“We Teach All Hearts to Break”: On the Incompatibility of Education with Schooling at All Levels, and the Renewed Need for a De-Schooling of Society

Abstract

‘We teach all hearts to break’ was graffiti spray painted on a school building in London's Notting Hill Gate in 1968/69 by the Situationst-influenced group King Mob cited by two former members in Paddington Bear (1988). ‘Once upon a time there was a place called Nothing Hill Gate.’ Retrieved Sept. 30, 2011, from http://www.revoltagainstplenty.com/index.php/recent/34-archivelocal/120-once-upon-a-time-in-notting-hill Education is for anarchism, and what can very broadly be termed autonomism—that is, the many different schools of non-Leninist Marxism—of paramount importance in creating a society worthy of humanity, but this is not a simple formula of countering the dominant mode of institutional indoctrination known as schooling with libertarian propaganda, though that may have its place. The importance of education can be said to be “an-end-in-itself” prefiguring free social relations of community and reciprocity, comprised of autonomous individuals capable of comprehending both themselves and the world in which they live. Such a process of learning and acquiring knowledge must also nourish intellect and other forms of intelligence, just as intellect and other forms of intelligence nourish the acquisition of knowledge. This paper will seek to critically explore some of the key issues involved in an anarcho-Marxist critique of schooling and develop the basis for what might constitute an alternative view of education which could be said to be in radical opposition to such schooling at all levels.