Robin Hanson believes that our school system functions in part to help folks accept workplace domination — a point made in Schooling in Capitalist America decades ago — but Bryan Caplan finds this wildly implausible. If capitalists ran the schools, he says, they’d impose much stricter discipline:
The system we have looks more like it was designed by egalitarian bureaucrats trying to minimize the number of phone calls and visits they get from angry parents of kids with bad behavior.
Furthermore, if capitalists ran the school system, they wouldn’t teach poetry, art, history, music, etc. Performance in these subjects does signal desirable traits, but if the capitalists were in charge, they might as well impose a curriculum that lets students signal and build job skills at the same time.
So, what kind of school system would our corporate overlords design? I don’t think it would be particularly terrifying:
Corporations hiring young workers just out of school complain that “kids these days” can’t communicate professionally and have little sense of responsibility, so a school run for the benefit of corporate employers would probably emphasize straightforward business writing and meeting deadlines.
Instead of poetry, art, history, music, etc., I would expect them to emphasize general business skills — accounting, project management, marketing math — and engineering, along with trade-school skills — metal shop, graphic arts, etc.