Education is central to the struggle for Understanding how people learn, and facilitating access to learning for all, is a key task. So is a grasp of current Tory strategy for education, which aims to introduce market forces, end critical thinking and invalidate the notion of equal opportunities. ANN HUDSON reports. WE MUST develop a clear critique of the state's current policies on schooling and formal education. But we also need to develop and promote a socialist alternative.
The process of defining a set of socialist objectives for education must be based upon progressive understanding of theories of intellectual and emotional development, but must also include learning from the struggles undertaken jointly by workers in the field of education, students and parents in the communities education is meant to serve.
Actively engaging in campaigns to oppose Tory education policies and to build democracy allows dialogue and debate among and between such groups and socialists, and it is essential to developing and promoting a new set of perspectives.
Achievable
We need both a utopian sense of how education might operate after capitalism and a more immediate set of achievable goals to facilitate the development of an inquisitive, literate, critical, articulate and conscious working class.
The latter is precisely what the architects of Tory education policies intend to avoid. Their current National Curriculum is designed to serve the capitalist A one-finger salute to equal opportunities from Tory Secretary John Patten state. Thus it reinforces inequalities and stifles creative potential. It is intended to perpetuate and intensify social stratification and prevent the development of forms of consciousness which could enable people participate in changing it.
For socialists, education should concern the development of people's creative potential; their understanding of the natural world, the society in which they live and the work processes of that society. It should develop the capacity to work with others in controlling society's collective life.
In order to promote the growth of consciousness the curriculum must facilitate the development of abstract thought and the skills of analysis an synthesis. It must foster the ability to transfer skills and concepts from one area to another.
To this end, we need a uniform but flexible, locally differentiated system of education provision based upon universal entitlement which encompasses broadly stated curriculum objectives.
We should have a national curriculum, but one that is defined through democratic processes and takes into account the cultures, languages, experiences and needs of a multicultural, class-divided society.
It should have an internationalist perspective, cater for the needs of students of all abilities and seek, both through its content and methods of learning to counter prejudice in all its forms.
Environment
We should argue for an approach to learning which promotes an integrated view of human experience and its relationship to the environment.
We need to break down the traditional, compartmentalised structure of learning currently typical of secondary schools. We should advocate active, student centred learning at all levels.
The government's attempts to make education subject to Socialists must ensure children can learn of the world around them market forces also have the effect of developing a system in which the privileged - usually white, middle class students of Anglo-Saxon descent- have access to the skills and qualifications which will give them a head start in the labour market. By promoting Grant Maintained Status ('opting out'), educationally unsound, externally imposed tests (SATs) and the publication of league tables, the Tories are creating a context in which the notion of equal opportunities becomes farcical. Obviously, equality or opportunity, laudable as a goal, is not really feasible under capitalism. Recognising this reality should not prevent us from fighting -through building alliances which reach beyond those immediately involved in education -against the states efforts to deny the working class access to learning. We should demand open and equal access to a fully comprehensive state funded education system as part of the process of working for socialism - without having any illusions about the nature of the state.
Socialists should be actively assisting teachers, parents and students in battles against Grant Maintained Status for schools and against the SATs. We should demand the reincorporation of all Grant Maintained schools, City Technology Colleges and remaining grammar schools into a fully comprehensive LEA system.
This should go hand in hand with the fight to defend public services, councils and the potential for local democracy they can afford. We should also be seeking community involvement in setting education agendas locally.
While continuing to build opposition to SATs, we must insist that schools are responsible for ensuring the basic right of parents and students to full information about progress in the curriculum. This should be based upon continuous teacher assessment including records of achievement negotiated with school students and parents.
The comprehensive principle is not only about schools. It should also be applied to the post 16 education system.
What we need is access to education throughout life, and an education system which does not divide education from training, or the academic from the vocational.
We should demand an end to the existing external exams post 16, rightly defined as a hangover from the nineteenth century.
In order to develop new perspectives on education, we have to transcend the anti-intellectualism so apparent in modern British culture.
Research
We need to engage in serious research about processes of learning and to develop deeper insights into the political economy of international capitalism.
We also need to understand better the culture of this society and of youth in particular. The task is not only an academic one: the process of defining a healthy socialist outlook on education also involves learning, through struggle, dialogue and debate.
At the same time as countering the state's attempts to tailor formal education to suit its ends, we need to be developing our own longer term agenda for informal as well as formal education.
FEATURE
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 53, November 27 1993, Page 6 Would the security forces = are the bers of the security forces operating in