Schooled for capitalism (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Different people expect different things from schools. Margaret Thatcher is on record as saying that education should prepare children for the world of work, while the radical educationist A. S. Neill (head of Summerhill) thought that education should be a preparation for life. These views may seem poles apart, but both coincide in seeing education as a preparation for something else. Neill’s position is especially odd. as it implies that education is not part of life. Surely education—the process of learning—is an integral part of our daily lives. It takes place outside school as much as in it, and doesn’t stop when we leave school for a job or the dole queue.

Discipline

Education now consumes about one-sixth of central and local government spending, but government's role in education only came about for reasons clearly related to the historical development of capitalism. The first state intervention in education in England was the quaintly-named Health and Morals of Apprentices Act of 1802; this was an ineffective attempt to get factory-owners to provide some basic instruction for their younger apprentices, who had been forced into factory work by the Industrial Revolution. The reasons given for educating workers in the early nineteenth century were to teach thrift and good housekeeping (and so reduce the expense of poor relief), and to combat the rise in crime by teaching order and discipline. Most factory jobs needed few or no skills, so education was not seen as necessary for production.

In the course of the century, however, technical progress led to a greater demand for skilled and educated labour. Both state and church schools provided basic instruction (mainly in religion and the three other R’s), but formal schooling was still a small part of most people's lives. In 1851, an inquiry found that the average school attendance was just two years. In 1865 an investigation of children between the ages of 3 and 12 in Manchester showed that over half were neither attending school nor in employment. It was partly to control the potential for crime and disorder resulting from this idle mass that elementary education for all was introduced by the 1870 Elementary Education Act. which set the school leaving age at 12.

Pigeon-holing

But there were powerful economic arguments too. as Britain encountered competition from other capitalist countries, such as Germany, where a fairly sophisticated education system already existed. William Forster, the architect of the 1870 Act, claimed that “upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity". Similar arguments were used in the present century to motivate the expansion of secondary schools and the provision of teaching in technical subjects. A 1931 government report coined the word “numeracy” to indicate mathematical capabilities alongside the traditional literacy.

It was the Education Act of 1944 which instituted the system of primary and secondary education for all. Its proposal to raise the leaving age from 15 to 16 was not achieved till 1972, however. The Act enshrined a division of children into three types, each destined for a different kind of secondary school. Those who could follow a proper argument were earmarked for grammar school, those whose aptitude was more for applied science were suitable for technical school, while those who were supposedly happier with concrete things rather than ideas could hope for no more than a secondary modern school.

Such ludicrous pigeon-holing prompted the switch-over to comprehensive schools. It was often claimed that these were intended to give children equal opportunity to succeed, but of course there was another side to it. In 1964 Harold Wilson, soon to become Prime Minister, stated; "We simply cannot as a nation afford to neglect the educational development of a single boy or girl". Nowadays, too, the Labour Party seems to see education as the guarantor of efficiency and competitiveness, and hence as the saviour of British capitalism.

Education has clearly been viewed by politicians, and the capitalists whose interests they represent, as an instrument to serve their own ends. As production became ever more complex, the need for an educated workforce came to be the main motivation; so schools really do exist to prepare children for the world of work—for wage slavery. Ever-present, too, is the need for a disciplined workforce; whatever else schoolchildren may or may not learn, they are taught to do as they're told, to know their place and to knuckle under to authority. And who shall say that schools are not still means to keep potential troublemakers off the street, and to teach young workers how to manage on a pittance? Even the division of children into different ability groups is perpetuated by the continued use of streaming.

Book learning

William Morris in News from Nowhere depicted a society where the word "school" is unknown. People learn throughout their lives, picking up skills as they want to. We shouldn’t treat them as gospel, but Morris’s speculations are an interesting approach to what education might be like in socialism. With the ending of class society and production for profit, education will no longer serve the ends of providing an obedient and half-trained workforce. It will not be a preparation for anything, but will be an essential part of everyone’s existence.

The unnatural division into education of children on the one hand and of adults on the other will cease. Learning of practical skills can be done face-to-face—the idea of teaching such skills impersonally through books is, Morris thought, a rather odd one. Whether there will be separate institutions recognisable as schools is not for us to say now. But certainly there will be no examination tyranny, no blind faith in paper qualifications, no condemning of so many as “failures”.

We cannot know precisely what education will be like in socialism, but it will undoubtedly be a far cry from the production line-like schools of capitalism.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: What is Meant by Education (1958)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Doe education necessarily mean a knowledge of the higher mathematics, Greek and chemistry? No! Education, from the Socialist point of view, is a recognition of that class antagonism prevalent in society today, and a consciousness that the workers as a class must combine in opposition to the capitalist class and its supporters for the purpose of taking, holding and controlling the political machine, and subsequently the means of life in their own interest.

The full recognition of this basic principle of Socialist propaganda and of the uncompromising action necessary to the attainment of the above object is absolutely essential from our point of view, and the moment the individual unit of society recognises this and acts accordingly, he is, from the Socialist viewpoint, educated.

Unless the workers are educated in this sense all efforts at emancipation will be as futile as those already attempted. And this is why  they cannot emancipate themselves until they are educated.”

The administration of education at present lies in the hands of the capitalist class, who will take care that only those subjects tending to keep the workers in subjection, and to make them more efficient producers, shall be taught

(From the Socialist Standard, August, 1908.)

Free access to services (2007)

From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Apart from material things, socialism will bring many intangible benefits that capitalism denies us.

In our June issue we discussed some of the ways in which production solely for needs and free access (socialism) will replace production for profit and buying and selling (capitalism). In July we considered some problems of consumption in socialism, such as dangerous products, access to outer space, and when restricted access would be sensible. Here we extend the discussion to matters of services rather than goods: education; health and welfare; leisure, entertainment and sport; arts and culture; and dispute resolution.

Education

At present in schools, colleges and universities, access is available (free or at a price) to a wide range of knowledge. But the emphasis is always on the norms and values of the profit system. Learning how to buy and sell things seems to be more important than making them and getting them to the people who really need them.

In socialism teachers and educational bodies will be geared to the needs of the new form of society. There may be historical lessons about capitalism, but on a similar scale to the teaching about pre-capitalist societies today. The proportion of people who choose teaching as their main contribution to society will be much greater than today. “Jobs” needed only to run capitalism will have disappeared.

With the advent of world socialism a priority will be to offer free access to education to those who have had none or too little because they or their parents could not afford to pay for it. That is not to say that children in Africa, Asia, South America and elsewhere will be given what is today considered a “good” education by European or North American standards. It will take time for world socialist education to develop its own character, and there is no reason to suppose that it will take the same form for everyone everywhere.

Health and welfare

Some health and welfare services are now available to some people free at the point of delivery or consumption. But many are not. In socialism the principle of free access according to reasonable need will be universally applied. Of course there will be some limitations, but far fewer than at present. Health and welfare problems resulting from accidents and natural disasters like floods or earthquakes will continue to require emergency measures. But the problems won’t be as extensive. For one thing, people living in disaster-prone areas will be offered removal to safer environments.

Having to seek paid employment when jobs are scarce, experiencing money problems, just living in a world that places so much emphasis on “must have” personal possessions — all this causes sickness and shortens lives. So in socialism there won’t be such a widespread demand for health and welfare services. You won’t need to take pills to get you through the day or night.

Leisure, entertainment and sport

Today the leisure industries promote and sell you what is profitable for them to supply. You can choose to entertain yourself with pastimes or hobbies, or in social gatherings with little or no resort to the market. But there is heavy pressure on you to be a customer of one or more of the leisure industries. Most people who say they are interested in sport don’t actually play a game or even attend a live event – they mean they watch it on TV.

