ABSTRACT
Studies of assembly-line workers tend to confirm Smith’s conclusion: “factory employment, especially in routine production tasks, does give evidence of extinguishing workers’ ambition, initiative, and purposeful direction toward life goals.”3 Other findings suggest that the effects of working conditions extend to the realm of moral education. Many menial workers hold attitudes inimical to the aims of democratic edu cation. They believe that “the most important thing to teach children is absolute obedience to their parents. Young people should not be al lowed to read books that are likely to confuse them. People who ques tion the old and accepted ways of doing things usually just end up caus ing trouble.”4 As one commentator puts it: “ [M]enial work tends to breed . . . a sort of blind authoritarian conservatism of the Archie Bunker type.”5
