The Role of Education in a Strategy for Social Change

Abstract

AT THE CIES MEETINGS in San Francisco this past March, Philip Foster asked our panel on Educational Change in Revolutionary Societies how he could agree with much of our analysis of educational change but at the same time so disagree with the implications of our analysis for change. My answer was that we disagreed on the nature of capitalist development. Foster takes a Schumpeterian view, believing that the main problem of capitalist development is that the State interferes with the workings of a market system which is inherently just and fair and leads to maximum economic development. I and my co-panelists believe that the interference by the State is not anti-capitalist. To the contrary, it is part and parcel of the cooperation between the State and capitalists to increase profits. Of course, only a small proportion of capitalists may be rewarded, but we think that the evolution of competitive capitalism to monopoly capitalism is a logical outcome of the way capitalism functions and that the participation of the State in this process is inevitable given the State's role in post-feudal societies. Foster's Schumpterian view of the State's role in economic development is clear in his proposals to decentralize educational decisions and responsibilities. According to Foster, decentralization would be possible because centralized authority is the product of a colonial state of mind. However, I have suggested that the dominant role of the State in development is due to the economic and social structures of dependent capitalism. Thus, it seems to me that many of Foster's suggestions for decentralization will not be implemented because they conflict with the interests of the government and capitalist local bourgeoisie who profit from its decisions and foreign, ex-colonial groups who believe more in economic stability than in reform and decentralized decision-making. This is the fundamental reason why I can agree with parts of Foster's analysis and so disagree with his strategy for educational development and social change. By 1985, the majority of the world's children will have had some formal schooling. We can view this fact with pride, believing that it marks a forward step in human development, or we can view it with serious misgivings, fearful that much of the schooling experience is no more than a further incarceration of the human will and spirit. Our judgment should emerge from an analysis of the economic and social system which this formalized teaching-learning process is being used to maintain and promote. I submit that schooling should be analyzed as an institution serving a particular society with well-defined ends and means to