With socialism there won’t be buyers and sellers of leisure, entertainment and sport experiences. But there will surely be more participants. There won’t be a distinction between amateurs and professionals, though some people will continue to be better at some things than others. So audiences will be bigger or smaller – but never paying anything except attention and respect. Whether or not individuals or teams are champions at some level at whatever, they will have the same free access to what they reasonably need as everyone else.

Arts and culture

Capitalism allows the very rich to possess rare items of art and culture, and even to lock them away from public view. Not so with socialism. It won’t be sensible to let everyone have the freedom to keep original masterpieces in their own homes. But it will be feasible and desirable to store and maintain rare artefacts in supervised public places.

With regard to access to popular events such as concerts, there might have to be restrictions. The relative merits and demerits of advance booking, first come first served, and even rationing would need to be sorted out. However, one way or another, access to artistic and cultural artefacts and events will be available to all, not just to a privileged minority.

Dispute resolution

With the abolition of the killer disease of nationalism, wars and the whole destructive war industry will be a thing of the past. Many other disputes about property – divorce settlements, allegations of mis-selling, for example – will also have gone. Some rules and regulations, emphasising pro-social behaviour not punishment, may still be desirable. But the law as we know it today will have no place in a socialist world.

Reasonable though the vast majority of people will have to be before socialism is introduced, it is unreasonable to expect all of us to be good boys and girls all the time. There will no doubt be a few disputes that will call for some procedure of resolution. This will probably best be done by some form of mediation, by people interested in, and perhaps trained for, this form of public service.

Stan Parker

Letters: What’s utopian? (2000)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s utopian?

Dear Editors,

Your Party’s ideals are well meaning but quite unattainable in a world of big bucks, and human instinct of greed. Without money who would control how much material any one person or family needs? It’s as open to corruption as is capitalism. At least money gives spending power on choice, and freedom of such.

The utopian concept we need is redistribution of money via taxes and work availability at living wages. This can be achieved by the tax system being fairer, and an international convention on closure of offshore havens. And if everyone paid going-rate taxes, and “harmony” was practised with a fair progression system, how long do you think the Third World would take to be first (e.g. investment in African pipelines/canals)?

With money, everyone is a capitalist, like it or not e.g. the price of food and material contains an element of recovery of outlay, capital matters like land, property, stock, equipment. What doesn’t use them for production? In your system half the world’s luxuries would never be made.

A fairer world only comes from tax reality, consensus democracy agreement, and racial unity, allied to environmental facts about survival and either main party (or Jesus!) could deliver it. Or “3rd forces” in merger.

Tim Collier, 

Kettering, Northants

Reply: 

In a world dominated by big bucks, promoting real socialism certainly isn’t a doddle, but nor is it “unattainable”. All that influential money may have the world’s population in its grasp, but that grip is crushing and restrictive for billions of people—a potential revolutionary majority in fact. And greed comes not from “instinct”, but is a necessity for “succeeding” under today’s system. It is behaviour that occurs only because capitalism itself has greed at it roots. Because there is exclusive ownership of productive assets, resulting in excluded access to goods and services unless able to pay, rapacity, selfishness and envy permeate society, and become the norm.

By replacing minority asset ownership with collective possession by us all, artificial shortages of products then end, and “greedy” behaviour is no longer necessary. As for who then gets to “control” the freely available products, it is the individuals and families themselves, according to their own determined needs. Taking more than is required would simply not occur to people to do when all their work and organised living is then conducted in a co-operative moneyless environment, geared purely to fulfilling human needs. The “corruption” you envisage would be pointless. You can’t wheel a trolley-load of food out of a store today without paying since it is capitalist-owned, but when it’s collectively owned in the socialist future, the notion of grasping as many goods as you can carry before others beat you to it, and rushing them home, will be as senseless and laughable as it is criminal and punishable today.

Presently, money may bring limited choice and freedom to choose (for some of the world’s population), but socialism would not prohibit access to alternative products, and “luxuries”, if that’s what the new owners (all of us) want—a choice and a freedom which would then, however, extend to everyone.

As for money, taxes and waged employment, these are merely capitalist features intended to facilitate and maintain that system, not provide a “utopian” world for the many. So it is futile to expect and pursue monetary “redistribution”, “fair” levies and “living wages”. However, if it’s a “fairer world”, serious attention paid to “environmental facts” and global “democratic agreement” that you want, then it is real socialism that will deliver—not capitalism (or Jesus)—Editors.

Miserable old men?

Dear Editors,

I write as a supporter of the Socialist Party and as a friend, but I’m writing to say that I’m increasingly frustrated by the tone of the Socialist Standard. This is the shop window for the party and for your views and yet it comes across as the rantings of a group of elderly, cynical, miserable old men who are against . . . well . . . everything.

Of course, it’s easy to be against capitalism and very few of your readers would disagree with you there but you go much further and criticise the activities of everybody else who might be trying to do something about it. This wouldn’t be so bad except that you don’t really offer any constructive alternative—except the rather glib mantra of “it’ll be different under socialism, everything will be free and you can have as much of it as you want”.

Of course, it’s easy to be against capitalism and very few of your readers would disagree with you there but you go much further and criticise the activities of everybody else who might be trying to do something about it. This wouldn’t be so bad except that you don’t really offer any constructive alternative—except the rather glib mantra of “it’ll be different under socialism, everything will be free and you can have as much of it as you want”.

Also, there’s no discussion—debate about how socialism would work after a critical mass has been developed and the revolution successfully achieved—what are your policies on education? Do you, for example, support the continued mass incarceration of our children, or do you support some variant of the home schooling movement? Health—how do you assign priorities in the development of expensive life-support machinery against other health programmes and the other needs of society? Transport—are you in favour of an integrated transport policy and how might this work? And even the economy—where you would expect a socialist party to be strong—you have nothing really concrete to offer in debate—how, for example, would distribution be achieved, priorities assigned across a range of product needs and local demands, how would exchange be recorded and controlled to prevent abuse.

Let’s hear some positive ideas from you—let’s discuss them—let’s develop them into a programme that we can offer the electorate.

I won’t begin to talk about your marketing which doesn’t really exist—not even any car stickers or leaflets to hand out on a Saturday morning. How are people expected to know you even exist? Come on, wake up, you’ve had 100 years to think about these things. I realise you don’t have any money but even a little can be used to at least improve brand recognition.

P.S. I’d also like to see some photographs/pen pictures of the Socialist Standard journalists. Whilst none of us believes in the cult of personality, it helps if you can identify with the people concerned.

Andrew Stephenson, 

Newhaven, East Sussex

Reply: 

You seem to have misunderstood what we see the role of a socialist party as being. We don’t think a socialist party should seek passive support from people on the basis of what it would do for them if they voted for it. In fact you would seem to be more committed to the so-called “parliamentary road to socialism”—a majority of socialist MPs voting in socialism for a passive majority outside—than we would be. This is not how we see socialism coming about. Socialism is something people must do for themselves, organising themselves consciously and politically to establish it and actively participating in the movement. They alone can establish socialism using parliament with the socialist party merely an instrument to this end.

This is why we limit ourselves today to carrying out general agitation against capitalism and for socialism. We fully accept, however, that when the “critical mass” of socialists has been reached, people will be discussing all the issues you raise and working out detailed plans about how to tackle them once capitalism has been ended. But even then it won’t be a question of the socialist party presenting them with a programme for them to vote for, but of them democratically deciding for themselves, via the socialist party and other bodies such as trade unions, professional associations and neighbourhood committees, what the practicalities of establishing and running socialism in its first days should be.

Of course the relatively few of us who are socialists today do have our ideas on how education, transport, health services, etc might, and even should be, organised in a socialist society, but this is all they can be at the moment: ideas and suggestions. This is because the exact details will have to be decided by the people around at the time, most of whom are not yet socialists and who might, and probably will, have different ideas from us on the details of some of these issues.

We have, in fact, produced a pamphlet called Socialism As A Practical Alternative which does spell out some of the possibilities of socialism, particularly as regards possible institutions of democratic control and ways of organising the production and distribution (we prefer this word to “exchange” which has connotations of buying selling) of goods is a moneyless context. You should read it. We’ll be pleased to send you a copy for 80p (post paid).

As to leaflets, we’re sending you a selection. Please let us know which, and how many, you’d like. We’re also sending some stickers for your car.

The Socialist Standard is not written by professional journalists but by ordinary people like yourself who have a day job too. If we don’t publish our photos this is because the Socialist Party does indeed not believe in leaders or the cult of personality, but also because they are not just expressing personal views but are writing on behalf of the membership as a whole. But if we did you might be surprised to discover how many of us are not half as old as you have assumed.-Editors.

Education under capitalism (1994)

From the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The education system functions to serve the needs of the capitalist society in which it resides. Its objective is to produce educated and competent workers, including managers and military personnel; in addition, knowledgeable, sophisticated members of the capitalist class. The subjects and training cover a vast complex field that assures the owners of a qualified workforce that can do everything that is necessary to produce, distribute and market commodities for sale and profit, in line with existing technologies.

Of vital importance is the fact that a working class is produced which accepts capitalism socially and politically. The majority of students, when their formal education has been concluded, embrace the wages system without question. Their labour power is ready to be marketed. They, in turn, are willing to conform with docility and eagerness to all the standard norms of capitalist society which, in effect, will maintain their rulers in power in contrast to their own subservience.

The superstructure of society, is determined and conditioned by its economic base — the dynamic for its existence. Capitalism is a social organization wherein a minority own and control the means of production and distribution for the purpose of capital accumulation through the realization of profit based upon large-scale wage-labour. The education system is locked into this process in every conceivable manner both directly and indirectly.

The whole curriculum, from start to finish, is conducted within an atmosphere of competition and stress together with a weeding-out process which segregates those with supposedly superior talents from those less fortunate. This is accomplished through the use of tests, examinations, and grading, all of which have a direct bearing upon ultimate occupations and potential earnings. Such an environment prevents the pleasurable pursuit of education as a primary end in itself. The young find themselves involved in an intensive training programme, presented under the guise of education, which will ultimately affect the price of their labour-power and in many instances can prove disastrous health-wise.

As the pressure of schooling is mounting in the western industrial societies and Japan, child suicide has increased. Japanese authorities offer two reasons: (1) The country’s competitive education system in which the road to success in later life is linked to passing difficult examinations to enter the leading universities; (2) The reaction of some children to the mounting pressures of excessively regulated lives. The education pressure in Japan is unremitting and not only causes ulcers in children but in many cases leads to suicide.

The perpetual conflict within the educational system is the attempt to produce the desired results at a budget price, within a competitive, stressful environment harmful to both students and teachers. The teachers themselves, in similar fashion to their students, have been graded and selected to perform at certain levels in different categories. Their own education has been in many instances limited by economic and material circumstances beyond their control. They find themselves frustrated by rigid guidelines that apparently do not bring out the best in their students, especially those who come from broken, poverty-stricken homes.

In addition, just like their fellow workers, they are faced with a never-ceasing variety of seemingly insoluble problems which relate to the economic considerations of a cost-conscious administration and mean that the individual needs of the student rarely, if ever, get priority. Instead, education receives the same approach as that given to commodities which have to be produced in a given period of time, at a certain price, for a particular market, with a quality-control that leaves much to be desired.

There is an interdependence, a direct relationship, between the educational system and the business world. Starting with first year children, a concept called "career education" has been used to permeate all academic subjects at all levels of education, from nursery school through junior college.

Is there an alternative to this market-orientated education system? Yes, in a sane society, real education, whereby the pupil learns in an environment without stress and competition, where time is not at a premium, where financial considerations are non-existent, where individual needs are in harmony with society’s, has never been given an opportunity to work its potential wonders.

Education properly organized under these conditions, will be a continuous one that will not commence and finish at a given age, but rather will be recognized as a never-ceasing quest for individual improvement throughout our lives.

In a socialist society it should be obvious that education will not be prostituted to the needs of a class minority or the demand of a market place — because neither will exist. All healthy individuals will be able to satisfy their desire for knowledge unhampered by economic restrictions or barriers. The whole of society will in a sense become a perpetual seat of learning wherein studying, travel and the productive process can become beneficially interrelated. In socialism, the world itself can become "The class room".

Michael Ghebre

What's Wrong With Education: How Capitalism Learns ’em (1974)

From the May 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent figures show that there are over one million adults in the UK who are illiterate. When one considers that compulsory state education has been in existence since the 1870 Education Act, that figure is quite startling. Even if one takes into account that possibly some of that one million are immigrants who were not necessarily educated here, the proportion of illiterates is still very high. In many parts of the country they are trying to tackle the problem. In Birmingham, for example, adult education centres are being established to deal specifically with illiterates. But the Mayor of Birmingham has no doubts about the chances of succeeding in overcoming the problem in his town. “We can’t eliminate illiteracy in Birmingham, but we have to try.” (The Guardian 14th March 1974). Why won’t they eliminate illiteracy in Birmingham, or London or Manchester for that matter? To answer that question one has to see education in its proper context.

Education under capitalism is a topic that always demands and receives much attention. As capitalism’s history unfolds, the importance of education to its continuance becomes more and more obvious. Capitalist society now needs a highly educated work force which can adapt itself to the changing needs of the system. The education world, full of articulate enthusiastic people, is one of great activity. The people involved in the process of imparting knowledge are often more aware than many other similar groups of workers of changes taking place in their own sphere. Great debates will sweep through the education world from time to time, about the place of education in society and how it should be organised and structured. Sometimes the debates are between those that are seen as the preservers of the future élite  against the rest (grammar v comprehensive).

More often the debates take the form of priority issues. Most ideas are regarded as good ones, but they can’t all be implemented at once. So the protagonists of the various education reforms line up like competing football teams, but instead of getting on with the game, squabble over which pitch to play on. Nursery v primary, higher education v lower, university v polytechnic, vocational courses v liberal arts courses, etc. In addition to these the age-old, sterile debate about whether education means to “draw out” or to “stuff in” continues. Currently the stuffer-in seem to be losing ground in terms of educational techniques. What the educationists do not appear to realise, and what the Socialist will always be at pains to point out, is that any discussion on education cannot be divorced from the function of the education system within capitalist society.

Capitalism is a world-wide economic system (i.e. Russia and China too) based on private or state ownership of wealth and the means of producing wealth. Education within that framework has a certain well-defined role. One of the definitions of the word “education”, in the Oxford English Dictionary, is “preparation for the work of life.” In other words, education under capitalism is the process of training the working class (that section of the community that has to sell its abilities to work for a wage or salary in order to live) for work. The type and amount of training that the workers will be given (forced to undergo) depends, looking at capitalist society as a whole, on the technological level of society. It did not matter much a hundred years ago (to the capitalist) if workers could not read or write. Now literacy is demanded for the workers. As one “educational sociologist’' has put it: “The literate factory operative, for example, is not only better able to follow instructions and undertake new tasks but has been trained in the school in habits of order and discipline.” (The Sociology of Education, Olive Banks). Most jobs now require that workers have at least a good basic ability in reading, writing and mathematics.

As well as ensuring that there is a work force adequately trained to cope with the difficulties of production at all levels, the education system also fulfils several other basic functions for capitalist society. It disciplines children into creatures able to control the frustrations that will inevitably arise when faced with dull repetitive processes for forty years. In spreading the education catchment to all children a mass education system also ensures (so far as possible within its own limited horizons) that whatever ability is available to capitalist society gets some sort of chance. The reformists in the education world hail this as their golden land of “equal opportunity.” All it means is that clever children get to the top (where capitalism needs them) instead of just rich ones. The vast majority are still where they will remain all their lives — underneath.

Without this wide spreading of the net, technological advance would not continue. And without technological advance, individual sections of competing capitalist groups (countries) would not remain competitive. The competition between the various nations to sell goods on the world market at a profit, also demands that the workers’ education be continually intensified to create those who are going to be able to produce the technological advance that capitalist society requires. Economists, with callous indifference to the interests of those involved, now call the education process “an investment in human capital.” Above all, the education system has to instil in workers the values, prejudices and concepts of capitalist society. True that society needs some of its workers to think, invent, create etc. But the inventions, thoughts or creations of workers must be channelled into lines conductive to the smooth functioning of a market society.

It is this fundamental point about the purpose of the education system that all the do-gooders and reformists in the education world will never remember. Education as a commodity of capitalist society is not given away to provide some sort of elusive happiness for workers. It is there to ensure that the system of society as at present constituted continues, and from the point of view of the capitalist, improves. Once this is remembered, it becomes clear why not only the teaching methods, but also the subject matter is linked with the status quo. Possibly the best example of this is in the teaching of economics in schools and universities. Economics should be the study of how society works. But if that were taught the recipients might start to question a system that so obviously works against the interests of the vast majority. So instead, economics is taught as a collection of ludicrous theories. None of them bears any resemblance to the real world outside the class room.

Some of the obvious pieces of ideological double-think in standard school and college economics are:

1. That resources are scarce (they are plentiful — it is just under capitalism production and therefore consumption are restricted to what can be sold at a profit);
2. That governments somehow play a neutral rôle in the economics they are supposed to control, in that government action is aimed at producing the best results for all in society — this ignores the fact that society is divided into two classes (capitalist and working) and the interests of the two classes are diamertically opposed, what is good for one must be bad for the others. And, most absurd of all. 
3.  that given certain (impossible) conditions, capitalism’s price mechanism leads to resources being distributed in the best interests of society.

This appalling distortion and intellectual juggling that takes place in many subjects (not just economics) can only occur in an educational system geared not to imparting knowledge but to ensuring the smooth running of private property society. This results in children very largely being forced to learn what capitalist society wants them to know. The Badger in The Wind in the Willows neatly summed up the objects of capitalist education: “We don’t want to teach ’em . . . We want to learn ’em — learn ’em. learn ’em. And what’s more we’re going to do it.”

Educationists, like all reformists, have to realise that the particular social problem with which they are concerned cannot have its contradictions ironed out whilst the causes of those contradictions remain intact. Because capitalist society has as its aim, in producing anything, sale with a view to profit (even if only indirectly, as in education) it cannot take into account the satisfaction of human requirements, where no profit is to be made. And the education system, being but a limb of that society, can only function according to the requirements of that society. The net result as in all aspects of life under capitalism is that workers as a whole have a standard of education (and living) far below society’s possibilities. Those at the very bottom of the ladder end up illiterate.

When mankind ends capitalism, and by its own conscious action replaces it with Socialism, wealth that is produced will be freely available to ail in society. Free access to everything will include free access to knowledge. Education as a process of finding out about the total human environment, will not be an action limited to sections of people’s lives, when forced to learn. Instead, there will be nothing to prevent man’s natural curiosity about the world he lives in continuing to be fulfilled all his life. Like everything else, education will be available to satisfy man’s needs, not as now, for continuing the even running of a system of society that deprives the vast majority of fulfilling life.

Ronnie Warrington

More about a socialist scenario (2006)

From the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we discussed four scenarios outlined in a report by Foresight, a government thinktank, on transport over the next 50 years. We briefly described a fifth missing scenario – a socialist one, concentrating on transport. This month we add some more to a socialist scenario.

First politics. The Foresight report lists 60 “key drivers for change”. The only one that is overtly political is “Decline in power of national governments”, although “Culture of control” and “New decision-making frameworks” have political implications. Any socialist scenario has a central place for democracy, but not democracy as it is usually defined in capitalism. Socialist democracy is based on sharing in planning and decision-making, not having plans and decisions imposed on oneself or imposing them on others.

In socialism there will be no professional politicians – no one having an income from being elected. Access to goods and services will be free (made possible by the free work given to society by its members) for everybody, including individuals elected or appointed as delegates or representatives at various levels. In capitalism these levels are generally something like local, regional or global. There may well be some continuity in these levels, but as the socialist movement grows there will probably also be changes, reflecting different circumstances in different parts of the world.

Then education. The Foresight report says very little about this. Schools are mentioned as an economic resource and “the growing crisis in higher education” is noted – and that’s about it. A socialist scenario must have a great deal to say about education. Its aim will be to prepare people – participants, not consumers – to live in socialist society. There is education required to help bring about socialism as well as education as a feature of socialist society. The effort now put into socialist education is severely limited by lack of active socialists and money. Imagine what could be achieved if socialist schools, colleges, universities and distance learning projects were set up which treated capitalism critically and socialism sympathetically.

Socialists have long speculated about how education will differ in socialism as compared with capitalism. William Morris sought to narrow the differences between learning manual skills and book-learning. His pre-electronic predictions need updating, but there is also a case that education in socialism will not be as dominated by electronic gadgetry as capitalist education now is.

The way people work gets some mention in the Foresight report – “Movement away from office-based working” is one of the 60 Drivers for change. A socialist scenario has much more to say about work as a necessary, creative and satisfying activity. In socialism all the work required only to run capitalism will no longer be needed – no banking, insurance, financial services, sales and all money-related jobs will go. Harmful occupations connected with the “defence” (war) industry will be a thing of the past.

The elimination of work that keeps capitalism going will mean a vast expansion in the potential for useful work in socialism. Employment, and its flip-side unemployment, will be consigned to history. People like to do work that is useful to themselves, others and the society in which they live. Once financial coercion is removed there is no reason to suppose that there will be a shortage of volunteers. Obviously, men and women will prefer work that suits their abilities and interests, as well as the chance for change. Joy in work – in the past a privilege afforded only to the minority – will be available to all.

Lastly the media. The Foresight report does have something to say on this, but only the technical side. “Satellite location devices”, “Smart antenna” and “Increasing use of ‘telepresence’ technology” are included in the Drivers for change. A socialist scenario may well have a view on such changes. But it will also be concerned with the content of the media, how that content is decided, and the circumstances in which it is used as a means of communication, information and education.

In contemporary capitalism, as Chomsky and others have pointed out, the ideal is that each person should be alone in front of a screen, subject to what they see and hear, deprived of opportunities to discover what they really think through communication and interaction with others. In socialism the media will be democratically organised and controlled, not manipulated by political and commercial interests. No need to write programs for future media output and input. But you can be sure that it will reflect and be part of a happier and less problem-ridden world than capitalism.

