“Socialism in the Classroom” is a bad analogy
(Public domain, please reblog)
I’ve been sent the “socialism in the classroom” analogy many times—it’s a story when a professor decides to “prove” that socialism is bad by giving all people the same grade.
I shall explain why this is a failed analogy. In a socialist system, the main focus is not to push everyone to the middle, but rather to end systems of class conflict and exploitation. In a classroom, unless the bullies are somehow the smart kids (something that doesn’t appear often), there is no system of oppression or exploitation of class between class. Thus, a better analogy would be having the teacher help the students who aren’t performing too well.
Here’s a capitalist classroom:
A student goes to an economics professor and complains to him that capitalism is the best system of economics. The professor says “OK, let’s run an experiment on that in the classroom. I won’t lecture, there’ll be no quiz section, and you can’t ask for help. There’ll be quizzes every week, but I don’t consider it cheating if you bully someone into giving the homework answers—in fact, I’ll encourage it, but I won’t notice it.”
The student did well on the first homeworks and tests, but then a more muscular man arrived and coerced him into doing the man’s homework. The student became more and more miserable, as he had less and less time for his own homework and studies. In the end, he started to fail the exams, and, by the end of the class, received an F. The other man, however, received straight A’s
At the final exam, the professor explained to the student that this was the exploitation inherent to capitalism, and that capitalism only benefits the few, at the expense of an exploited mass.
