionary policy than did Lassalle’s General Association of German
Workers; in particular, on the question of German reunification, they followed ‘the
democratic and proletarian road, struggling against the slightest concession to
Prussianism, Bismarckism, and nationalism’ [Lenin, “August Bebel”, LCW 19:298]. Under
the influence of the growing working-class movement and of increased government
repressions, the two parties united at the Gotha Congress in 1875 to form the Socialist
Workers’ Party of Germany, of which the Lassalleans formed the opportunist wing.”
—Note 140, LCW 5:559.
EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION
The anti-working class and imperialist activities of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and
his administration, from 1953 to 1961.
“After shifting the CIA’s focus from an attempt to penetrate the Soviet
bloc, which had failed badly, to controlling the emerging nations of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, which succeeded all too brilliantly, Eisenhower authorized 170 major
covert operations in forty-eight nations during his eight-year term. In effect,
clandestine manipulation became Washington’s preferred mode of exercising old-fashioned
imperial hegemony in a new world of nominally sovereign nations. In industrial societies,
the agency cultivated allies with electoral cash, cultural suasion, and media
manipulation, thereby building long-term alliances with the Christian Democrats in
Italy, the Socialist Party in France, and above all the ruling Liberal Democratic Party
in Japan, recipient of ‘millions of dollars in covert C.I.A. support.’ In the developing
world, the agency brought compliant leaders to power through a string of coups from Iran
in 1953 to the Congo and Laos in 1960. Under the Eisenhower administration’s Overseas
Internal Security Program, the CIA also served as lead agency in strengthening the
repressive capacity of Washington’s Third World allies, creating secret police units for
a dozen such states and, in 1958 alone, training 504,000 police officers in twenty-five
nations.” —Alfred W. McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and
Decline of U.S. Global Power (2017), p. 54. [In light of the current (2017-2018)
uproar over Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, it is worth noting that all
imperialists routinely meddle in much more serious ways in other countries, and U.S.
imperialism itself has by far the worst record of all in this regard. —Ed.]
“The Eisenhower-Dulles era was a Pax Americana enforced by terror. The
administration ensured U.S. postwar global dominance by threatening enemies with nuclear
annihilation or with coups and assassinations. It was empire on the cheap, a product of
Ike’s desire to avoid another large-scale shooting war as well as the imperial burdens
that had bankrupted Great Britain. By leveraging the U.S. military’s near monopoly on
nuclear firepower, the president hoped to make war an unthinkable proposition for any and
all American adversaries. And by utilizing the CIA’s dark sleight of hand, the commander
in chief aimed to render it unnecessary for the Marines to go crashing ashore in far-flung
locales where unfriendly governments had taken office.” —David Talbot, a liberal bourgeois
writer, Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret
Government (2015), pp. 241-2.
EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION — Racism Of
“[T]he Eisenhower administration remained a reactionary bastion. The
president and his top advisers were convinced that the African people were not ready to
take responsibility for their own affairs, and that any revolutionary mischief on the
continent would only play into Communist hands. At one National Security Council meeting,
Vice President Nixon observed, ‘Some of the peoples of Africa have been out of trees for
only about 50 years,’ to which Budget Director Maurice Stans (who would later serve as
President Nixon’s commerce secretary) replied that he ‘had the impression that many
Africans still belonged in trees.’ The president did nothing to elevate the discussion,
remarking with assurance that in Africa ‘man’s emotions still have control over his
intelligence.’ On other occasions, Eisenhower expressed resentment when he had to invite
‘those niggers’—by which he meant African dignitaries—to diplomatic receptions.”
—David Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s
Secret Government (2015), p. 364.
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Editorial cartoons can be very powerful, which is why they are tightly controlled in the
bourgeois press. Indeed, some newspapers, such as the New York Times, have banned
them entirely! But even the other bourgeois newspapers keep a tight rein on who they allow
to draw editorial cartoons, and even fire cartoonists who do not follow their political
line closely enough. They especially fear any cartoons which expose capitalist-imperialism
or its top leadership.