Capitalism is a social organisation wherein a minority own and control the means of production and distribution for the purpose of capital accumulation through the realisation of profit based upon large-scale wage labour. The education system is locked into this process in every conceivable manner both directly and indirectly.
The education system functions to serve the needs of the capitalist society in which it resides. Its objective is to produce educated and competent workers. The subjects and training cover a vast complex field that assures the owners of a qualified workforce that can do everything that is necessary to produce, distribute and market commodities for sale and profit, in line with existing technologies.
Of vital importance is the fact that a working-class is produced which accepts capitalism socially and politically. The majority of students, when their formal education has been concluded, embrace the wages system without question. Their labour-power is ready to be marketed. They, in turn, are willing to conform with docility and eagerness to all the standard norms of capitalist society which, in effect, will maintain their rulers in power in contrast to their own subservience.
The whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an atmosphere of competition and stress together with a weeding-out process that segregates those with supposedly superior talents from those less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, examinations, and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon ultimate occupations and potential earnings. Such an environment prevents the pleasurable pursuit of education as a primary end in itself. The young find themselves involved in an intensive training programme, presented under the guise of education. There is interdependence, a direct relationship, between the educational system and the business world. Starting with first-year children, a concept called "career education" has been used to permeate all academic subjects at all levels of education, from nursery school through junior college.
The perpetual conflict within the educational system is the attempt to produce the desired results at a budget price, within a competitive, stressful environment harmful to both students and teachers. The teachers themselves, in a similar fashion to their fellow workers, have been graded and selected to perform at certain levels in different categories. Their own education has been in many instances limited by economic and material circumstances beyond their control. They find themselves frustrated by rigid guidelines that apparently do not bring out the best in their students, especially those who come from broken, poverty-stricken homes. Just like their fellow workers, they are faced with a never-ceasing variety of seemingly insoluble problems which relate to the economic considerations of a cost-conscious administration and mean that the individual needs of the student rarely, if ever, get priority. Instead, education receives the same approach as that given to commodities that have to be produced in a given period of time, at a certain price, for a particular market, with quality control that leaves much to be desired.
Is there an alternative to this market-orientated education system? Yes, in a sane society, real education, whereby the pupil learns in an environment without stress and competition, where time is not at a premium, where financial considerations are non-existent, where individual needs are in harmony with society’s, has never been given an opportunity to work its potential wonders.
Education properly organized under these conditions, will be a continuous one that will not commence and finish at a given age, but rather will be recognized as a never-ceasing quest for individual improvement throughout our lives.
In a socialist society, it should be obvious that education will not be prostituted to the needs of a class minority or the demand of a marketplace — because neither will exist. All healthy individuals will be able to satisfy their desire for knowledge unhampered by economic restrictions or barriers. The whole of society will in a sense become a perpetual seat of learning wherein studying, travel and the production process can become beneficially interrelated. In socialism, the world itself can become "the classroom".
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