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The deep and barely hidden purpose of institutionalized schooling is to maintain a class based system. There are the "blue collar" workers(as Americans say) who do not have degrees and are thus locked into lower prestige and paying jobs. Then there are the "white collar" workers who have a degree, can get higher prestige and paying jobs. This is the true function of college and the university and not anything else: to create the modern class system. To get into the truly elevated class(since after all college grads are always as well a few paychecks away from being homeless bums) that in Marxian terms "controls capital with which to make more capital", going to college or not, cannot get you to such a vaulted level. Only hereditary inheritance can get you born into that status, or a chance combination of the right portions of luck, chance, proper connections, social climbing and ruthless greed in business matters. As Illich says in modern schooling the myth is maintained that "everyone has an equal chance to compete for equality," an absurd notion that modern propaganda has made into the common sentiment instead of a disturbing contradiction. This competition among the economic and social classes that are still in the similar situation of being a paycheck or two away from homelessness is what allows the disturbingly and grotesquely rich minority that can afford their own $100 million yachts and luxury Boeing 747's to remain undisturbed.

You are forced to learn in school new packets of information or knowledge all the time that serve no functional purpose within your life at that moment other than the demand the teacher imposes on you to retain the information at least long enough to be graded on. Those who just do it and get a good grade, only can do so by confirming to the institutional goals which can only exist outside their autonomy, desires and wants; such people are rewarded and promoted in school(pre-workforce). The higher prestige university you attend and higher grades you can get, the higher prestige job you can command upon graduation -- within its limits in the workforce. If a mouse is placed in a cardboard maze during an experiment and the mouse finds its way to a piece of cheese, can that mouse be compared with a wholly different type of mouse that realizing its situation chews through the cardboard when the experimenter is not on guard and escapes? As far as the hydraic institution of school is concerned, mice are meant to run around mazes to amuse experimenters through their mutual but useless competition. Thus in school whole generations are conditioned to conflate success with working against their self-desire and autonomy, a true battle against oneself to conform to the malicious modern social body and organization that only exists for profit motives or the motive of infinite institutional expansionism(since all corporations wish to grow as big as possible, all governments the same, and all organizations wish to be more successful and expansive). Modern success is the success of pleasing your teacher, who himself is a mere lose-able pawn deep in some labyrinth bureaucracy, who can only teach what curriculum stipulates he teach. Modern "success" is the success of pleasing your boss and company for a comparative trifle in monetary compensation compared to any large stockholder or President, Vice-President, CEO, etc. This is merely the "success" of working against your deep self-interests for self-defeating and paltry rewards possible only after humiliating yourself before the current social order as an obedient lackey of indifferent corporations -- the only social position left any longer for modern man.

Recommended reading:
Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society.
Gatto, John Taylor. The Underground History of American Education.

The 40 hour work week as mandated by the US government did not SHORTEN working hours, it lengthened them. Average length of work week decreased consistently from 1840 until the 1930s when the US government mandated a minimum work week as part of its response to the Great Depression. As a result, the modern worker has been forced to work longer hours than would likely be common had this law not been passed:
http://www.preservenet.com/studies/WorkHours.html

As wikipedia states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States
"Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, and continuing with all administrations since, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Document 68 [8] proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion which would allow it to "siphon off" a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union"

Arguably, this was a valid course of action, but the laws mandating a 40 hour work week were not for worker protection, but to force workers to be more productive than they might have otherwise chosen to be. It was a deliberate action to cause us to become a superpower. Average work hours DO naturally drop as average productivity increases, and any economic textbook will validate this.

• The first lesson I teach is: "Stay in the class where you belong."
• The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch.
• The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command.
• The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what curriculum you will study.
• In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer's measure of your worth.
• In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched.

From my humble experience, these guidelines help with the subject of the article
1. Be at work 10 minutes before time
2. Leave on time or up to 5 minutes after.
3. Don't do overtimes unless it's happening at most once a week and it's paid.
4. Have your own strong principles and be professional, do what you are paid for, but keep in mind rule number 2.
5. When a 'funny' new idea/feature/concept is about to be discussed and possibly implemented, don't go nuts over it. Stay calm, state your view, sit down and shut up. The last part is important because regardless of the undesirability of the idea, if your boss wants it to be implemented, you'll have no choice anyway. Instead of being stressed out, refer to rule 2 and 6.
6. Once work hours ends, forget everything until the next day regardless of the pressure. Work isn't your personal life.
7. Remember that people treat you the way you've allowed them to do.

If you still don't agree with me, do read:
workweek
Average work week in manufactoring

"We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions". In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."

It might hamper your ability to properly indoctrinate.

You can find a lot of his stuff here, and I would recommend starting with The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher.

In the two weeks I was waiting for this question to be accepted, I put together for my students a small, research-oriented group project. I've asked them to scour the library and web in search of, among other issues, real-life incidents of "book burning" and censorship (in books, film, and music). I've pointed a few students to Neil Postman's work as well.

Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of reading this book until recently. It has fast become one of my favorites, and I really hope I can share my enthusiasm for reading this novel with my students.

Oh, and I put a li'l bit of Socrates in all of my lessons, not just this one.

Thanks again for the ideas

are increasingly accustomed to tailoring their news consumption: they want information of particular interest to them, at the times they choose to receive it.

A very interesting bit of truth. Neil Postman writes very shocking and telling books on this subject. Important is: Amusing Ourselves to Death and How to Watch TV News which deal with these ideas.

What will surely rise as a problem in the near future is a society disconnected from a common 'world state' (not state as in country, but state as in tense). When people only have interest in seeking out and reading news that is of interest to them we may have a problem. The evening news (for all its obvious ills) provided a common public discourse. When people begin to consume their news information as entertainment, we loose the ability to maintain an idea of a general present state (of society/world). For instance, Slashdotters, myself included, are rabid over the MPAA/DMCA/RIAA/DeCSS/Napster/2600 mess. When we only focus on the problems WE are interested in we loose touch with everything else. Have you ever tried to explain this situation to 'non-slashdot-types'? Painful isn't it. This situation has broad reaching implications and people in the general US population have ZERO idea what the problem is, maybe because they find other things 'more interesting'.

The mainstream media plays to the middle, this topic will NEVER bubble to the top. Now imagine other groups coalescing around whatever topic is of interest to them, by doing so it marginalizes our ability act in force. This will separate people into many disperse groups, unable to communicate. People no longer are aware of the general world around them. We have got to try and maintain a balance between specific news topics/sources (tech - slashdot) by balancing it with more general topics/sources. (bbc/cbc/cnn - environnent/social justice/politics). When a story appears on one of these sources* remember that their is another equally rabid group trying desperately to get US to hear them.

* except the obvious status-quo corporatist propaganda stories foisted by the corporate media(which should be obviously ignored).

Scared of the recent comments by Sony's VP? Yeah, me too. Corporations got you down? Yeah, me too. Why don't you: