user preferences

New Events

Ireland / Britain

no event posted in the last week

Education

textProgettifici e dittatori scolastici 23:09 Jul 05 0 comments

textLa Buona Scuola 02:50 Oct 05 0 comments

textLa Buona Scuola 16:04 Sep 09 0 comments

textEducar para la bobada 07:32 Jan 08 0 comments

textAteismo diventa materia scolastica in Irlanda 17:59 Sep 27 0 comments

more >>

The Goals Of Modern Education

category ireland / britain | education | non-anarchist press author Saturday September 09, 2006 08:00author by Victor P - Action-Onlineauthor email vpetroff at hotmail dot com Report this post to the editors

This is the first of a four part series I have compiled on education and what it stands for. This is an analysis on education's primary goals, looking at its tailoring to suit a capitalist economy as well as seeding out compliers from rebels. The other three parts are 'Class And Attainment', 'Education and Leadership' and 'A Future for Education?'

[i]‘The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized.’ Paulo Freire, Pedagogy Of The Oppressedhttp://www.marxists.org/subject/education/freire/pedagogy/ch01.htm]

Education. It is a big word when you think about it. We spend, on average, at least ten or eleven years in its embrace, and often we feel that we haven’t gained much – or we haven’t gained what we wanted to gain, whatever that murky ideal is. You can blame youthful dissent for that, and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong – for people find their identity through conflict. Yet, the present education system has other inherent problems or peculiarities, which raise certain questions about its usefulness – not to the present economy, but to the single, autonomous human being.

What is education? In one sense – it is the acquisition of knowledge and the learning of skills. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, education often also helps to shape beliefs and moral values – and that is where the key is. For ‘One who graduated yesterday and stops learning today is uneducated by tomorrow’ (as a sign in Oxford University reads), yet morals and beliefs internalised during that most susceptible of periods – adolescence – often stay with a person forever.

Here in Britain, which many of the following observations will be based on (out of necessity), a Labour Party that came to power in 1997 promised equality – for education does need to provide equality of thought, learning and respect for your fellow man and their ideas. Yet, as so often happens, the reality is different – and governments have even stopped paying lip service to this ideal.

When trying to perceive what today’s education system is about, our first port of call should be studies. And the primary one that concerns the issue is the one conducted by Bowles and Gintis, albeit in the distant for some of us 1976. However, their ideas seem just as relevant today, as education is still treated as another marketplace where people’s early lives can be played around with for the sake of business interests.

What did Bowles and Gintis propose? Their main idea is that the world of work casts a long shadow over education – the latter is subservient to the needs of those who control the workforce i.e. the owners of the means of production. The first major way that education functions is to provide the bosses with a workforce, which has the personality, attitudes and values that are most useful to them – hard work without question, docility, obedience and motivation; as well as fragmentation and division – to remove the challenge to authority.

It is not the contents of the lessons and the examinations that the pupils take that are important (although they purport to be), it is the way that teaching and the hidden curriculum instil ideas and beliefs into the students. According to Bowles & Gintis, the hidden curriculum shapes the future workforce in the following ways:

1. Producing a subservient workforce of passive and uncritical workers. In a study based upon 237 members of the senior year in a New York high school, B & G found that the grades awarded were related more to personality traits rather than academic ability – low grades went to creative, aggressive and independent young people, while the high achievers were the ones that were consistent, dependable and punctual. Not surprising – an office job requires arriving at work on time and doing the same motions over and over again, not thinking out of the box.

2. Encouraging the acceptance of hierarchy – schools are hierarchical organisations that are structured along the lines of authority and control. Teachers give orders, students obey (if they want to succeed). The latter have little control over what they study – you may choose the subject, but the illusion ends there: there is a limited set of options to choose from inside the subject. This prepares the students for a relationship inside the workforce – if the worker is to stay out of trouble, they need to defer to the authority of supervisors and managers.

3. Motivating students by external awards – akin to the workers. Studying in such an organised, hierarchical structure provides little enjoyment – but a qualification at the end of the year is what motivates them to achieve. A vast majority of work is organised so it achieves maximum profit, not maximum satisfaction – and school prepares people for that: just swap the end of school certificate with a pay cheque.