Stan Parker

Letters: Socialism and the Media (2012)

Letters to the Editors from the February 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism and the Media

Dear Editors

The Leveson Enquiry is currently looking into the malpractices of the newspapers but it goes deeper than that. In capitalism there is at present the very large Goliath of capitalist inspired policies and practices and the very small David of socialist education. The same goes for the media. Newspaper, periodicals and other electronic media are overwhelmingly owned and controlled by capitalist interests. They hardly ever mention the s-word and when they do they invariably equate it with nationalisation or what happened in the former Soviet Union.

In socialism education will be for life and life-long. There will likely be a closing of the gap between teacher and taught. In some cases there will be an interchange of roles. For example the same individual may for a time be a teacher in a subject of which they may have made a special study, while at other times they may learn from others who have different specialisms.

People will derive meaning and satisfaction from the varied contributions they make to the material, intellectual, social and cultural world in which they live. Of course  skills and expertise will still need to be taught and learned. But not how to be a professional killer, a persuasive salesperson or a maker of money (except perhaps how to preserve specimens of it in a museum).

In any modern society the media are a reflection of, and a significant part of, the world in which they are located. Regarding the various forms of media in a socialist future, it is easier to say what won’t be in them rather than what will be. Property based crime won’t be reported and discussed because there won’t be any. That doesn’t mean to say that no one will ever behave in an anti-social way or that disputes will never arise, but how these will be coped with is another matter. The salacious events in the lives of media-created ‘celebrities’ seem unlikely to outlast a capitalist-dominated world. We shall have to work for the growth of socialist media to see what will take their place.

In recent years there has been a rapid increase in technological – and especially electronic – invention and gadgetry. We don’t know what the socialist future will bring in this regard. But we can say for sure that there won’t be such things as commercially-inspired advertising, product placement or incitement to consumer addiction. Information about what is or could be made available would be freely accessible by all.

Stan Parker, 

London SW8

Something in the air

Dear Editors

Thank you for the articles in the January Socialist Standard on the Occupy Movement and the radio series Capitalism on Trial. There’s definitely something in the air, and

I was reminded of a comment in an article in the Standard last year – that you know capitalism is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism. And aren’t they just? It’s as though it’s suddenly been noticed that there are obscenely rich people in the world and that the most important division is between them and the rest of us. People are now prepared to talk about the social system as a whole rather than some particular aspect of it, and it’s significant that many of the movements responding to current capitalism have stuck to democratic instincts rather than allowing leaders to emerge from their midst and lead them astray. Moreover, the idea that political problems require a global solution (which the Socialist Party strove for years to propagate, in the face of much ridicule) is now a commonplace.

Of course, all the present unrest may come to nothing. The Occupy movements and the Arab spring movements may lapse into a preoccupation with trying to patch up aspects of the existing society and so become mired in futile reformism. But what should be encouraging for socialists is just the evidence that people can change: they can cease to take for granted what they have accepted so far, they can develop critical attitudes to what has previously been unquestioned, and all of this may come out of the blue. That’s a heartening thought in the context of the present miserable phase of capitalist society.

Keith Graham

Erratum

Re January Pathfinders, Brian Cox writes: “Good article. Only one fact check. I didn’t co-author Things Can Only Get Better. It was written by Peter Cunnah and Jamie Petri.” 

Apologies for the grievous misattribution.

Education and the Working Class (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The growth of state education was once called “the silent social revolution”. Few phrases ring less true. Silent it is not: loud discord is its characteristic. If a revolution, it has ended in chaos with the strategies all gone wrong and a popular feeling that those responsible deserve the worst.

The thirty-one years since the war have seen the implementation of the 1944 Education Act, which produced a tripartite system of secondary schools, followed by the demolition of that system in favour of comprehensive schools. Under the 1944 Act the school-leaving age was raised from 14 to 15, and in the last two years it has been extended to 16. Each change has been advocated as a reform containing great advantages for “the nation” and the working class, and each in due course has produced despair.

The fruits of the present system can be summarized as follows. 15 per cent, of school leavers are illiterate, according to research carried out by the Cadmean Trust (Guardian Education correspondence, 9th April 1974). It is estimated that half a million school- children in Greater London and another half-million elsewhere do not attend school at all; a high proportion of them are in the “extra year” age group between 15 and 16. “Equality of opportunity”, which was the professed aim of the reorganizations of secondary education, has never materialized. Numbers of schools are bear-gardens and teachers themselves are truants, afraid to face a daily losing battle.

To understand how and why this situation exists it is necessary to go back to the beginning of state education in 1870. At that stage in capitalism its need to systematize the existing partial facilities and have the working class educated to a basic standard had become clear. Philanthropists and radicals had agitated for education to be provided, but the motives for reform are practical ones. In particular, technical change—the petrol engine, the small electric motor, typewriter, telephone, linotype machine, cash register, tramcar, fountain pen and many other new inventions entered industry and commerce in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The process, extended by further Education Acts in 1902 and 1918, ensured the capitalist class a supply of clerks, mechanics and shop assistants who could add figures and had been taught obedience. It also provided a means of creaming-off more proficient children to be trained for more skilled work and even to enter the universities and professions. From the nineteen-twenties onward, the established grammar schools were encouraged by financial incentives to admit increasing numbers of “scholarship” boys and girls who were likely to do well. Investment in education remained restricted, however. The 1918 Act empowered and recommended local authorities to raise the school-leaving age to 15, but between the wars there did not seem much point in providing additional education for employment when unemployment was chronic.

The 1939-45 war emphasized capitalism's need to comb the working class for the abilities it wanted, and this turned to the special demand for technically-trained people in the nineteen-fifties. It was held that the post-1944 three types of school, based on selection at 11 years old, was inefficient in this respect: neither America nor Russia had a system of early selection, and both produced more science graduates than Britain. It seems to be wilfully forgotten now that this was one of the major arguments for comprehensive schools. Defending them in a recent television discussion Fred Mulley, the Minister for Education, said he was opposed to selection in any form. Yet the statement which committed the Labour Party to introducing comprehensive schools, Learning to Live (1958) opened with a section called “True Selection”. It claimed that selection at 11 was unsatisfactory, and that its plan would mean “real and continuing selection”.

Selection means rejection. As in the adult world for which it is the preparation (the school day is modelled on the working day), in the education system communalty and lofty motives are preached while divisiveness and mercenary aims are practised. In 1964, in a book called English for the Rejected, David Holbrook estimated that three-eighths of the secondary schools’ population formed the residue from the selection procedures, and were treated as “lesser beings” in the education system. Of this large section he wrote: “Who shall blame them for becoming a resentful group expressing their contempt for a society which treated them as ‘dim dregs’, by taking to forms of delinquency and violence, or by other forms of unsocial behaviour?”

The answer to the question is, of course: Nearly everybody. The London crime figures for 1975 showed a continuing increase in crime by young persons; 37 per cent, of thefts of and from cars were committed by children between 10 and 16. In connection with this and other figures a police official said London is “heading for the most violent period in its history” (The Times, 11th March 1976). This misrepresents the situation insofar as, throughout the history of capitalism, parts of big cities have always been infested with delinquents. The writer Jack London in his youth in the early eighteen-nineties ran with gangs of hooligans and took part in muggings. The sentiment today is that it is specially deplorable after so much social reform, in education particularly.

However, the fact is that the capitalist class — abetted, and whether consciously or not does not matter, by reformists—has gone too far. In its anxiety for profit it has demanded the perfection of a method for grading and separating prospective workers. The outcome is a youthful mass who are labelled “low-grade” but kept in the education system which has no use for them. In the 1914-18 war the capitalists found likewise that their greed had rebounded on them: large numbers of the working class, starved and deprived, hardly had the strength to fight for capitalism.

