Education and capitalism: a certain political economy of recurrent education

Abstract

In the beginning of the sixties the governments of the main capitalist countries considered the quick expansion of formal teaching as the basic factor for the economic growth and the social stabilization. The question was to use teaching in order to «adjust» the manpower to the «necessities of economy», that is to the new characteristics of enterprises and of the processus of capitalist acumulation. As such an «adjustment» implied a larger geographical, professional and social mobility as far as the population is concerned, one must take for granted that one would go ahead towards an «equality of chances» and a new «meritocratic» society. But the formal teaching failed as regards to the role that one intended to ascribe to it,even if it had not failed to carry out an economic and social impact. For this reason, and after some years, it has begun to impose not only the idea that «permanent education» is the only one adjusted to the modern society, but also the idea that it must be structured according to completly new patterns, as «recurrent education». Characterized by successive alternating periods of teaching and periods of work, after the end of compulsory schooling up to the end of the individuaos life, the «recurrent education» is expected to be developed. However, it seems to be most probable that the logic and the characteristics of capitalism may compel us to lend it an orientation more concerned with the achievement of the «learned man» ideal or, at the best, with a «civic education» for adults - missing again the target of the perfect «adjustment» to the so-called «necessities of economy».