A Labor Approach to the Development of the Self or "Modern Personality": The Case of Public Education

Karl Mannheim, and Karl Marx suggested that there is a relationship between economic and political institutions and that behaviors and attitudes are influenced by this. Viewing this postulate as a conception which posits the economic mode of production as the locus of causality for culture, this examination of capitalism as culture, investigates how education and its pedagogical techniques, as a means of "enculturation," reflects the capitalist economic mode of production. Building on the theoretical notions in the Sociology of knowledge and Structuralism, this hermeneutical analysis discusses how pedagogical techniques and curriculum arrangements of public schools in capitalist societies correlate with the organization of labor (for it is that role of the self which is dominant in capitalist societies). Data for this research was gathered through the content analysis of pedagogical techniques and curriculum arrangements adopted by The School Board of Broward County, Florida. Results show that the current shift in the organization of labor (from industrial to post-industrial) parallels, and therefore correlates with, the shift in curriculum and pedagogical arrangements of The School Board of Broward County, Florida; as such, it is a legitimate claim to suggest that the socialization of the self is determined by its relation to the mode of production.