Industrialisation is an economic and social organizing principle. It is not simply something we can be gentle with and put it in the right hands. Who are the right hands for maximizing efficiencies and producing massive amounts of stuff? That’s what industrialization does. If you don’t want that than you need an alternative.

Simple?

people of low class work in perilous conditions and places. The top class push paper or dictate to a steno. They have no fear of getting cancer, losing a limb or life, etc.
it is ok to have classes, if that’s what people want but we need the classful society with a human face and one where classes are blurred.
we cld easily eliminate hobo class. To eliminate the highest class and thus most evil class n-weapon may be used or threatened to be used. tnx bozhidar balkas vancouver b.c.

The purpose of industrialization has always been to leverage efficiencies through mechanization. Industrialization is about maximizing outputs. It sets in motion efficiency over effective use of all material, and produces commodities for consumption.

Certainly, industrialization can be minimized, reduced to be something it is not intended to be, but that is really beside the point. Industrialization and economies of scale go hand in hand; and as such they help to promote growth/quanities/commoditization.

There use to be something called sustenance farming. Much of that has been largely destroyed by….you guessed in modernist industrial farming. We need to begin to deindustrialize our food system. Yes there is great quantities of “food” but the price in external costs are vast, because to produce those quantities agribusinesses and meg-farms needed to be implemented. Surplus, today, comes from this industrialization and together with imperial trade laws US subsidized agribusiness “food” is dumped undermining sustenance farming and creating poverty, hunger and needless death in its wake.

The internet is not an example of industrialization per se. It is a technology which was created by public investment.

Lastly, industrialization is part of a mind-set which is closely tied to a conventional militarization of problem solving. Yes, it provides great quantities but at even greater expense.

The industrialization of our eduction follows the same pattern. The outputs are trained minds/hands to do the work/occupations for jobs which are owned and determined by “markets” which are at best vague. Even under the best conditions it produces a routinization of thinking; a focus on a “paying job” not on a quality of life. It has been that way for at least a century and continues to be so. Obama’s charter schools provide no real alternative. His Secretary of Education is not about connecting children to community but in furthering the institutionalization of education as a place where child should spend even more time rather than in the life of the community.

That is the mind-set of an industrialist, or modernist. It is stuck in post-WWII industrialization.

As far as manufacturing, that’s a bit of a different story. Manufacturing can be light, done using intermediate or appropriate technologies, and scoped to to economies by to scale. This is a far better localized approach to manufacturing that does not belittle the worker, and ties production to a sustainable balance between quantity and quality.

It is the industrialization of our needs that has created greater poverty and hunger, in marched the American empire off to real or metaphorical endless wars.

I disagree with this conclusion. “Industrialization” like anything else can neither bad or good. The real question is who controls these institutions and who is setting the policies. Efficiencies are neither bad or good. Once again it is efficiency in whose interest. Clearly without industrialization you wouldn’t be on a computer participating on DV. In fact there would be no DV. In fact industrialization is not the cause of poverty and hunger. Capitalism is the cause of that because of allowing for the privatization of the means of production rather that its socialization. There is plenty of food to feed the world several times over the real problem is the maldistribution of resources and the lack of distribution of the surplus.

So the real issue once again comes down to the lack of power rather than industrialization.

This issue is the same modernist problem we have with energy, transportation, farming/food, health care, and just about every other common need. We “attack” problems, call them “wars” and the results are the kinds of military/food/education/healthcare/etc. industrial complex we see across the gutted American landscape of throw-aways commoditization and consumption.

It is the industrialization of our needs that has created greater poverty and hunger, in marched the American empire off to real or metaphorical endless wars.

We’ve latched on to the dogma of quantity and the industrialization that produces it with little to no regard for quality, quality of life.

We are by nature learning creatures, education’s role then is to guide that natural process and build on our curiosity and natural inclination to question (critical thinking). Instead we’ve destroyed those inclinations with the dogma of industrial education and the meaningless test scores that lead to the disasterous pathologies of a war/fearmongering empire. It is empire, hypergrowth and control, which seeps into our culture and is the price we pay for endless war…a long emergency of decay and collapse.

As usual, the state and its stooges like Rhee and Duncan love to slam the worker class – unions and teachers – with the goal of further elimination of govt obligations to its citizens (free, quality public education) and shift funds into coffers of private industry (charter schools). One exception: said stooges support ridding govt of obligations to spend on all public programs except for their own bloated staff and salaries.

Any so-called education expert who advocates the standardized testing model of No Child Left with a Mind, er, No Child Left Behind immediately shows his/her ignorance and/or true corporatist colors. Rhee talks shit about children not knowing how to read. Spending the bulk of the school day with lobotomized drills aimed at passing standardized tests won’t produce good readers – or good scientists, engineers, artists, and even counter help at McDonald’s.

Science, history, music, art, and even reading are taking a back seat to teaching to the test. Sure, the students may pass it, but what have they learned? Has a desire to read, to explore, to think critically, to have good oral and written communication skills been developed? Or have they simply memorized enough to pass the freaking test and still show up in the workplace and life in general as ignorant and uncultured citizens?

Rhee, Arne Duncan and Klein in NYC are cut from the same clothe.
Destroy public education inorder to put public dollars into the privately owned charter school movement.

Teach for America is an insult to students. Put persons with no education in teaching in charge of the education of children is a guarntee that the kids will get a defective education at best. This is an effort to destroy teaching as a profession. Michelle Rhee has no degrees in education. Her undergrad and graduate work is in government. That right even after she took over the DC schools she coundn’t be bothered to study education. Arne Duncan is Obama’s basket ball buddy and has a BA in sociology. Enough said. Klein is an attorney. Yes it only gets worse.

Its also an effort to detroy Black professionals who are well represented in the field of education after many years of struggle. Many Blacks got the bachelors and masters to be teachers and adminitrators, only to be replaced by non-professionals. Bill Gates fought Black participation in the IT industry by bringing in immigrants on H1b visas. It not only hurt Blacks but, all older IT professionals as well. One day people will realize that Gates in a bane to working Americans. NYC, Chicago, DC the pattern is the same. I am surprised that Black professional haven’t noticed the pattern and stood up to oppose it.

Parents must fight for the education of their children. The childrens future depends on it.

Eric