Friends,

What would the schools of the future look like and how would they function to keep class stratification to a minimum?

I don't have a blueprint, just some scattered thoughts. The most important thing, to my mind, is that these institutions would constantly teach generation after generation of students, the intertwined nature of the perceived-abstract and the perceived-practical, in order to prevent the artificial separation and segregation of "brain" or "clean" work from manual or vocational work, like a plumber.

There is something I forgot to mention in the last post. I said how intellectual work is largely mental housekeeping, to show that it is not as dynamic as we think. But how do you know that your plumber is not inspired by Poseidon, to make a marvelous innovation in his field, which might not only improve toilets (if such things can be improved) but also might also lead to improvements in water distribution systems for large sectors of the world's population - and for which he may be robbed of credit, not to mention royalties.

Suppose a young man graudated high school and wanted to be a farmer. He would go to a four-year school, we wouldn't necessarily call them colleges or universities, and they would be somewhat different from liberal arts universities.

Now, the farmer would learn everything technically he needs to know about agriculture, everything. But during those four years he would also learn about an area comparative mythology concerning the god of agriculture, literature concerning that theme (Grapes of Wrath, for example), and the history of agriculture. But the mythology would be most important.

The same true for the plumber (Poseidon, literature (perhaps works dealing with the sea), history of plumbing.

The same true for the electrician: (Zeus, literature on the topic, and the history of the electrician's field)

The same true for the carpenter: (the relevant mythology, literature touching on the theme, and the history of carpentry)

And so on and so forth. I'm leaving out jobs like sanitation worker, and so forth, because these are jobs created by the bulimic, deindustrializing, urbanizing aftershocks of capitalism.

I'll wrap this up in the next post, with a very small word about education in general.

wingedcentaur.