Similar observations can be made about illiteracy. Its true extent is never ascertainable because illiterate people themselves and schools both seek to conceal it. On 3rd March 1976 The Times reported that the government was giving money to the Adult Literacy Resource Agency “for the campaign to teach more than two million illiterate adults to read and write”. In 1850 it was estimated that eight million, or just under a third of the population of Britain, could neither read nor write. If it is assumed that the Cadmean Trust’s figure of 15 per cent, is an underestimate, after more than a century of compulsory education illiteracy has been halved.

This looks like the failure of the education system, but it is not. The system carries out what is required of it by capitalism. Its apparent problems are problems of the capitalist organization of society, that it is mistakenly expected to solve. On 19th December 1972 The Guardian's Education Notebook, referring to a discussion in New Society on the proposition “education is our main hope for social change”, said:

. . . the compelling evidence is that readers of New Society have got it wrong. In the last few months four separate studies have been published, and they have iterated a single message: that there is little, perhaps nothing, that the education system in isolation can do to alter the pattern of our society.

What it reflects overwhelmingly is the position of the working class, and the futility of hopes of “equality of opportunity”—or of “learning to live” in such a system.

Socialists have an interest in education of another kind: workers must learn about capitalism and what to do to get rid of it. We are often asked what prospects there are of this, in view of the lack of success in getting large numbers to learn in school. It is an educational commonplace that people, including school failures, learn swiftly when they want or need to. Backward boys become wizards of mental arithmetic if they take to buying and selling goods, and people “pick up” foreign languages they would never have learned at school. If Socialism were no more than an idea, the task would indeed be hopeless. But that is not the case. The drive to understand it comes from the pressure of the class division in society, and the compulsion for workers to know and pursue their interests.

We are asked, too, about education in Socialist society. The fact that Socialism is based on common ownership means that, for the first time, education will be for the purposes only pretended today—the benefit of the community and its individual members, not for an exploiting class. As regards literacy, the fact is that any literate adult can teach a child to read (many children teach themselves) and, with social disabilities removed, it would cease to be an achievement for some but not for others. The study of numbers may well acquire a different status, since its chief elementary function today is dealing with money.

Beyond the basic things, there will be choice in place of compulsion. As teachers know, people learn little or nothing at all of what they are not interested in. In any case, the amount learned of any subject in the school-lesson system over several years is pitifully small, aiming only at a general minimum. The purpose of true education is not to stuff knowledge into others, but to develop the desire and show the way for each one to obtain it for himself. Once it exists, the desire is not extinguished at 16 or when an examination is over. In a sane society, education would be available at every time in life.

Robert Barltrop

The classroom struggle (1980)

From the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

My schooldays were recent enough to remember and they were not the happiest days of my life. The compulsion to pay attention to pompous lectures about what is “right” and what is “wrong”; the competitive tension of examinations whereby friends become rivals for an advanced position in the employment queue; the deceit and ignorance upon which much of modern learning is based. I learnt three important things while at school how to hide from authority; how to read a good book while pretending to be listening to the teacher; and above all, how to rejoice in the abnormality which is officially scorned by the system of mass education.

The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is for all members of the class which owns little more than its ability to work and is therefore forced to sell its labour power to an employer in order to live. We do not discriminate between young members of the working class who are still being trained for wage slavery and those who have graduated from education into full-time exploitation. It is your common class position to which we appeal, not your age or your experience. To become a socialist does not require grey hairs or five “O” levels, but an understanding of the society you live in and a commitment to change it. If you are still at school, you can contribute towards making a better future for yourself no less valuably than any other worker; you will find no discrimination on the basis of age in the socialist movement.

1. THE PURPOSE OF COMPULSORY SCHOOLING

Schools are not there so that young people can freely learn and be turned into informed, mature human beings. Only the liberal educationalists who earn their bread and butter out of the blackboard jungle perpetuate the myth that education is about freedom and fulfilment. Schools exist to train you for your class role. Because the vast majority of people are destined to be wage or salary workers the job of schools is to give us training in working class skills and values. Boys are taught how to make things from wood and repair cars; girls are given a basic training in domestic skills. They teach us to read (good for machine instructions and understanding the lies of the newspapers), to count, add and subtract (necessary for industrial workers), to know about geography (through the nationalist eyes of the British ruling class) and history (where content is selected and, by careful emphasis and omission, the past becomes the story of kings, lords and war victories instead of workers, peasants, strikes and revolutions). They teach us to keep fit in a competitive form of warfare called sport. And they are legally bound to teach us religion (the only compulsory subject) so that we will accept their class morality.

Schools have always been the property of the ruling class and they have always served to inculcate into the mass of people the ideas of the rulers. The first schools in England were in the sixth century and their purpose was to train monks and priests to spread propaganda about those parts of the Bible of use to the feudal ruling class. The Roman Catholic Church, which controlled European education in the Middle Ages, was so fearful that literacy might be used to examine any ideas but its own that it officially supported a policy of mass illiteracy. The following extract from a letter from Pope Gregory to Bishop Desiderina of Gaul illustrates such fear of the power of literacy:

“A circumstance came to our notice which cannot be mentioned without shame, namely that you, our brother, give lessons in [Latin] grammar. This news caused us such annoyance and disgust that all our joy at the good we had heard earlier was turned to sorrow and distress, since' the same lips cannot sing the praise of Jove as the praise of Christ. Consider yourself how serious and shocking it is that a bishop should pursue an activity unthinkable even for a pious layman. We have already in hand the granting of your request, easy in mind and untroubled by doubts, provided that this information which has come to us shall have been proved manifestly untrue, and you shall not be shown to spend your time on the follies of secular literature.”

The Pope was right to fear the consequences of mass literacy, for it was the invention of the printing press and the growth of literature in the vernacular which contributed greatly to the popular dismissal of Catholicism in the sixteenth century.

The growth of industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century produced a requirement for a workforce educated in the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic). At first, the ruling class was slow to perceive its economic needs and some of them had a medieval fear of educating the poor:

“It is doubtless desirable that the poor should be instructed in reading, if it were only for the best of purposes that they may read the Scriptures. As to writing and arithmetic, it may be apprehended that such a degree of knowledge would produce in them a derelish for the laborious occupations of life.”
(Justice of the Peace, 1807. Quoted by R. Williams in The Long Revolution)

Robert Lowe MP, Vice President of the government’s Education Department in the 1860s, was in favour of educating the poor, but not for philanthropic motives:

“The lower classes ought to be educated to discharge the duties cast upon them. They should also be educated that they may appreciate and defer to a higher cultivation when they meet it, and the higher classes ought to be educated in a very different manner, in order that they may exhibit to the lower classes that higher education to which, if it were shown to them, they would bow down. . . ."
(Primary and Classical Education)

The modern comprehensive school fulfils this role admirably. Young workers are taught practical skills to enable us to 'discharge the duties cast upon’ us. The importance of punctuality (getting to work on time), not talking while working, passive obedience to authority, ability to memorise so-called facts, and repetition of dogma are all part of the preparation for wage slavery. They teach us history, but not our history from our angle. State education is an attempt to nationalise the minds of the working class.

