Wages for Students. Wages for Students

      Wages for Students

      (A pamphlet in the form of a blue book, 1975)

      The ‘Wages for Students’ Students

      The Mental Discipline Factory in 1965

      “It is morning. The Weatherman declares daylight and places the sun (rain, snow, clouds, etc., whichever is most appropriate) in the sky. And like mechanized clock-time, the earth tick-tocks around the sun again.”

      John Doe belongs to Unit 12 of the Elm City Mental Discipline Factory. He is Our Example of the day. John is Average, or was until he Went Wrong. He was sitting in Our physical-need room with his fellow mass-productions, pencil in right hand, paper on table, mind on his own work, busy.

      By the way, for some background information. The original excuse for Our physical-need room’s existence was for “producing and distributing food to supplement Our disciplinary teachings with physical encouragement and semi-satisfaction.” But its purpose is now a gathering place for John Does who aren’t scheduled for anything more important. Here we teach them obedience, a very, very, very important part of overall mental discipline.

      But about John Doe. He was Alright until he discovered the audacity to get up and go right over to Our water fountain and drink two huge gulps of water, completely filling his mouth and quenching his thirst at our expense.

      Now, You’ve all been disciplined to realize that is not the purpose of Our water fountains. You’ve been programmed to understand they’re for disciplinary temptation and have a part in Our Plan only for that purpose. You have to master your thirst, not like John. He is bad, bad, bad, bad. One of Our supervisors had to have him escorted to the medical surgeon who promptly sewed his lips together.

      Some of Us think John’s punishment was too slight for such a disgraceful show of disobedience. But We do still believe in mercy. Principle is principle but what is principle worth if humanity is ignored.

      Study significance for lecture tomorrow.

       (Written in school by a high school student)

      What is Schoolwork?

      Going to school, being a student is work. This work is called schoolwork although it is not usually considered to really be work since we don’t receive any wages for doing it. This does not mean that schoolwork is not work, but rather that they have taught us to believe that only if you are paid do you really work.

      Schoolwork takes the form of many different tasks of varying intensities and combinations of skilled and unskilled labor. For example, we are to learn to sit quietly in classrooms for long periods of time and not cause a disturbance. We are to listen attentively and attempt to memorize what is being said. We are to be obedient to teachers. Occasionally we learn certain technical skills that make us more productive when we work in jobs outside of school that require these skills. Most of the time, however, we spend doing a lot of unskilled labor.

      The characteristic common to all the specific tasks that schoolwork involves is Discipline, i.e. forced work. Sometimes we are disciplined, which means that we are forced to work by others (teachers, principals, and guards). At other times we are self-disciplined, which means that we force ourselves to do school-work. Not surprisingly, the different categories of schoolwork used to be called Disciplines.

      Obviously, it is cheaper and better for Capital if we do our own disciplining. This saves paying for more teachers, principals, and guards who are waged workers and have to be paid something. As self-disciplined students, we perform the double task of doing schoolwork and making ourselves do it. That is why school administrators place so much emphasis on the self-disciplinary aspects of school while trying to keep the costs of disciplining us to a minimum.

      Like all capitalistic institutions, schools are factories. Grading and tracking are ways of measuring our productivity within the school-factory. Not only are we trained to take our future “position in society” but we are also being programmed to go to our “proper place.” The school-factory is an essential step in the selection process that will send some to sweep the streets and some to supervise the sweepers.

      Schoolwork may also include some learning that the students themselves find useful. This aspect, however, is rigidly subordinated to Capital’s most immediate self-interest: working-class discipline. After all, what good to capital is an engineer who speaks Chinese and can solve differential equations if he never shows up for work?

      Why Schoolwork?

      Most economists agree: “Schoolwork is both a consumption and investment good.” So their answer to the question of “why schoolwork?” is that the schooling you get has this marvelous two-sided good about it. Not only do you invest in yourself in such a way that you can expect to get a high paying job in the future but also it is fun! This is a far cry from the days when investment was abstention, but can we take this stuff seriously?

      Let us consider the “consumption” side. Since by “consumption good” the economists mean something that is enjoyable, pleasurable and satisfying, then anyone calling schooling a consumption good must be kidding. The constant pressure to finish assignments, the hassle of schedules, the stupid sleepless nights to study for exams, and the rest of the self-disciplining that goes on immediately quells any possible fun. It is like saying that going to prison is a consumption good because it is a pleasure to get out!

      Surely one might say that there is some enjoyment going on in school, but it isn’t education. Rather, it is the struggle against that education that’s enjoyable. It is the trips you take to get away from classes, the love affairs that are so distracting, the meandering conversations in bars, the demonstrations that shut it down, the wrong books read and the right books read at the wrong time; all that you do not to be educated. So on the consumption side, the conclusion is exactly the opposite of the economists.

      What about the “investment” side? All throughout the sixties economics professors, bankers, “guidance” counselors agreed: school was a good personal investment. The idea was that you should treat yourself like a little corporation, a mini-GM, so that you could invest in yourself by going to school in the same way a corporation buys machines in order to make a bigger profit operating on the principle: you have to spend money (invest) to make money. If you could raise the money (and the stomach) to go to school either by getting a loan, or working a second job, or getting your parents to pay, you could expect to make a profit on that money because you could expect to get a higher paying job in the future due to your increased schooling. In the heyday of what they called “the human capital revolution,” learned economists figured that you would get a better return in investing in your education than if you bought GM stock. This was capitalism for the working class with a vengeance!

      Aside from the distaste that this “investment view” might cause—for if you are a corporation then one part of you is going to be a worker and another part of you is going to be the boss over that worker—one might wonder whether you actually get more money from going to school in the long run. In the sixties everyone assured you that you would, but in the “crisis-ridden” seventies all bets are off. The authorities are now saying that their previous analyses were all misconceived, that you cannot expect any such “good return” to your investment in yourself. Not surprisingly it now turns out that you are not a better profit making operation than GM. At best all they can come up with is a possible increase in what they called your “psychic” income, in that if you get more schooling you might land a “nicer” if not a higher paying job; but even this is not guaranteed, especially since all the “nice,” “clean” jobs are becoming uncertain, harder to do, and even dangerous, e.g. teaching. It seems that students have been misplanned.

      It is obvious