Education and Social Change

Transcription

1 380 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, 1977 Discussion Contribution: Education and Social Change Nanette Whitbread I want to take up some points made by Brian Simon in his two important articles in the June 1976 and February 1977 issues of Marxism Today with reference to the role of education in the class struggle and hence in the transition to socialism. Role of the State First I want to examine some aspects of the relation between education and the state in Britain. 1 find Brian Simon's treatment of this (February 1977, p. 43) too simplistic in that he does not differentiate what is meant by the State in different historical contexts. The essentially monarchical Tudor State, the mid-17th century Commonwealth State, the pseudo-parliamentary state of the Restoration, the partly reformed parliamentary state of the 19th century and the more democratically developed form of the parliamentary state (as the franchise was step by step extended to universal adult suffrage from the iate-19th to the mid-20th century) cannot be given the same meaning of term even with the proviso 'representing different class interests at different times'. The key difference relates to the franchise, the power of parliament to control the bureaucracy of government and the method of recruitment to the higher echelons of that bureaucracy, namely the civil service. In the context of education in Britain today, Parliament and Government legislate and theoretically control the Department of Education and Science (DES) and Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI). Through universal suffrage a socialistdominated parliament and a socialist government are theoretically possible and this is the perspective of the British Road to Socialism and hence there is the potential for socialist control of DES and HMI. In practice, Labour Governments have not controlled the Board of Education nor its successors the Ministry of Education and now the DES, and these sections of the state apparatus along with the

2 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, Treasury have operated to exercise ruling class hegemony through the pursuit of policies which have frustrated democratically-oriented reform. Instances have been the Board of Education's consistent policy of resisting pressures from the labour movement for secondary education for all in the inter-war period (analysed in detail by Brian Simon in The Politics of Education ); the Ministry of Education's policy towards LEA Development Plans and its publication of pamphlets advocating tripartite secondary schools following the 1944 Act; and the slow and difficult progress towards comprehensive reorganisation which the DES, HMI and Treasury can hardly be said to have accelerated. The labour movement, in strong alliance with teachers' associations even before the main teachers' unions affiliated to the TUC, has been able to influence and Labour Governments at times initiated educational legislation in a progressive direction, but has had no direct means of bringing pressure on the relevant apparatus of state bureaucracy. The continued existence of the independent Public School sector, with its close and 'closed' Oxbridge links, has assured the formation of 'traditional intellectuals' to man the directive echelons of the DES and HMI (as noted more generally by Gramsci 1 ) and thus monitor reform. State and Local Government Analysis of the role of the state and ruling class control of education is made vastly more complex in Britain than in most European capitalist countries by the decentralised pattern of control through LEAs. Are these instruments of capitalist state control, part of the state apparatus, or agents for democratic control of local education? Potentially and theoretically County and Metropolitan Councils could be electorally won for socialist policies. Though under our present electoral system and the stranglehold of the two main national parties in local elections this perspective seems long, it must be noted that some Labour-controlled LEAs made considerable headway in the inter-war period in their provision of opportunity for secondary education and more recently in comprehensive reorganisation, always with pressure from the wider labour movement and teachers. Corporate management since 1974 has, however, lessened democratic control of local educational policy. Local government dependence on the Rate Support Grant makes LEAs more subject to Treasury control than they were under the percentage grant financial arrangements of the 1918 Act, and local educational policy is more subject to 1 Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971), pp. 10 and 18. competing vested interests in the allocation of funds than before the block grant replaced the ear-marked grant in The potential for local democratic control of the maintained school system was severely restricted by the 1902 Act and the abolition of School Boards, which was one reason why that legislation was vehemently opposed by the labour movement at the time; the purpose and effects of that Act were clearly characterised by Brian Simon as an instance of class interests featuring centrally in educational legislation (February 1977, pp ). I conclude that LEAs are paraded as democratic organs capable of popular control, but in reality are appendages of the bureaucratic capitalist state apparatus over which powers of coercion could readily be exercised by the Treasury and, if necessary, by the courts if any were to try to act too autonomously in response to local popular demand. (Clay Cross, Enfield and Tameside are each significant.) Thus I disagree with Brian Simon who contends that LEAs 'can hardly be characterised as organs of the State' (ibid., p. 43), though I concede his qualification of 'directly'. Since 1964 the universities have been brought under the direct control of the DES, with the potential for coercive control, when the University Grants Committee was linked to the DES. The UGC presents no semblance of democratic control and is paraded as a 'buffer' between government and the so-called 'autonomous' sector of higher education; but this is patently a delusive facade. The whole of higher and further education, as well as the maintained school sector, is now controlled by the state bureaucracy which is remote from parliamentary control and hence not directly subject to pressure from the labour movement. That control of LEAs and the UGC is significant when we are considering the perspective for moving into the period of transition to socialism as outlined in the British Road. Coercive power may normally be latent but is none the less available. Left-Progressive Pressures Left-progressive pressures can, however, be marginally yet significantly exerted through the appropriate teachers' and other institutional employees' unions as these can be won over to socialist educational policies. The relatively recent affiliation by the major teachers' unions to the TUC is thus significant, as is both the struggle for democratic control of the internal government and decision-making processes by staff and students within all types of further and higher education institutions and the issue of democratising school government. The class struggle enters the educational arena at institutional level alongside the levels where wider educational policy matters are decided

3 382 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, 1977 as in the politics of local and central government. However, the role of teachers' and other trade unions in social institutions such as schools, colleges and hospitals requires careful analysis in the light of further marxist appraisal of their relation to the state in the present historical context. If they can achieve unity of purpose they may prove effective in confronting coercion. In the complexity of the British educational scene there are numerous other bodies whose role in relation to the state and ruling class control need to be examined the various examining and validating bodies for the schools and further and higher education, the Schools Council, NFER, the Nuffield Foundation, grant-disbursing bodies such as the SSRC. Curriculum content, teaching methods and educational research for all levels of education are strongly influenced by such bodies. At times many of them act to frustrate, undermine or directly counter progressive developments working in the interests of the working class. At other times some positively foster such developments. Education During Crisis of Capitalism This ambivalence may be generally explained in terms of contradiction pertaining to the social function of education in the period of the crisis of capitalism. The social function of education in the period of the rise of capitalism was clearer, even though it inevitably contained contradictions as capitalism created the working class. Thus in mid- Victorian Britain, when the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie was consolidating its position in fusion with the gentry and aristocracy, it was establishing and transforming educational institutions to serve that situation, and perforce also establishing and attempting to control minimal schooling for the working class who were themselves striving by their own initiatives to secure an education. But then the bourgeoisie had won control of parliament and government. The political aspect of the crisis of capitalism is that that control is now threatened, and with it control of such critical organs of social control as educational institutions which, as Gramsci has argued, are "the instrument through which intellectuals of various levels are elaborated". 2 The battles over comprehensive reorganisation of the structure of the maintained school system, over non-streaming and the evolution of an undifferentiated secondary curriculum, over child-centred, problem-solving and informal teaching through non-authoritarian teacher-pupil (or student) relations from primary through to higher education, are all connected with contradictions in the social function of education in a period of acute crisis of the capitalist state. 2 Ibid., p. 10. Without wishing to underrate the influence of the labour movement and left-progressive forces in the transformation of education that has so far been achieved, I think more attention should be given to the fact that all these developments and not only comprehensive education as noted by Brian Simon (June 1976, p. 171) were necessary for the survival of capitalism. They were necessary not only to limit the 'wastage' of talent by the functionally-organised school system which too rigidly preserved the social status quo, but also to develop creative, inventive and even divergent capabilities needed for the advance of technological industry in the competitive world and to provide liberal palliatives to disguise the inhuman face of capitalism. All these developments, however, also pose a threat to the stability of capitalist society, and hence first evoked opposition from the Black Paperites and eventually attempts by the DES and HMI to put the brakes on, as is now happening. The politically engineered 'Great Debate' launched by a right-wing Labour Prime Minister and his Secretary of State is an attempt to give the whole halting operation a facade of democracy. In demagogic vein the plight of unemployed youth can be blamed partly on the lax 'standards' of progressive education about which industrialists are invited to complain. The economic crisis of capitalism can conveniently and plausibly be used to apply another apparently 'neutral' braking system in the form of public expenditure cuts through the RSG and UGC. The Treasury, again as in the 1920s, acts as a bastion of capitalism's defence against the gentle inroads of even right-wing Labour governments. LEAs are compelled to curtail developments, such as more favourable pupil-teacher ratios and various physical resources, which are necessary for progressive educational approaches to flourish. This could prove more effective in undermining or at least checking educational advance than direct attacks in the name of 'standards', which can be countered by the profession on the ideological front so long as teachers are convinced of the correctness of their position. 'New Direction' Sociology Here I want to pick up points from the Simon articles on the 'fight for the humanist transformation of the schools' by teachers in the classroom, lecture hall or seminar situation (June 1976, pp , February 1977, p. 44). Education has a significant function in either ensuring consent to the status quo and hegemony of the ruling class or fostering the critical capacity of pupils and students, enhancing their self-image of capability so that they will have the confidence to work for their own success and for the transformation of society when they recognise both its injustice and its mutability. The Coleman Report attributed under-achievement

