Why are teachers being made scapegoats?
David Graeber: “Spotlight on the financial sector did make apparent just how bizarrely skewed our economy is in terms of who gets rewarded”
In Salon magazine, Thomas Frank interviews noted American anthropologist David Graeber who teaches at the London School of Economics.
(Graeber created the indelicate term “bullshit jobs” [obviously not referring to teachers] which he uses frequently in his articles. How does he define the term? “When I talk about bullshit jobs, I mean, the kind of jobs that even those who work them feel do not really need to exist.”)
(Graeber created the indelicate term “bullshit jobs” [obviously not referring to teachers] which he uses frequently in his articles. How does he define the term? “When I talk about bullshit jobs, I mean, the kind of jobs that even those who work them feel do not really need to exist.”)
Excerpts:
So the right wing manipulates the resentment of the bulk of the working class from being able to dedicate their lives to anything purely noble or altruistic. But at the same time—and here’s the real evil genius of right-wing populism—they also manipulate the resentment of that portion of the middle classes trapped in bullshit jobs against the bulk of the working classes, who at least get to do productive work of obvious social benefit. Think about all the popular uproar about school teachers. There’s this endless campaign of vilification against teachers, who they say are overpaid, coddled, and are blamed for everything wrong with our education system. In fact, grade school teachers undergo really grueling conditions for much less money than they’d be paid if they’d gone into almost any other profession requiring the same level of education, and almost all the problems the right-wingers are referring to aren’t created by the teachers or teachers’ unions at all but by school administrators—the ones who are paid much more, and mostly have classic bullshit jobs that seem to multiply endlessly even as the teachers themselves are squeezed and Why are teachers being made scapegoats? | Reclaim Reform: