comment

Krishna Kumar
Socialist Reconstruction of Schooling:
A Comment
The appearance of two articles on education in a single issue of New
Left Review (192) is indicative of the mood and spirit triggered by
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Apparently, the time has come to
take education more seriously and to give up the assumption that
planning for change in education (part of the superstructure) has
little value before change has taken place in the economic base of
society. Paul Auerbachs article, On Socialist Optimism, is highly
welcome in this context, but the mistaken premisses underlying it
need to be challenged.
Auerbach says that the elite school is an appropriate model if we
wish to make educated guesses about the resource commitments that
[such] a transformation would involve. The transformation he
has in mind presents possibilities like expansion of the school plant
(so that children of the poor can benefit beyond the 9 to 3 regime), a
higher teacherpupil ratio, and a higher professional quality of
teachers. Auerbachs main diagnosis of the problem of present-
day mass education is that it is poorly funded. He feels that meagre
finances force the educational system to adopt authoritarian methods
of pedagogy. Attempts made to introduce liberal approaches typic-
ally end up benefiting children from better-off homes, mainly because
the success of such approaches depends on the availability of copious
learning material. Auerbach concludes that without a dramatic
change in the resource endowments of schools, these less structured
approaches can be (and perhaps have been) a disaster for the great
mass of children. His solution is a massive infusion of resources into
schooling which would permit children from deprived back-
grounds to benefit from flexible, experimental methods of teaching.
Also, an increase in funds would permit higher pay scales for
teachers, which would allow greater rigour in the selection of teachers
from among candidates with higher professional quality and self-
esteem. In Auerbachs scheme of things, the final improvement that a
dramatic enhancement of funds would make possible would be in the
teacherpupil ratio. He recommends 1: 3, with 1: 6 as the absolute
maximum.
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Liberal Underpinnings
While several features of this scenario can be appreciated and
approved, we must place these features in the context of the ultimate
goal that Auerbach sets for education. The purpose of a radical pro-
gramme of education, according to him, is that every child in the
society (this must ultimately be expressed in world-wide terms) is to
have full and equal opportunity for individual self-realization. What
precisely is meant by individual self-realization is not quite clear. A
kind of explanation of this term emerges from Auerbachs approving
portrayal of the mental make-up of the rich. He finds an element of truth
in an old canard [which] maintains that if the rich were stripped of their
wealth, they would regain it in a generation. He goes on to say that the
greatest wealth the rich pass on to their children consists of skills, edu-
cation and self-confidence. Perhaps we can assume that possession of
this wealth is symptomatic of self-realization.
We need to notice the liberal underpinnings of Auerbachs idea of
self-realization as a goal of education. A key concept embedded here is
that there is such a thing as a fully constituted self that exists from
childhood onwards and that is not dependent on a social or cultural
context.
1
Only such a concept of the self can permit us to view peda-
gogical inputs like low teacherpupil ratios and computer software as
facilitators in self-realization. That the self is a dynamic construct
shaped by the structure of relationships featured in the childs milieu
is clearly an opposite view. This alternative concept imparts to the self
a ubiquitous character and characterizes its development as an incre-
mental process of involvement with the environment. In Auerbachs
concept there is little room for the environment except in the limited
sense of the schools material and pedagogical ethos. These are
undoubtedly important details for educators, but the quality of com-
puter software cannot override the influence of the relations of produc-
tion characterizing the childs wider social environment. It is these basic
elements of the childs own world that the school must intellectually
grapple with if it wishes to participate in the shaping of the childs self.
Auerbachs idea of the self as a free-floating entity, apparently consti-
tuted by purely psychological elements like intellectual potential and
tendencies, and so forth, is in line with his perception of an element of
truth in the popular belief that the offspring of the rich, if suddenly
stripped of their parents wealth, would regain it fast on the strength
of their skills, education and self-confidence. One notices that Auer-
bach does not mention the advantage that children of the wealthy will
enjoy, during their struggle for recovery of their lost wealth, from the
contacts and linkages their parents and forefathers had built and
strengthened. It is not just the symbolic capital which we know helps
children of the rich, but also the structure of relationships in which
they find themselves. The test proposed in the canard assumes that while
individual wealthy parents will lose their wealth, the world will be per-
mitted to remain the place it was when they had amassed that wealth.
1
See B. Crittenden, Comparing Liberal and Marxist Theories, Curriculum Inquiry,
vol. 21, no. 3, 1991.
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Most problematic of all in Auerbachs scheme of socialist reconstruc-
tion of education is his acceptance of elite schools as a model. It is
astonishing that he does not see elite schools as being among the
important tools of capitalisms economic and social structure. Appar-
ently, it is one thing to acknowledge the unjust and oppressive social
character of the capitalist economic system, and quite another to view
education as part of that system, with the more successful examples
(for example, elite schools) occupying crucial, deeper-set positions in
it. Surely, elite schools make as major a contribution as advertising
does towards promoting the values and the ethos that symbolize and
uphold the capitalist socioeconomic structure. Perhaps the most
important value they promote is competitiveness, so essential for the
consumption-centred lifestyle that capitalist economics demands.
They mystify learning and inquiry by alienating school knowledge
from the social milieu, or by restricting school learning to the unprob-
lematic givens. They can serve as a model for mass education only in
an argument confined to the value of education as a means of social
mobility. One hopes that socialist plans for educational reform will
now go beyond the aim of promoting social mobility within a fixed
social structure.
On Low TeacherPupil Ratios
It is enchantment with elite schools that leads Auerbach to suggest 1: 3
as the ideal teacherpupil ratio for future schools for the masses, with
the maximum acceptable as 1: 6. I wish to argue that such ratios will
be counterproductive if the goal of reform is to increase childrens
autonomy and self-confidence. Such low ratios can only ensure that
children will have no opportunity to be intellectually away from the
teacher even if good training induces the teacher physically to with-
draw at times. The only logic of such absurdly low ratios can be the
idea that if smaller classes generally mean more individual attention,
then the smallest possible number ought to enable us to reach the
ideals of education. Perhaps we can learn from physical phenomena
in this matter.
2
Beyond a point, increases in the quantity of a positive
input begin to give negative results. For example, when a vibrator
resonates, the amplitude of its vibration reaches the maximum value
within a small range of the frequency that is very close to the vibrators
own natural frequency. In other words, as the forced frequency
increases, the amplitude increases, peaks, and then starts to decrease
even as the forced frequency continues to increase. Similarly, the pro-
ductivity of the teachinglearning activity is not a linear function of
the teacherpupil ratio. Smaller classes are indeed a great help to the
teacher, but beyond a point smallness of class size may become coun-
terproductive (except in the context of remedial education). The
experience of teachers in many parts of the world suggests that an
intellectually rich class which uses peer interaction as a resource is
likely to consist of twenty to thirty pupils, depending on the childrens
age group and the subject matter.
Possibly, the attraction of an extremely low teacherpupil ratio has its
rationale in the agenda Auerbach sets for education of the working
2
I am grateful to Padma M. Sarangapani for this idea and the metaphor that follows.
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classes, apparently following Gramsci. In a footnote in the first part of
his paper, Auerbach criticizes those who think that the teaching of the
strict rule of English grammar to working-class children is an imposi-
tion upon these childrens own culture. Auerbach says: I, on the con-
trary, believe (as did Gramsci and Williams) that passing on to
working-class children a full competence in the language of the domi-
nant culture is central to the project of breaking down social stratifica-
tion. Auerbach is engaged here in a familiar debate on the choices
before the teacher: should she permit children to stay within their own,
arguably limited, symbolic repertoire, or initiate them into the reper-
toire of bourgeois culture? This kind of formulation is common among
academic commentators on education who have never worked with
children themselves. Unfortunately, Gramsci must be included in this
category, though as a father he provides indicators of being deeply
aware of childrens needs and the kinds of activities that would be
meaningful to them.
3
Adults who work with children find out in no
time that child-centred pedagogy is not an ideology or even a theory,
but rather a stance which requires adults to take the childs point of
view. The question of choices to be made between cultural codes
simply does not arise in the manner formulated above. What becomes
imperative is to engage the child in an intrinsically motivated process
of inquiry into the world, its physical as well as social properties.