4 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, of American negro children partly to their deflated self-image and sense of lacking control over their environment. British sociologists have not only made similar findings for working class children, but have more recently attempted to show that teachers inadvertently foster this sense of inadequacy and thereby alienate the academically unsuccessful from education. Here I disagree with the totally hostile interpretation that Brian Simon put on 'new direction' sociology (June 1976, p. 173), and contend that some of it has something to contribute to our understanding of what goes on in school lessons and the hidden curriculum of schools, especially when this kind of analysis is set alongside that of David Hargreaves. The destructive effects of streaming and teachers' low expectations of children they and the system categorise as 'non-academic' are demonstrated in these portrayals. When set in an historical perspective, Basil Bernstein's exposition of how 'high status' and 'low status' curriculum become defined has considerable validity. There is a clear line of descent from the Higher Elementary curriculum of the Consultative Committee Report of 1906, through the Ministry of Education pamphlets on Secondary Modern within tripartite in the 1940s to the Newsom Report and Schools Council Rosla publications: a similar type of diet was recommended at the beginning of the century in the interest of society and employers as subsequently in the name of 'relevance' to categorised pupils and their so-called personal needs. Bernstein rightly warns of the need for ideological consensus among the team of teachers designing and working with interdisciplinary studies which otherwise disintegrate into purposeless confusion. Levitas' total attack on Nell Keddie and most of the contributors to Tinker, Tailor... (Marxism Today, April 1977) was unhelpfully indiscriminate and misleading in that he concentrated on discrediting them rather than on identifying the problems many teachers face and showing where these are falsely construed while indicating more positive strategies in contrast to those he rightly denigrated. Hence I welcome John Salway's thoughtful contribution in critical response (Marxism Today, May 1977). The potentially progressive lines of argument in contemporary theorising, speculative though some of it may be, must be sharply distinguished from the downright reactionary lines pursued by G. M. Bantock, Bryan Wilson, etc. The way forward in considering language in classrooms, for instance, is being shown by Douglas Barnes, James Britton, etc., and on curriculum independently by Douglas Holly, Denis Lawton, and John White. It is important to understand how children, whose experience derives from their sub-cultures and is emotionally charged, organise and reconstruct knowledge including 'non-school or common-sense experiencial knowledge'. Gramsci's Views and English Experience Teachers in England and Wales enjoy considerable freedom at all stages of education to select curriculum content. That freedom in the schools is now under attack from DES, the Committee of Vice- Chancellors and Principals and other organs of civil society concerned to preserve hegemony. The CNAA was created to control that freedom as higher education was expanded in polytechnics, and is increasingly doing so for teacher education and training. BEC and TEC are to have that function for much of further education. But that freedom should not be defended uncritically. Gramsci recognised this when he noted the need 'to place limits on libertarian ideologies', 3 and Brian Simon has elaborated on the argument in the contemporary British context (June 1976, pp ). Gramsci's distinction between the 'active' and 'creative' school and his criticism of idealist educationalists' excessive emphasis on the distinction between 'instruction' and 'education' are helpful for identifying positive and delusive features in what are currently presented as 'progressive' trends, so that we can develop a marxist educational theory and practice with which to move from the still largely 'romantic phase' to the 'rational phase' in the primary-secondary continuum of comprehensive education. This will necessitate a firm stand on the central responsibility of the teacher to direct, structure and control learning in such a way that it is individualised to develop autonomy yet socialised within the classroom or seminar collective. The nonstreamed school with stable classes moving up together presents the conditions in which this becomes possible, and we can learn much from Makarenko's writing to guide us. "Wider participation in secondary education brings with it a tendency to ease off the discipline of studies, and to ask for 'relaxations' " 4 Gramsci's warning is very pertinent to comprehensive schools today where well-intentioned teachers are tempted to do just this. After discussing the problems faced by working class children, Gramsci goes on: "it will be necessary to resist the tendency to render easy that which cannot become easy without being distorted. If our aim is to produce a new stratum of intellectuals... from a social group which has not 3 Ibid., pp Ibid., p. 42.

5 384 MARXISM TODAY, DECEMBER, 1977 traditionally developed appropriate attitudes, then we have unprecedented difficulties to overcome." 5 But only thus can schools in capitalist society undertake the formation of organic intellectuals of the working class who will give it that "awareness of its own (class) function" 6 in the class struggle for the transition to socialism. Teaching methods and relationships which develop the working class child's self-image of competence and ability to control his/her environment are essentials and non-streaming a prerequisite. The former depend on the teacher's professional skills and personality as much as on ideological standpoint. In the formation of effective progressive teachers we need to organise and select from bourgeois technical knowledge in the fields of psychology and sociology all that is appropriate to our aims, synthesise it with that of marxist pedagogy as well as our own teaching experience, and thereby develop theory and feasible practice for comprehensive primary and secondary schools and all types of postschool institutions in Britain today. For instance, a searching reappraisal of that child-centred tradition which has served the middle classes so well is required in the light of Gramsci's discussion and English experience. And while Maurice Levitas' Marxist Perspectives in the Sociology of Education (1974) is welcome as a start in an important area, it must be subjected to sharper and more thorough criticism than it has yet received from marxists. Importance of Theory Historically the campaign had first to be fought for the common school a campaign which began in the 19th century and has been waged on national and local fronts in this century. But neglect of a pedagogy for the development of the common school and the non-streamed classroom left the teaching force to work out tactics on a largely empirical basis when and where battles for the prerequisite school structure were won. Idealist theory and liberal social philosophy inform most practice. The consequence is that now the long campaign is well on the way to formal success, there is grave danger of the strategic position being undermined because it is vulnerable to reactionary counter-attack from the forces of traditionalism whose educational aims still command consent. This is why the development of explicit educational theory to inform and direct classroom practice is now urgent and must be connected with clarification of the relation between education and the state and the concept of subcultures in Britain today. 5 Ibid., p Ibid., p. 5.