It is not only in Britain and the West that education serves the needs of the ruling class. In Russia, China and the other state capitalist countries young workers are taught the virtues of employment, deference and nationalism, the only difference being that it is all done in the name of socialism. In Russian schools, where the boring memoirs of Tsar Brezhnev are now compulsory reading (like the Bible in Britain), many students have become cynical towards the elite bureaucracy that dictates over them—a cynicism they share with many young members of the working class throughout the world. Even in South Africa, where the racist system of apartheid has tended to blind capitalists to their economic needs, there is growing recognition by the ruling class that their overriding objective must be to produce profitable wage slaves, regardless of colour. Harry Oppenheimer, South Africa’s leading industrialist (he is head of De Beers diamond and Anglo-American gold mining combines) is reported to have urged the Botha government to get rid of apartheid in education:

“. . .  Mr. Botha must bring the electorate to recognise that racial discrimination and free enterprise are basically incompatible . . .  the education issue threatens to prevent the rapid and peaceful development of the country because it creates an ‘acute and growing shortage’ of skilled workers.”
(Guardian, 14th July, 1980)

This is not to say that the existence of schools is a bad thing for the working class. If you use your brain to serve your own material interests, some of what you learn at school can help you. It depends on what you study, what conclusions you draw and how far you are able to sort out the prejudices from the facts. Literacy can be a powerful weapon, opening a path to the study of the world around you, but it can also be a path to a lifetime of Daily Express editorials and Harold Robbins paperbacks.

2. CLASS INEQUALITY IN SCHOOLING

Capitalist education is unequal and the introduction of comprehensive education has not eradicated that inequality. In the days when male children were divided up at eleven into manual workers-to-be who were sent to secondary modern schools to learn woodwork and arithmetic, and the potential managers and professionals who went to the grammar schools to learn Latin and Chaucer, it was the claim of liberal reformers that comprehensive education would remove such inequality. This idea was based on the popular illusion that education determines class, whereas in fact education tends to reflect class. Inequality still exists in comprehensive schools between the poorest sections of the working class and the less poor (who often imagine themselves to be middle class). In many areas two-level schooling has continued, with the better-off parents sending their children to the better equipped, less rowdy schools near to where they live, while the children of the slums and the council estates end up in the worst schools.

The real division in education is not within the working class, but between the state education provided for the workers and the paid public schools for the sons and daughters of the parasites who own the means of living. Still Crabbe’s dictum applies:

To every class we have a school assign’d;
Rules for all ranks and food for every mind.

We have described the purpose of working class education, but what about the public schools with their spacious grounds, academic excellence and conditioned snobbery? They teach young capitalists the exact opposite to what we learn in the comprehensives: we learn to follow, they learn to lead; we learn to save money, they learn to invest and spend it; we learn how to be brave soldiers, they learn how to be distant Generals; we learn to respect property, they learn to own and control it. The public schools teach people to be superior to those not in their class. Entry to the capitalist class is not determined by competitive examination, by having better minds or working harder or having more initiative than anyone else—it is simply determined by the ownership of inherited wealth. Eton and Harrow contain some of the biggest morons on the face of the earth, but they are morons with fancy clothes, big family homes, posh accents, daddies in the City and, above all, plenty of money to invest in the labour power of the working class.

One in five members of the present Conservative government went to one of three of the top fee-paying schools in Britain. An analysis conducted by C. S. Wilson and T. Lupton in the 1950s showed that Eton alone produced 30 per cent of Conservative Ministers, of the directors of large banks, of the directors of City firms, and of the directors of insurance companies. Eton, Winchester, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse and Marlborough between them produced between two-fifths and half of the holders of the above-mentioned posts. Jean Blondel, in his study of Voters, Parties and Leaders, points out that:

“The 25 to 30 per cent of old Etonians whom one finds in a Conservative cabinet, in banks, in the insurance companies, have greater influence than their numbers warrant, because, being old Etonians, they have more contacts. They supply information about other old Etonians who are influential in other walks of life; they are go-betweens, they are instruments of compromises in the sector of British political, social and economic life in which they are numerous.”
(P. 24)

While capitalists spend millions of pounds on getting their children a superior education, the government tells us that it must cut expenditure on schooling because it stands to reason that nuclear bombs must be a higher social priority than school books. In the present economic recession, which is an endemic feature of capitalism, you can expect your standard of schooling to markedly drop. The June 1979 budget cut £55 million from central government spending on education and the November 1979 White Paper on public spending announced a cut in real terms of £240 million for education. This will amount to the loss of 18,000 teachers in England and Wales and increased charges for—or the withdrawal of—school meals, milk and transport. This is happening at a time when, according to the Department of Education, there is a shortage of 4,000 mathematics teachers, 2,000 physical science teachers, 2,000 craft, design and technology teachers and 1,600 language teachers.

3. REVOLUTION, NOT REBELLION

Revolution is a mysterious term. Most of us are taught at school to understand it in relation to the capitalist revolutions of the past. The French Revolution of 1789 is most people’s idea of what revolution is all about: barricades, bayonets, blood, slogans, heroic leaders and a new regime, not much different from the old one. That is not what socialists mean by revolution.

By social revolution we mean a conscious change in social relationships from those based upon private or state ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution to common ownership and democratic control of the world around us. The socialist revolution will mean the instant abolition of class divisions, the wages system, private property, and the need for money. It is a big aim, but it presents the only alternative to the present world system of capitalism.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain states as a matter of principle that the establishment of the new social order can only be possible when a majority of the world’s workers consciously understand and want it. Once majority consciousness arises, nothing can stop the conquest of power by the working class.

The tensions and contradictions of working class life under capitalism tend to lead more and more workers to question the status quo. This critical thought is essential, for once you start to formulate questions, you are half way to knowing the answers. But capitalism has an immense capacity for accommodating working class discontent and dissent and it is often able to convert challenging resistance into sterile rebelliousness.

The Labour Party Young Socialists, the left wing romanticists and campaigns for reforms have wasted the political energies of millions of working class youths. They have grown weary trying to do what none has done before them—to make the slaughter house fit for the cattle. In their late twenties the participants in the reformist movement grow tired and drop their radical poses, claiming to have grown out of such youthful fancies as wishing for a better world to live in. The system has converted them into regular channels of dissent and they end up as conservative, acquiescent workers.

It is not only into overtly political blind allies that young workers can be led. The so-called ‘alternative culture' is, on the whole, just another capitalist rip-off. You drop out of one oppressive way of life and into another. Escape via rock music or art is often at best merely pretentious and at worst an excuse for someone to get rich quick. Escape through drugs or alcohol is a boost to those who profit from human self-destruction, but ultimately serves to stupify workers and blind them to their condition. Youth cults have been used to make money out of despair, while regimenting youths into easily identifiable mass fashions: while the hippies sang of peace and love, the drug pushers dreamed of dollars; skinhead culture, with its frustrated racism and know-nothing nationalism, did its recruits little good in the dole queue; and as for the punk ‘New Wave’—what’s the use of walking around with a safety pin up your nose if you still face all the poverty and degradation of being a wage slave? Some young workers still turn in frustration to the empty skies and the empty churches for an answer, often ending up on the wrong end of the exploitation game in the Moonies, the scientologists or in a temple devoted to a guru. To really challenge the conservatism of this system, it’s not new cults we need, but liberated minds.

Mind liberation is not the same as women’s liberation (women wage slaves being exploited on the same terms as men). It means thinking about what is in your own material interest and joining with those in a common social position to do something about it. Punks, junkies and lefties can be well accommodated within the capitalist system. Socialist consciousness cannot be accommodated within capitalism: not until we have a system of society run in the human interest will socialists be content.

