Education as struggle

Abstract

In the previous chapter I have argued that formal education - as a service provided by the state or by 'independent' or private entities - is intimately connected with the interests of particular groups that make up a society, and that contributes to the balance of power that exists, at a particular moment, between these different groups. In this sense, therefore, education is a social practice that entails constant struggle, and is involved in either furthering or diminishing democratic forms of life. It is intimately linked to politics, and the decisions made regarding the provision of an educational service - its form, content, delivery, assessment and duration, the language of instruction that is adopted, the pedagogical modes that are preferred, the relationship between certification and the employment market, and so on - are all dependent on which group succeeds in establishing its agendas, and generally enforcing these on other groups. As Archer (1984: 1) notes in her Weberian answer to the question 'how do state educational systems develop and how do they change?': 'education has the characteristics it does because of the goals pursued by those who control it ... change occurs because new goals are pursued by those who have the power to modify education's previous structural form, definition of instruction and relationship to society ... education is fundamentally about what people have wanted of it and have been able to do to it'. Let us take a few examples to immediately make this view of education as real and accessible as possible. Imagine a Mediterranean society where different groups have different religious beliefs - say, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. Adherents to these are all firmly convinced that their belief is the 'true' one, and they are also equally set on bringing up their children in the faith of their forefathers. It immediately becomes clear that the formal education, system can respond to these demands in different ways, depending on the balance of power that prevails in that particular society. If, for the sake of argument, the Catholic group is more powerful in numbers, and has the support of governmental, then it might succeed in establishing Catholicism as the main - if not only - religion that is taught at school. Alternatively, if there is a balance of power between the three different religious groups, all three belief systems could form part of a compulsory or optional curriculum. Another possible scenario among the many that could be imagined is that the three groups opt to exclude religious instruction from the formal curriculum, and promote that within the context of the family, or/and in special, after-school religious clubs or centres. Some countries have handled this potential conflict between religious groups by developing Catholic, Islamic, and Jewish schools, with each educational establishment having, to a greater or lesser degree, its own regulations, curricula, pedagogic traditions, assessment modes, and so on. Of course, depending on the prestige, power and influence of the different religions, and depending on the extent to which schooling mediates between origins and destinations, graduates of the different schools will have more or less success in being employed in the more prestigious sectors of that country's economy. One could easily pursue this example further. The point is that there can be much at stake in the provision of it formal educational service - much that is worth struggling for and over. Religion is only one such locus for struggle between different groups in a particular society (Bates, 1993). Another locus is gender (Weiler, 1988; Sultana, 1990; Wrigley, 1992). A number of very specific issues immediately come to mind here: should boys and girls be offered the same kind of education, the same curricular diet? Should they be put together in the same schools? Should both be equally encouraged to pursue education at higher education levels? Should schools channel one particular gender into adopting specific roles, linked to wider social and economic traditions, so that they are prepared more effectively to be nurturers, for instance, or warriors, for that matter?

Similarly contentious is the issue of ethnicity. Contemporary societies are far from being homogenous in a century which has been marked by mobility of people. Migrations between and within state boundaries have a serious implication for educational establishments, who are obliged to face up to the challenge of a multicultural, often multi-ethnic society. Again, schools have a number of choices in front of them. They can encourage different ethnic groups to attend different schools, or to mix together and learn from each other's traditions. They can opt to celebrate difference or squash it. Depending on which group is in power, schools can provide better services to one ethnic group at the expense of another, or even exclude a rival group from educational provision altogether. Curricula and texts can proclaim the superiority of one race over another; guidance teachers, for instance, can channel one ethnic group towards the more lucrative and prestigious occupations, and another group towards the more servile, less remunerative jobs. The possibilities of using education in this way are only limited by human beings' imagination, as witnessed by the anti-Semitic campaigns in the schools of Hitler' s Third Reich (Jarausch, 1990), or the racist practices in the apartheid regime of South Africa (Jansen, 1990).

There are at least two other poles around which the struggle for and about education tends to congeal. We have referred to religion, gender and ethnicity. Crucially important is the struggle of groups who have special needs, be these physical, mental or psychological. Such groups have had to struggle in order to be taken seriously, to avoid being excluded from educational services, and to be taken into account of in the provision of a schooling that responds to their own particular needs (Swain et aI., 1993). From being hidden in homes, groups with special needs have struggled for their own special schools, and then for their full integration into mainstream educational establishments, often in the face of stiff opposition from other citizens. They have had to point out that school architecture is generally insensitive to the needs of students with limited mobility, rendering establishments inaccessible. They have had to contest medieval notions of ability, where difference is confused with inferiority, if not downright evil. They have had to struggle for fur:.ding so that physical and other 'limitations' are overcome in a social and material context that is supportive (Bezzina, 1993). The right to difference, the struggle for visibility and legitimacy in social sites such as schools, has also been promoted by those with a life and sexual orientation that is alternative to that embraced by the 'mainstream' .

Finally, I will highlight the important struggle over class issues in the politics of educational provision. I discuss class last not because it is the least important, but rather because it cuts across religion, gender, ethnicity, and special needs issues. Indeed, for some sociologists class is the central locus of struggle in any social formation (Bowles and Gintis, 1976; Bourdiet. and Passeron, 1977; Apple, 1979, 1982). The word 'class' (in the Marxist sense) or 'social class' (in its Weberian sense) is shorthand for a view of society based on a conflict of interests between different groups. Marx tends to privilege struggles between the group that owns and controls the means of production, and other groups that have a subordinate relationship to the dominant group. In industrial societies, capitalists would constitute the dominant group, while the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would constitute subordinate groups with differential access to material (e.g. purchc:sing power) and symbolic (e.g. status) resources. Weber, while accepting Marx's insight regarding the power wielded by the owners of the means of production, considered society in a rather less dualistic and hierarchical fashion. He portrayed society as being made up of different status groups, each with their own forms of capital, engaged in a never-ending struggle for influence and power, with different alliances being struck up depending on the momentum and balance of a specific historical conjuncture.

It is not crucial, for our purposes, to have to choose between Marx' s or Weber's vision of society. Indeed, there is not necessarily a contradiction between embracing the in sights provided by both sociological traditions. What is important at this stage is to recognise the basic fact that 'society' is not some 'benign' collective where the good of a group works out in the interests of all. Human history is strewn with the corpses -literally and figuratively - of groups fighting for dominance, of people of one skin colour enslaving and exploiting others of another colour, of men attempting to render women abject servants, of hordes of 'faithful' torturing others in the name of religious beliefs, of able bodied citizens denying basic human rights to those who were physically or mentally different. A.d, if we are to accept Marx's point of view, underlying 'man's inhumanity to man' [sic] is the search-for economic power, arguably the key to all other forms of power. That will to power has an international dimension as well, one that is particularly relevant to countries like Malta that have been colonised, and whose educational systems still bear the imprint of erstwhile masters (Carnoy, 1974; Altbach and Kelly, 1978).