(Research taken from: [b]Bowles and Gintis [/b][u]Schooling In Capitalist America[/u], [i]Routledge & Kegan Paul, London[/i], 1976)

But wait a minute, you may say. We are encouraged to organise for example – teamwork is a large part of the modern classroom. But you organise to do what? Achieve a target set by your teacher – make a presentation about the causes of the First World War. You are not organising to question the sanctity of the education system itself!

Bowles and Gintis were not alone in this thinking – Marxist theoreticians have seen through the education system for a long time:

[i]‘In bourgeois society the school has three principal tasks to fulfil. First, it inspires the coming generation of workers with devotion and respect for the capitalist régime. Secondly, it creates from the young of the ruling classes 'cultured' controllers of the working population. Thirdly, it assists capitalist production in the application of sciences to technique, thus increasing capitalist profits.’Bukharin, ABC Of Communism, Chapter 10http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/10.htm]

And as Bowles and Gintis showed (and Althusser re-stated in 1972) – it does instil workers with, if not respect, at least an acceptance of the capitalist economy – by reproducing that same society through schooling. The second point raised by Bukharin shall be addressed in later parts, when we look at Britain as a more specific example.


This is the place to mention some research done by Paul Willis. Working in the late 70s, he investigated classroom culture – and his findings give us insights into how cleverly education is actually structured. Willis concentrated on the counter-school culture – well known to all, I assume. He followed a group of 12 working class boys through the last 18 months of their education, and discovered that they developed a distinct social group, with an emphasis on an anti-school frame of mind. The ‘lads’ (what a British term!) felt superior to teachers and conformists, attached little value to academic success and had no interest in qualifications. Their main objective was to have fun – and avoid work. When these boys were followed into their work-lives, it was found that the strategies developed in school were key in surviving in their jobs – they were destined for low-skill, manual jobs, which were often tediously repetitive and boring. ‘Having a laugh’, developed in school, was carried over to the world of work – enabling them to cope with their dissatisfaction. They keep the illusion of attaining freedom, while still not being sacked – just as they had freedom not to learn, but still attended just enough lessons not to be expelled.

(Source: [b]Paul Willis[/b][u]Learning To Labour[/u], [i]Saxon House, Farnborough[/i], 1977)

Their behaviour shows recognition that our society is not as meritocratic as it purports to be.

Education pacifies us. We all feel it is unjust in our student years, and yet we internalise its teachings and values. At just the time of our lives when we are most forceful, radical and rebellious, we take on attitudes that will ultimately turn us reactionary and stagnant.

An education geared towards an economy hampers freethinking – social sciences and even the arts are often less of an emphasis than science and maths. The second deals with iron laws – the first: with interpretations.

To say that education turns everyone into sheep who know their places is a gross distortion – as the recent riots in French universities showed us. Not everyone who goes to a comprehensive school ends up in a menial job – entrepreneurs rise on their own merits, true (Richard Branson is one that I can think off the top of my head).

Yet, out of the vast millions that exit education each year, most know their place and know what they need to do to ‘succeed’.

We are taught to pass exams, to meet deadlines and to conform to a higher order - we are not taught to question except when it is within tightly regulated guidelines, to develop unique lines of thought or to challenge the established status quo. We are taught to accept orders from a teacher, who is easily subsituted by a manager or supervisor. When we are told 'You have control of your learning', they mean you have the option to choose between five different subjects and ten different topics within each. We are not given the choice to pursue what we want - and this anger gets vented towards others. Evidence of this are the broken store windows on a Friday night or the walls, stencilled by graffitti that pop up every so often. Sure, there are other factors - but not being in control for ten of the best years of your life sure is part of it all.

The cruellest thing you can do to a person is make them ashamed of their own intricacy. The parables of our lives have no definite morals. Any single conclusion drawn would be false; the events, taken together, are untranslatable, unmatched and unique. If we are to conclude at all, we can only conclude against conclusions.

This is what education should be about – the ability to think for yourself, and be an unique individual. Not just the thousandth data analyst, factory worker or shop clerk – but the thousandth data analyst, factory worker or shop clerk that makes their own decisions, knowing that, for once, the sky is the limit.

Related Link: http://www.action-online.org
This page can be viewed in
English Italiano Deutsch
© 2005-2024 Anarkismo.net. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by Anarkismo.net. [ Disclaimer | Privacy ]