Tony Barrow

Education and Society

From International Socialism, No.67, March 1974, p.29.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

Education and Society
Chanie Rosenberg
Rank and File, 10p.

THIS EXCELLENT pamphlet is designed to show just how the ruling class keep the worker in some semblance of order through education. For capitalism to survive it must start at the very beginning with the systematic brainwashing of its labour force. How often have you heard the worker say, ‘The boss must be clever, after all he had a better education than me and that’s why he earns more money.’ This of course is absolute rot The pamphlet clearly gives the answer that everyone is entitled to the same education, no matter how humble, and that it is not the prerogative of the ruling class to control who goes where, and for how long, and what they should learn.

Chanie states,

‘The ideological submission of the working class is indeed the most powerful shackle preventing it from taking power, and our education system a powerful factor in achieving this.’

We have only to look at millions of workers whose talents far exceed what they are academically qualified for. The worker who puts nuts and bolts into a hole two thousand times a day and failed every exam ever thrown at him, but in reality is an expert boat builder in his spare time. The worker who failed every English exam and has no qualifications, but in reality has a vocabulary far in excess of any teacher that ever taught him, and with a little encouragement could become an excellent writer. These two cannot become anything other than what they have been forced to become through this society, they have no qualifications and are therefore not worthy of consideration. The socialist case for the abolition of examinations is a long one and will only come to fruition when the mind-bending policies of the ruling class are destroyed along with that class.

There are many anecdotes from people who have been through the state school system in the pamphlet, one of the best from a building worker who always went for the lowest marks possible thus proving that whilst he could learn, the lackeys of the system couldn’t teach, only from ingenuity can one get low marks consistently, and that takes brains.

Chanie shows that there is outright rebellion in working class schools; these are at the moment confined to truancy, insolence, and defiance to teachers who refuse to teach what the working class pupils wish to learn. I felt while reading the pamphlet that there is a great wind of change beginning to blow in education and that the marches by pupils in May 1972 were not what the ‘popular press’ made them out to be, high-spirited school kids who just wanted time off school, with the ‘baser elements’ egging them on. The fact is that pupils today are far more aware of what is going on around them than they were a decade ago. There is something in them that says, ‘Look at my clapped out old mum and dad, I don’t know who or what did that to them, but it ain’t happening to me.’

To this end there must, as Chanie states, be collective, not competitive education, where you don’t just get on on your own, you all get on together, where if one lags behind or falls down, the rest help him or her to their feet In this way working class pupils will go forward as a whole, and not as if now, in tiered, split groups, each trying to outdo the other, and only the ruling class benefiting from the rat race they have purposely created.

The chapter on Socialist education is self explanatory, but I feel that I must reproduce in this review the six points which are written in chapter five.

Against ruling class privilege we seek positive discrimination in favour of schools in working class areas, by a massive input of resources to overcome social and educational deprivation and give the best conditions for learning. The education budget needs to be multiplied many times to achieve equality with the best-endowed schools. As class educational deprivation manifests itself in the first few years of life, free nursery education is essential. Public and direct grant schools to be abolished.
Against the hierarchical school we seek a democratic system in which all aspects of school policy are decided by all who have a stake in the school-pupils, teachers, ancillary workers, parents and members of the outside community of workers; the head and other officials to be elected by all members of the school community, and be subject to recall. All teachers to be paid a single salary scale.
Students to be free to organise in unions, and to be free to discuss and act politically. Victimised students and teachers must be defended. Student and teachers strikes must be supported.
Experimental schools must be encouraged and maintained by the state.
Selection, competition, and the ideology which give rise to them to be combated and replaced by collective endeavour in fully comprehensive schools in which the contributions of all are equally valued.
Examinations and academic degrees to be abolished and higher education be free for all who wish it.

The reason I felt the need to reproduce those six aims are because the more they appear in print, the more people are likely to take notice of them. This pamphlet is a giant in its field, it is written in easy to understand language, it has been written for the working class. It is for the working class to take note of, and to act on. I wish it had been around when I, empty-headed, and doomed by the system, came from the academic desert that is the lot of the working class pupil, into the ready-made jungle created by the ruling class.

Top of page

ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

Last updated on 1.1.2008