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ficial doctrine moved towards greater State control, so did university teaching follow nike air max tn . It is interesting to observe that the Swedish system was presented as lying before a watershed, on the other side of which lay the capitalist world. There seemed less difference, in this presentation, between Sweden and the Communist countries than between Sweden and the West. Education in the Service of Conditioning 239 Teaching acquired a distinct Marxist colouring. There was a good example in the first-year economics course at Stockholm University for the academic year 1970-71. The part on the United States prescribed as textbook, <a href="http://www.airforce1fashion.com/specials.html"><strong>air force one </strong></a> The Age of Imperialism, by the Marxist author, Harry Magdorff. The course was clearly tendentious, aimed at denigrating the whole American system. To a lesser degree, the rest of the Western Nike ireland world was similarly treated. But the main object was to present dollar imperialism as the gravest of contemporary dangers, which happened to be party, and to a certain extent government opinion as well. The conversion of Swedish education to an exclusively vocational system guided by the State has necessitated thorough- going and complicated changes in the universities. A technological society requires not only technologists. As the Swedes discovered a long time ago, these are not nike air max turbulence even necessarily in the majority for the proper functioning of a modern State. Equally necessary nike air max 95 are teachers, economists, administrators, sociologists, planners; in short, all the social engineers without whom a modern society cannot be directed. In the middle of the 1960s, then, the Swedish university system was reformed in order to supply the specialists required. The faculty of Arts, which in, Sweden includes all subjects not taught at technical universities, and which in the past was a school for bureaucrats, used to allow considerable variation in studying. As is the case with most universities in the West, one proceeded from the general to the particular: in other words, the freshman started off by embracing a number of subjects, and specialized as he approached graduation. The Swedes have turned this scheme on its head. Swedish students now have to specialize in their first year in order to prepare themselves for a profession recognized by the Labour Market Directorate. It would be too much to suppose that even the meticulous nike air max 1 240 The New Totalitarians Swedes could match every occupation with a university course. nike air max shoes Apart from anything else, this would have extended the choice, instead of narrowing it, which was the object of the reform. Instead, the recognized occupations were arranged in the seventeen main groups of the official Labour Market Directorate system of classification, corresponding to which there were seventeen permissible combinations of courses. Studies are what is known as goal-directed; <a href="http://www.airforce1fashion.com/mens-air-force-1-low-c-9.html"><strong>air force one low </strong></a> that is, they are chosen not to satisfy the desires of the student, but to fulfil the requirements of some more or less realistic end. To take a few examples. Studying history in the first year necessarily implies that teaching has been chosen as a profession; no other possibility is admitted, because the Chancellor’s Office and the Labour Market have decided that no other occupation needs that subject. Subsequent years’ curricula are automatically adjusted to that assumption. Or, consider the course designated in all Swedish universities as No. 6 (uniformity extends to the minutest details). It starts with Economics, Law and Statistics, and produces two specialists much required by the State for Swedish society: the economist and the community planner. Ideally, students would be deprived of their freedom of choice, and so distributed, after suitable testing, among the courses of study, that the supply of occupations was adjusted women nike air max to the demand. In practice, the Swedish authorities have gone some way to achieving the same ends by a system of pressures without overt compulsion. In the first place, the pattern of the courses itself makes automatically for a general channelling from beginning to end. In the nature of things, interests generally narrow with time, even in the compressed space of the average university sojourn. Normally, Nike ireland store if a student shows a disposition to shift studies, he does so in his early terms, concentrating later on something that absorbs his interest, or that is forced upon him by the necessity of satisfying the examiners. If he is compelled to specialize as a freshman, he Education in the Service of Conditioning 241 will tend to continue in the groove thus allotted, for the narrowing tendency will apply in his case as well. Moreover, a student forced to select his studies according to a closely defined future profession will feel constricted and even fearful as a result of the act of commitment. He is unlikely nike air max 90 infrared to spread his interests as he advances in his university career, even though the authorities do permit greater choice in later terms. But other, more obvious, pressures have been added to the system. Since Swedish universities have become rigorously cheap nike air max 90 and exclusively vocational, it is logical that vocational guidance has in turn been made compulsory. It is, in fact, combined with study guidance, but the dividing line is obscure. All students must have their courses approved by a director of studies, without whose permission a change of course is impossible. Since that approval is not lightly given, a firstyear choice is almost certainly irrevocable. By tuning such persuasions to the suggestions of the Labour Market Directorate, national planning is helped. Intimate consultation between the Directorate and the universities ensures that guidance conforms to State policy. The concept of education as a civilizing influence has been dropped. It is now considered exclusively as a practical device in the service of a technologically dominated society. The authorities openly, and indeed with some pride, admit that their institutions of learning are to be considered as educational factories. Production is their only concern, and quantity their only standard of judgement. Quoting Mr Moberg again: ‘Our concern is to promote economic efficiency.’ And it nike air max wright is in this way that resources are being exploited from kindergarten up. ‘We have to spread education,’ says Mr Moberg. ‘We used to favour the <a href="http://www.airforce1fashion.com/mens-air-force-1-low-c-9.html"><strong>air force 1 low shoes </strong></a> clever children, and gave too little stimulus to the average. Consequently, there has been nike air max turbulence a wastage, which we now have to rectify.’ It has become official policy that encouragement of extraordinary talent is wasteful, since it concentrates too much 242 The New Totalitarians effort on too few people. The energy spent on helping one bright child has less effect, economically, than if it were distributed among several average pupils. The approved aim is to extract the untouched reservoirs of ability among the ordinary mass of schoolchildren. In practice, teachers neglect brighter children, to concentrate on the less gifted. And there is a school of thought in the Schools Directorate that has canvassed the idea of actively handicapping the talented pupils in the interests of equality. It is generally conceded by teachers and educational officials alike that the Swedish system is devised for the child nike air max light of average ability, and the clever one is penalized. ‘A clever child will always manage on its own’ is the usual justifying formula. This would be verging on the suicidal for any society which set store by originality. But it cheap nike air max 90 is perfectly understandable in a society, like that of Sweden, where it is the obedient administrator and interpreter of other men’s discoveries who is required. In the terminology of Brave New World, it is the Beta Pluses, possibly the Alphas, that are wanted, but decidedly not the Alpha Pluses. Besides the sheer economic reasons for the university reform and the limitation of courses, there were equally important social ones. Mr Moberg again: ‘The expansion of education, and the rising demand for graduates was certain to bring to the universities a new kind of student. He would come from the lower middle classes, with a new social background, and without a tradition of study at home. Lef to himself, he would be likely to become confused and frustrated, and liable to revolt.’ This shows some foresight. Mr Moberg is describing here the very private reasoning of the Swedish educational reformers when they were formulating their plans in the late 1940s and 1950s. It was almost nike air max 2003 two decades before the epidemic of student unrest cheap Nike shoes and the French ‘events’ of May 1968 That was a time, it will be recalled, when undergraduates Education in the Service of Conditioning 243 were a singularly docile body, intent only on taking degrees, and letting off steam, when necessary, by the politically innocuous methods of womanizing or drinking. By being forced to specialize early, students would then be spared the primary confusion of uncertainty and the necessity of making up their minds themselves. Moreover, it was supposed that, by an insistence on the vocational nature of university, and by playing on the obsession with security, or rather fears of its future loss, the new students would be more amenable to guidance and direction. And so they were. This was one reason why, during the troubles of 1968, the Swedish universities got off so lightly. There was some unrest among sociology students in Stockholm, but this must be attributable, not so much to indigenous motivation, as to mimicry of foreign models. On one occasion, the Swedish TV broadcast a lengthy and romanticized programme on the day’s rioting among students in Paris. Approximately <a href="http://www.xinzhouba.com/view.php?id=33434"><strong>Women's UGG Classic Argyle Knit Boots 5879 | nfl jerseys</strong></a> two hours later, students were on the rampage in the streets of Stockholm with war nike air max 90 cries and hastily contrived banners that were obviously copied from the sounds and images they had absorbed from the little screen so short a time before. There has been no lasting unrest, with the exception perhaps of consistent new left agitation in sociology and education faculties. Starting with a militant core in 1968, sociology students at Stockholm University were converted wholesale to a neo-Marxist way of thought. Marxists acquired control of the student representative bodies. It became necessary to toe the party line in order to avoid unpleasantness. Anybody who elected to ignore the Castroesque style of dress accepted as the norm nike air max 180 at the sociology institute was boycotted as an undesirable and a reactionary. The atmosphere was so strained that students with moderate tastes in dress (and opinions) felt obliged to leave for other lines of study. Perhaps unrest is an inappropriate description of what happened. The new left did not want disruption so much as 244 The New Totalita