Suchergebnisse

A Marxist analysis must evaluate affirmative action according to several different criteria: improving the lives of the working class, promoting race and gender equality, exposing negative aspects of capitalism, and promoting working class unity and political mobilization. After considering each of these criteria, the author concludes that affirmative action has more positive aspects than negative aspects and deserves the support of Marxists.

Three different types of discrimination are defined and analyzed. Individual and institutional discrimination refer to actions and/or policies that are intended to have a differential impact on minorities and women. Structural discrimination, on the other hand, refers to policies that are race or gender neutral in intent but that have negative effects on women, minorities, or both. Concrete examples of each type of discrimination are presented and pedagogical techniques for using these concepts are provided.

The customized contract training agreements between community colleges and corporations have contradictory effects. Corporations receive economic benefits because contracting with community colleges is often cheaper than providing in-house training for employees. Community colleges receive increased revenue and increased political support from corporations. However, the training emphasis is likely to hurt the colleges by detracting from their already weakened liberal arts and transfer programs. The overall effect of customized contract training is to push these institutions further in the direction of becoming primarily vocational, rather than educational institutions. This, in turn, will provide even fewer opportunities for upward mobility for poor and minority students.

Between 1970 and 1976, Chinese higher education was organized to promote the simultaneous development of both the forces and relations of production. Meritocratic principles were de-emphasized and political conscious ness emphasized in order to gradually reduce the differences between mental and manual labor and to prevent the development of a new ruling class composed of intellectuals and bureaucrats. However, certain problems emerged which re duced the schools' ability to provide students with the technical expertise needed for rapid economic growth. Since the death of Mao Tse-tung and the fall of the "Gang of Four" in 1976, colleges have been reorganized on a more meritocratic basis in order to train technical experts. The new Chinese leadership feels that the forces of production must be developed before the relations of production can be transformed. This new policy may retard the socialist transformation of produc tive relations. Ultra-right errors may result from the attempt to correct some of the ultra-"left" errors of the early 1970s.