Political Opportunity: Another factor that makes educationalization attractive
to politicians is that schools are readily accessible to their influence. They may not
be effective in solving the social problem, but they are an institutional arena that
politics can affect. As Bridges points out, the government already owns the schools;
they are already established in every community (no need to hire staff, set up an
organizational structure, or rent offices); they already have the children of the community
under their control and subjected to programs designed to shape their skills
and beliefs; and the system is quite used to receiving new mandates from above
and undergoing continual retraining for the latest reform effort.11 Educationalization
may not be the right tool, but it is the tool at hand.