Class, Status, Party and Education

Abstract

progenitor-the Christian Church-education insists on a degree of purity which it is always prevented from wholly realizing both by hostile and powerful forces without and by the inadequacies of those charged with tending the ideal within. But despite these chronic problems the failure is never total; the impossible ideal remains a criterion for judgment, a standard to which behaviour makes periodic attempts to conform, and a value to which even many of the external enemies pay at least formal respect. The ideal is that education, and the inseparable activities of scholarship and the advancement of knowledge, should be governed solely by their own internal laws. The truth should be pursued wherever it leads and regardless of whom it offends; the success or failure of both pupils and teachers should be judged solely by the internal criteria of the process of study itself and not by external factors of rank, wealth or power; decisions as to what to teach or where to research should be determined by the emergent needs of the subjects as they are defined and ranked by the academic community alone-that community itself being defined solely by educational and scholarly criteria.1 The reasons why this claim is an impossible one are not hard to find. The acquisition and pursuit of knowledges are valuable resources which can be of use in a wide variety of ways outside the educational community itself, being aids to power and the achievement of a wide range of material goals. There are therefore many groups in any society who will want to lay their hands on education and turn it to their own advantage, threatening the vaunted autonomy. Against this education has few material defences. Indeed, in order to find some institutional embodiment it has to draw on extra-educational resources, with the result that its very defences are constructed with the weapons of potential enemies. Although our predominant concern here is with one form of 'invasion'-that from the political-it would be highly misleading to abstract politics from the wider context of social powers which surround education. Absence of political involvement alone by no means guarantees the claimed autonomy, and may in fact only lead educational institutions into an intensified dependence on alternative social forces. It is a feature of liberal capitalist societies that the state, while being invested with enormous power, is also scrutinized for its exercise of that power in a manner which is escaped by many other, particularly economic, institutions. The deeds of the state are widely publicized and its acquisition and use of specific powers are subject to elaborate procedural control. As a form of power the state is uniquely visible. Indeed, in much discussion, power is presented as something which by definition resides in the political sphere alone. In order to avoid such misconceptions, this examination of the relationship between education and politics will be prefaced by a general if cursory review of education in the