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HUMAN CAPITAL AND THE LABOR OF LEARNING: A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Author(s) -
Sidorkin Alexander M
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2007.00254.x
Subject(s) - human capital , earnings , human capital theory , identity (music) , labour economics , economics , investment (military) , work (physics) , sociology , political science , law , philosophy , economic growth , mechanical engineering , engineering , politics , accounting , aesthetics
A bstract In this essay, Alexander Sidorkin offers a conceptual critique of the human capital theory that makes erroneous assumptions about the nature of student work and the private cost of schooling. Specifically, human capital theorists underestimate the private cost of schooling by taking low‐level manual labor as the basis for estimating students’ forgone earnings. This does not take into consideration the nature of students’ labor of learning. In the essay, Sidorkin describes student work as a form of labor, not an investment activity, and considers the implications such an understanding of student work has for school reform.