TWO FUTURES FOR WORKING CLASS EDUCATION
No one in Britain speaks for working class education anymore.
The ruling class parties are interested only in how to shape
education for the needs of capitalism. The teacher unions accept
this agenda; what little opposition they once offered has long
since been abandoned. The social democratic left and parent
groups limit their protests to more resources and te defence of
comprehensive education. It would appear there is no alternative
for the working class. A recent book by Michael Barber, guru of
New Labour education thinking, seems to confirm this dismal
prospect. Another new book, however, about education in Cuba,
demonstrates there is a radical and liberating alternative once the
working class take control of their own future. JIM CRAVEN
examines the arguments.
Schooling the Revolution, by Theodore MacDonald, recounts the
remarkable advances in Cuban education since 1959. MacDonald tells us
how illiteracy was virtually wiped out within a year in what he describes
as 'one of the truly great achievements of mankind'.
Later, these workers were able to take part-time courses to improve
their skills and to enter special new colleges - opportunities they
couldn't have dreamed of just five years before. Within ten years, every
Cuban child had access to primary education, 90 per cent had pre-school
places and over 80 per cent were enrolled in secondary schools: figures
that are comparable to most rich nations and are way ahead of any other
poor Third World country. In the first three years following the revolution
university entrants increased fivefold, while between 1960 and 1980 there
was a tenfold increase in the number of students matriculating from
secondary schools. But it doesn't stop there: lifelong learning is a reality
in Cuba. A staggering three out of every five Cuban adults has enrolled in
some form of part-time education.
However, it is not just the facts and figures that make the story of the
Cuban revolution in education so impressive. The greatest achievement of
Cuban education is the way it has affected people's lives. From the
beginning, its primary motive was the right of Cuban people to be free
from ignorance and oppression. It was a matter of human dignity, of
human development.
MacDonald tells the story of Angelo, who remembered schools before
the revolution with boxes for seats and a drunken teacher, where the only
thing he learned was that England still had kings and queens like Spain.
In 1960, after the revolution, he achieved the whole of his primary
schooling in two years. We hear of Isabel, an arrogant little rich girl, who
found some sense of humanity through the revolution; of Yolanda, who
lived in a hut before her father died, who was found a home by the
revolution and then taught to read and write when she was 11 years old
in a makeshift school set up in the old gambling casino. Yolanda now
works as a financial analyst for the Department of Trade. She remembers
promising to model herself on Che and says 'Even now that is my ideal.'
MacDonald points out the ideology behind the Cuban system. 'From
the beginning, the guiding principle was the fairly simple one that it is
immoral to make education available to only a select few.' He elaborates
by quoting Che: 'We are building a new society - a just and humane
society in which exploitation of man by man will have no part. As part of
that our schools need to form the New Man - one who is not motivated
by greed or self-interest but by the good of all.'
These sentiments translate in practice to a set of principles which
underpin the whole Cuban educational system. These principles include:
* emulation, not competition. There is a belief that most children are
capable of achieving the highest standards and that everyone should
help each other to do so.
* The integration of mental and physical labour. Even preschool children
help out in the school gardens. Ivory towers have been torn down.
* Collectivity and internationalism, not individualism. This holds just as
much weight as academic achievement in judging a child's success.
* Openness, democracy and integration with the community. The
purposes, aims and policies of education are discussed openly. Parents
and children, local factories and farms are closely involved with
schools.
In these ways, everyone becomes involved in education. Education
responds to revolutionary developments in society and in turn drives
those developments forward. As MacDonald points out, 'What has been
achieved in Cuban schooling cannot really be separated from its total
revolutionary context and experience, and any society which would learn
from the developments of Cuban schooling must ineluctably also learn
from its social revolution.'
It is illuminating to compare MacDonald's inspiring view of education
in socialist Cuba with Michael Barber's book The Learning Game, which,
according to the subtitle, also claims to be 'arguments for a revolution in
education'.
The Cuban revolution was based on optimism. At the heart of Barber's
thinking, however, is fear - the same fear that is shaking so many of
Labour's middle class supporters; the fear that their cosy and privileged
world is under threat. As the capitalist crisis deepens, chaos looms.
Barber fears the consequences of the vast divide between rich and poor;
he fears the growing isolation, alienation and indifference among young
people (which Barber regards as a moral dilemma); he fears the rise of
what he calls 'the underclass'; he fears the economic strength of the Far
East; he fears environmental catastrophe.
Barber's only solution to these 'problems', however, is education. Like
so many other middle class intellectuals, he has to believe that education
alone can change the world. He will not consider radical political and
economic change, the overthrow of what is at the root of all his fears -
capitalism - for he will not risk losing his privilege. Indeed, Barber will
not even contemplate a different order of things. For him, the 'globalised
market economy' is taken for granted as the only conceivable world order.
Not surprisingly, he misses no opportunity throughout the book to sneer
at socialism.
You might expect that Barber's educational plan to save the world
would be a radical departure. In fact, his ideas sound painfully familiar.
No one should remain in any doubt that the Labour Party will be even
more ruthless than the Tories in forcing education to follow the dictates of
capitalism. Barber wants a massive and rapid increase in academic
standards. The curriculum must be reformed once more, as must testing
arrangements and the exam system. Primary schools will have to
concentrate on the basics, whilst at secondary level vocational training
and links with industry must increase. Parents must take greater
responsibility for their child's education and 'worthies' from business and
industry should play a greater role in school as 'education associates'.