All the recommendations Auerbach makes in the section entitled
Education as Individual Self-Realization are consistent with the well-
known practices of child-centred education. But his recommendations
assume a naive character when we recall that he wants reformed mass
education to follow the model of elite schools. If we see this attraction
of elite schools as an extension of the Gramscian idea that working-
class children need initiation into the dominant culture, we can recog-
nize the blind spot lurking in this line of thought, namely that all is
well with the dominant culture and its epistemological basis. Leaving
aside the fact that this kind of interpretation of Gramsci is itself
inadequate, if not suspect, the point I wish to emphasize here is that
the worthiness of the dominant culture as a model for education must
be viewed in a context broader than that of social inequalities and
mobility within the prevailing economic structure. This may not have
been necessary half a century ago, but is certainly so today. The
unviability of the dominant culture has been proved not just by the
crisis of ecology (which is linked to the crisis of economics),
4
but also
by the continuous ensnaring of the developing world into debt traps
and dependency with every attempt it makes to imbibe the dominant
culture or to partake of its knowledge systems. Those who believe in
socialist reconstruction of education must accept that alternatives to
the dominant culture need to be found in order to rescue the meaning
of words like education and culture. A dramatic increase in funds
can give ordinary schools the look of elite schools, but nothing more
(and it would be malicious for someone to use this to count me as an
opponent of better funding for mass schools). A deeper search, at the
3
See Gramscis Prison Letters, trans. H. Henderson, Edinburgh 1988. For example, the
letters dated 30.12.1929 and 31.8.1931 to Giulia, his wife, are especially interesting.
4
See Narindar Singh, Economics and the Crisis of Ecology, 3rd edn, London 1989.
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level of ideas and visions, is necessary to build a model of culture and
education superior to the barbaric models that are part of the domi-
nant culture today. I agree with James Donald (whose review appeared
in the same issue of NLR as Auerbachs article) that in the context of
education this search can greatly benefit from a rereading of Dewey
and an attempt to combine Deweys insights with those of Gramsci.
Paul Auerbach replies:
Krishna Kumars lucid summary of my article contains two elements
of criticism, one of which is based on a misunderstanding. The mis-
understanding concerns my footnote about the elite school. It had
been directed at potential right-wing critics who might comment on
the seemingly unprecedented resource commitments of the radical scheme:
when set against the value of resources put into the elite school
(including the value of land, and so forth), the radical programme
seems a good deal less utopian. How those resources would be used in
a radical context is another matter. I therefore concur with Krishna
Kumars critique of the somewhat Orwellian image created by me of
one teacher standing over every three little childrena rather discon-
certing picture. This 1: 3 ratio was meant to be an averageonce
again, merely an indication of the resource requirements involved;
where appropriate, larger teaching groups might exist alongside one-
to-one tutoring in, for instance, music lessons and remedial work.
The second element of criticism may be the result of genuine disagree-
ment. It is suggested that my belief in the necessity for rigorous educa-
tion in the operative skills (the grammar of the societys principal
language; mathematics) of the dominant culture implies that all is
well with that culture. On the contrary, my belief is that there is no
substitute for the mastery of traditional skills and forms of discourse,
most especially for those who believe that alternatives to the domi-
nant culture must be found in order to rescue the meaning of words
like education and culture. Krishna Kumars own writing is
eloquent testimony to this fact.
In an attempt at a reductio ad absurdum of my position, it is implied I
believe that the quality of computer software [can] override the
influence of the relations of production characterizing the childs
wider social environment. Kumars categories fail to capture the way
inadequate information and education puts people at the mercy of
complex economic processes. In the UK, day after day, television
viewers are inundated with stockbroker experts who lecture them
on the realities of the present situation in the British economy.
One aspect of the success of this mystification is the general publics
bewilderment with technical details of any kind. If, indeed, com-
puter software in the education of children could help eliminate the
befuddlement in the general public surrounding compound interest,
probability, statistical correlation, and so on, it would be an import-
ant weapon in the empowerment (to use the currently fashionable
word) of the general population vis--vis its elite.
Perhaps the differences between Krishna Kumar and myself are
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merely based on alternative perspectives. From the perspective of the
Third World, for instance, much in the present proposals may seem
fanciful and distant. It may be suggested that there are more pressing
problems in the poorer societies of the world; even in such societies,
however, I believe that education is central to the question of social
liberation.
In rich societies such as the UK and the US, the programme I have
been discussing is easily realizable. The evolution of capitalist compe-
tition is forcing a re-examination of the role in this process of the
skills and education of the workforce. Thus the issue is, in any case, in
the air, and the question remains: will socialists join battle over the
issue of what is to be taught and over the forms and social context of
education, or will they, as usual, stand on the sidelines, wait for the
revolution, and court irrelevance? If moved in a socialist direction,
within two generations the human capital of the whole population of
these societies could be empowered on an equal footing with its elite.
In the context of such a programme, democratic decision-making and
other aspects of the socialist vision can begin to be realized. As a well-
defined focus for action, it is part of a strategy for breaking through
the paralysis and pessimism so pervasive on the Left.
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