The following essay was submitted by a member of the SPGB to a competition, open to people between 16 and 19, organized as part of the so-called “National Debate on Education”. The winning essay was published on 4th October in The Guardian. This contribution was short-listed but not chosen for publication. It shows the fundamental difference of approach of a Socialist to the subject.
The usual answer to the question “What are schools for?” is to reply that they are for education. That is true but unsatisfactory, for it begs at least two other questions—what shall be provided as education, and, more important, education for what?
Schools tend to be reflections of the society in which they exist. Today, therefore, schools are created in the image of capitalism. As in capitalist society the majority of the population are members of the working class (i.e. dependent upon the sale of their labour-power to an employer for a wage or salary) the education provided by schools for that majority must, however vaguely, be influenced by that fact.
Schools mainly teach the young, whom they have to enable to take their places in society. At the moment, therefore, education for the majority must be largely training them for future employment. Capitalism needs “clerks”, "engineers”, “doctors”, “postmen” and “policemen”, etc. and so these are some of the qualities of labour-power that schools must produce. Additionally, as capitalism requires a disciplined workforce some form of discipline and moral education must be central to schools.
Today, therefore, “education” must be for enabling people to take their place in capitalist society. This “end” of education determines which of the available “means” shall be employed, i.e what shall be provided as education.
Exam System
The most obvious link between school and employment is the exam system. It is this system which presents schools with the clearest expression of capitalism's labour-power needs. It is at the clear target of getting their pupils to attain satisfactory exam qualifications that schools must aim. The government and their examination boards must keep the exams responsive to capitalism’s needs, while schools must alter their subjects and methods in response to changes in exam requirements.
Employers increasingly depend upon exam qualifications when hiring labour-power. Their aim is to employ only the most productive (in the sense of profitable) workers in order to survive in competition with their rivals. Similarly, “the nation” requires an efficient and sufficiently qualified (i.e. educated) workforce in order to out-pace foreign competitors. Thus, the exam system and the relative merits of each qualification must continuously alter in response to capitalism’s increasing demands, while schools can only follow this lead by adjusting their courses and placing different emphases on the importance of various subjects.
To the pupil, the exam seems (correctly or otherwise) to be the main point of the dozen or so years spent at school. The exam may well appear to be the key to “higher” education and more exams, or ultimately, for the majority, the qualification for a job. Just as prostitutes are forced to advertize their wares, so too wage-workers increasingly have to exhibit their exam qualifications; to many, school may appear little more than a training centre for the brothel of life.
While capitalism needs workers to be qualified to perform certain types of work, it also requires a working class which is disciplined and which accepts the moral values of capitalist society. With this task schools must also be concerned. The school day is modelled upon capitalism’s working day. The school must discipline the pupil to attend school at certain times and to accept the authority of those in charge. Although alternatives to this have been attempted, “experts” and “public opinion” have been against their general application (probably correctly from their position), as they fear that it would produce an undisciplined working class (the majority).
Similarly, the exam system, it has been argued, instils discipline into the pupil by forcing him or her to recognize that the only way to "get on” in life is to work hard. In this is based a contradiction, for if the exam is a competition then only a selection can succeed and this will remain so even if every pupil works very hard—the only winner in such a situation being the employers who would gain a better-quality work-force while the majority of pupils would, as ever, have lost. Further, this argument is promoted into a myth of meritocracy in society; for by extension it is erroneously inferred that those on top of society have got there either by hard work or by “merit” and intellect.
Examinations today therefore mean selection, and selection means rejection. The rejecting system means that many pupils, who have been taught to have aspirations of reaching “the top”, must be disappointed. Their impotence to achieve their aims leads them to frustration. Schools must cope with these frustrations both by teaching their pupils useless alternative “leisure” pursuits and also by preaching “safe” moral values, e.g. respect for private property and authority.
Examinations and teaching are based upon the prevailing orthodoxy and both aim to reinforce and perpetuate that orthodoxy. For the majority this must remain so (even in “denominational” and private schools), as long as the “end” for schools is life in capitalism.
If, however, society was changed to Socialism, then the aim of education would be for life in Socialist society. That would mean that schools wouldn’t be for producing “clerks” or “postmen” (i.e. qualities of labour-power) but rather for developing human beings in the widest and most varied sense. As all work shall be voluntary, there will be little restriction on what and when work shall be done. In one day a person may choose to deliver post, cook meals, type letters, work in a factory or do any other variety and number of works.
Thus schools shall provide the broadest possible education to enable people to develop and extend their individuality to the fullest, not being confined by class and rigid division of labour. Production shall be to satisfy society’s needs, for useful and necessary items, not for profit. Education shall provide people with some of the abilities needed for such production, but not in any narrow sense of producing people to do only certain confined types of work.
Schools without walls
In Socialism, where everyone in the world shall own the means of living, there will be no need for exchange and money, which are the products of private-property society. Thus education would not be limited by cost and property factors. Socialism will be a “school without walls” where students could receive experience working in factories and offices etc. (which at present would be opposed by vested interests such as trades unions and employers, against the exploitation of child-labour); where, if the desire was to learn a new language, the student could travel to an area where that language was the vernacular not confined by cost; where, as private property would no longer exist there would be no copyrights, censorship or need for false theories or moral values so all information would be freely available for education; where lessons will not be merely passing sets of notes from teacher to pupil without going through the head of either, but rather the critical refinement and propagation of theories to support practice.
Schools in Socialism shall be freely accessible to all those (of whatever age) who wish to learn. In capitalism schools are for survival-training for the capitalist jungle. In Socialism education shall be for the fullest extension of human beings, both individually and socially.
Brian Philips
1 comment:
In the original Socialist Standard, this article was signed 'P.J.B.'
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