What, then, will be the position of young people in a socialist society? Of course, the social revolution will not alter human biology and make young humans look the same as older ones. Neither will it remove the need for those who are young to learn certain skills and acquire certain information as part of their development into adulthood. The difference in socialism will be that the young will no longer be conditioned from birth for class roles; no longer will those who are old have power over those who are young because they pay for them; no longer will education be only for the young, but instead will be seen as a lifelong process for all to enjoy the constant quest for knowledge; no longer will authoritarian discipline exist in schools, for the basis of socialism will be cooperative self-discipline; no longer will those being educated be forced to accept dogma in an uncritical fashion, for the need to inculcate norms into children will have disappeared.

Socialism will open up one new possibility which has hitherto been denied to the sons and daughters of the wealth-producing class: the right to be different, to assert individuality, to be eccentric and to be visionaries.

Steve Coleman

Raising of the school leaving age (1972)

From the April 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Teacher writes . . . 

Over the past twenty years or so education has become one of the most popular discussion topics among pundits, practitioners and participants alike. Following the 1944 Butler Education Act, and the resulting tripartite secondary system of grammar, technical and modern schools, there has been much heated argument about early selection and the relatively privileged position of the grammar schools. This in turn has been followed by a movement towards comprehensive schools and their gradual and partial replacement of grammar schools. But the concept of “equality of educational opportunity" has meant many things to many people in the past, not least among supporters of the comprehensive movement who saw in such schools the opportunity to put into practice such ideas of equality. The publication of three "Black Papers" on education by anti-comprehensive writers, and indeed other writings by some who support the idea in principle, has shown that much of the expected outcome has not been fulfilled, and the ethos within these schools today seems to hold little promise of a more egalitarian structure in education. As Dennis Marsden point out, in Education For Democracy, the early supporters of comprehensives looked to these new schools to provide a solvent for class barriers and inequality. They urged the abolition of grammar schools on the grounds of social exclusiveness, narrowness and rigidity of academic curriculum. By contrast, many of the later supporters of the comprehensive schools have wanted merely an extension of the grammar school traditions with a higher proportion of the population benefiting. Also, instead of the proposed unstreaming and the common curriculum, with flexible teaching methods intended to promote a new co-operative atmosphere especially geared towards the average or less-able child, the existing competitive streamed and specialised structure has for the most part been retained. The measure of success is still the number of GCE passes, university places and the more efficient use of scarce science and maths teachers.

Accompanying these arguments have been other equally passionate themes such as forms of examinations, school organisation and size of classes, changing pattern of sixth forms, abolition of free milk, and as a reminder that teachers are very much part of the class struggle there has been regular recurrences of teachers’ pay negotiations. Now comes the latest controversy in this long line of reform, namely the raising of the school leaving age, or ROSLA as it has become popularly known. From next year pupils whose fifteenth birthday falls on or after 1 September, 1972, will have to remain at school for one year more than they would otherwise have done, although it must at once be made clear that many children already stay on at school quite voluntarily. In fact there is an average of some 60 per cent of the age group throughout the country already doing so. This figure must, however, be considered further to establish precisely where the problems are likely to arise. It does not follow that 60 per cent in every area stay on at school; the incidence varies from about 68 per cent in Greater London and the South to some 42 per cent in the East Midlands.

The concern among practising teachers and administrators is directed towards the group of pupils who would normally leave at fifteen, and although these represent a minority of the age group there is a feeling that these “reluctant learners”, as they have come to be called, will cause disruption disproportionately to their numbers. An indication of this concern can be seen in Enquiry I, a Government Social Survey undertaken as part of the Schools Council’s programme for helping teachers prepare for the raising of the school leaving age. Around 3,000 teachers were interviewed.

The majority had some reservations about the advantages of keeping at least some of their pupils at school for the extra year, and one union — The National Association of Schoolmasters — views the plan with considerable apprehension. During the debate on the proposal at its Easter Conference, older delegates said their life expectancy was being shortened by five years by the stresses of coping with unruly teenagers in large urban schools.

Britain, of course, is not alone in this desire to extend education beyond the current school leaving age. Although there has been something of an explosion of pupils between 17-18 in schools there is still only 19 per cent of the age group getting full-time education. This compares with 24 per cent in France and Italy, some 38 per cent in the Netherlands and Belgium, over 70 per cent in Japan and nearly 90 per cent in America and higher proportions will soon be internationally commonplace. Yet some are asking if these figures are justified even by present-day standards, when one considers the type of education churned out for these increasing numbers. Does capitalist society need the technologists, and if so are the schools best fitted to train them, and should, in fact, that be the purpose of mass education? One writer, Paul Goodman, in his book Compulsory Miseducation, uses the following argument to question the value of extended education.

It is claimed that society needs more people who are technically trained. But informed labour people tell me that, for a job requiring skill but no great genius, a worker can be found at once, or quickly trained to fill it. For instance, the average job in General Motors’ most automated plant requires three weeks of training for those who have no education whatever. It used to require six weeks; for such automation has diminished rather than increased the needs for training. In the Army and Navy, fairly complicated skills e.g. radar operation and repair, are taught on the job in a year, often to practical illiterates.

The argument here is not that there should be no education for the mass of people, but rather what type of education, and to whom should it be orientated. Goodman argues that it is time we stopped using the word "education” honorifically, and that the present type of compulsory schooling under the present administrators, far from being extended, should be sharply curtailed. He feels that schools should become less institutionalised and much more flexible, with opportunities to return to education in later years as the desire or needs demand.

The purpose of this article is not to oppose the raising of the school leaving age, though it is clear that there has been a lack of preparation to meet the obvious demands this will make on an already overburdened educational system. And there are many in education today who have serious misgivings as to whether reforms like this will be an improvement. Evidence of this doubt can readily be seen in the new books dealing with the aims and values of modern schools, books such as Paul Goodman’s Compulsory Miseducation, Everett Reimer’s School is Dead, Ivan Illich’s work on the school as an institution, and many others searching for alternatives in education. So much of their description is correct, but the prescription is lacking, and while education today is restricting, limiting and narrow in every sense, putting this right can only be done in an alternative society, and for this reason we direct our efforts towards the establishing of Socialism rather than concerning ourselves with advocating or opposing reforms such as the raising of the school leaving age. As a practising teacher, very much in the front line of action, and like so many other teachers up and down the country, I shall endeavour to face the realities of the situation and work out a series of solutions and compromises, at the same time making the extra year as profitable and as enjoyable to the young people in my care as I possibly can. Perhaps one good feature about the whole scheme is that many adolescents are becoming more informed about world problems, and discussion groups within the schools are allowing them to become aware that the solutions to social problems such as war, poverty, unemployment and pollution can only be found through the establishment of a non-competitive society. (We have recently been invited to talk to groups of senior pupils within the schools, and the response to our case is encouraging).

Education in the seventies will continue to develop along the lines that it has for the past century, and to the same purpose, that is producing workers capable of manning the machinery of production and distribution, who are paid in return sufficient wages and salaries to reproduce their energies. The fact that some workers progress beyond this stage is due to their own efforts rather than the educational system, just as it was during the last century in Britain and just as it is today in many of the underdeveloped countries throughout the world. The Times "Turnover” article (29 April, 1964) pointed out that "Strictly speaking the hottest political debates about education are not about education at all. They are about national investment, national competitiveness, social justice and above all class.” The discussion, in other words, is about educational reforms within the context of capitalism. Real freedom and a truly liberal education can only come about in a cooperative and non-competitive society. Socialists look forward to the day when education will be genuinely for the individual, and when the development of creative talents will replace the pre-packeted, mass-training that sadly passes for education today.

Ronald.