Teachers and schools will be expected to constantly update their methods
in line with current research and any teachers or schools that fail to make
the grade will go. Most of these ideas have already been incorporated into
Labour Party policy.
What Barber fails to tell us, however, is how all this is supposed to
solve the problems he talks about at the beginning. His unelaborated
assertion seems to be that if people are more educated, somehow the
world will be less nasty. He makes no link between the idea and the
reality. He doesn't tell us where the extra jobs will come from. He doesn't
tell us how education will bring security and vitality to the increasing
number of mind-numbing, de-skilled, part-time and temporary jobs.
And he doesn't even begin to explain how more education will solve the
environmental crisis. Everybody else but Barber seems to understand
that it is not ignorance that is killing our planet - it's the uncontrolled
greed of capitalism.
Barber outrageously maintains that his plans are for the good of
everyone. This serves merely to hide his central concern - the education
of the middle class and the survival of the state system from which they
derive their privilege. Barber recognises that 'the end users of education
are the employers'. With capitalism in crisis, the ruling class will not
continue to fund state education unless it delivers the goods. Indeed
Barber, in a recent interview, explicitly recognised that unless 'standards'
improved, schools would be privatised. As it is, more and more of the
middle class will desert state education unless they can be assured of a
more secure and privileged position within that system. Barber tries to
obscure this central concern by suggesting special out-of-school learning
centres and incentive bonuses for teachers to work in deprived areas. But
with limited resources for state education, more for the middle class
means less for the working class. He does not say where the money for
these and other resources will come from. Indeed, Barber emphasises
several times what we already know from Labour's plans, that public
spending will be just as restricted as under the Tories. Barber's only
hope, again in line with New Labour policy, is to go cap-in-hand to private
industry. But since when did capitalists give back their ill-gained profit in
order to provide for the working class? That's where they stole it from in
the first place.
Anyhow, there is far more to working class educational disadvantage
than teachers and study space. This disadvantage stems partly from
working class children's deprivation - poverty, homelessness,
malnutrition, lack of transport, the stresses and strains of unemployment,
overcrowding and low pay; and partly from the cultural limits to their
world - their expectations, ambitions and social confidence. When it
comes to getting the best out of the system, the middle class are far better
equipped. These disadvantages for the working class are endemic to the
class system. They stem from the social and economic relations of
capitalism and can never be totally overcome without revolutionising
those relations. Compensatory education was tried in the 1960s and
1970s. Its impact was marginal.
Barber's egalitarianism is a sham. It is the social democratic
substitution of equality by equal opportunity which, even if it operated
fully, simply allows those in a privileged position to keep in front and feel
morally justified in doing so. Barber says not a word about ending
Britain's elitist system; about ending private education, grammar schools
and other forms of selection. In fact, at the heart of his drive for improved
standards is a most reactionary, individualistic plan - the Individual
Learning Promise, or 'fast tracking', as Blair calls it.
This must sound wonderful to all those middle class parents who want
their child to 'get on' without having to be bothered with working class
'troublemakers'.
In contrast to the principles of Cuban education, Barber's principles
boil down to competition, individualism and elitism. His attempt to reduce
the gulf between academic and vocational education is only to better
serve a decadent and dehumanised capitalism, and his 'partnership'
between schools and parents is little more than an attempt to discipline
wayward teachers and parents.
Barber talks a lot about improving school organisation, teaching
methods and the quality of teachers, and these may have some transient
impact on academic standards. However, his hope for a better society that
inspires people to new educational heights is not one that capitalism can
fulfil. Education is more than filling up people with facts and figures that
they can exchange for credentials and the possibility of access to some
more privileged sector of the labour market.
In Schooling the Revolution, MacDonald points out that in order to
learn, people must feel involved in the process; education must have a
meaningful purpose for them. Only a small part of this purpose is to do
with immediate personal economic gain. Education must also give people
a greater sense of dignity and help them to control their own lives. It must
help people to relate to a society which they value and which values
them. A revolution in education must be part of a liberating experience.
This cannot occur if people remain economically and socially oppressed.
The prospects for the majority of working class people is few jobs, low
pay, poor conditions, alienating work, stress, insecurity, the prospect of
repeated redundancy and retraining, declining health and social services,
scarce housing and the threat of a lonely old age. This is the reality facing
the majority of people in Britain today and the situation is not going to
fundamentally improve under capitalism. Without an alternative vision of
society, large numbers of people may participate in the educational rat-
race in the hope that their prospects might not decline quite as fast as
they otherwise would. By participating these people lend legitimacy to the
system. But this scrambling to keep on the treadmill could hardly be
described as a liberating educational revolution, even if it does result in
more students getting more marks in more exams.
People will not find a sense of dignity and value in a society that treats
them as 'flexible labour'. They might go through the motions, but how will
they find satisfaction and purpose in training for skills that may never be
used? In learning for and about a world order bent only on exploitation
and destruction? Large numbers of working class kids have always
understood and resisted the debilitating reality of state education under
capitalism. Even if it is wrapped up in the hypocritical terms of 'equal
opportunities' and 'fulfilling a child's potential', any attempt to impose a
'revolution' in capitalist state education will be met with the same
stubborn resistance. END
(Professor Michael Barber has resigned from his post as Dean of New
Initiatives at the University of London's Institute of Education to become
David Blunkett's Special Adviser on Standards and Effectiveness in schools.)
* Schooling the Revolution, Theodore MacDonald , Praxis Press 1996, £12.99
* The Learning Game, Michael Barber, Gollancz 1997, £12.99
(
geocities.com/capitolhill)