Making lemon juice, not lemonade, from lemons...

A Philadelphia City Councilmember asks for a study of casino-related job training classes, including creating a "charter school devoted to preparing youngsters for careers dealing with the gambling buisness." See "Debate over casino-job training" from the Philadelphia Inquirer. As the article says:

Paul Vallas, schools chief executive, was a bit less enthusiastic. "We welcome enhanced employment opportunities for our young people, but our reforms are geared to do more than just train our young people in slot machines," he said. "We'll certainly take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves. But we're trying to get every kid into college."

From "History of Education: 1976 -- Questioning the Function of Schooling: Bowles and Gintis Publish Schooling in Capitalist America":

Drawing upon classic Marxist notions of base and superstructure, Bowles and Gintis formulated a comprehensive analysis of schools as institutional constructs operating at the superstructural level, which is in turn inscribed by society's economic base. In such a system, inequities are determined and reproduced in one direction--from base to superstructure. Specifically, Bowles and Gintis attempted to demonstrate the ways in which schools in the United States were closely involved and interrelated with capitalist structures of production. The schools and their curriculum, in other words, structure education so as to produce "good workers" who will fill various socially stratified occupations, thereby maintaining class-based inequities and benefiting the means of capitalist economic production and profit.

(I actually interviewed Herb Gintis for a student newspaper project in something like 1984.)

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