Capitalism - that is capital1sts. transnational corporations and national corporations based in Britain - and the governments who act on their behalf, have two agendas in education.
Their agenda in education is to make profits from it. Globally the public education sector-if flogged off to private companies- is worth three trillion dollars!
Private schools and universities flourish, and are increasing, globally. US and other companies for example run chains of schools and universities in, for example, the USA and Latin America.
And governments such as those in China and Pakistan see private schooling as stepping in where the state does not want to spend. In other countries, privatization and private education is still fiercely resisted.
In England, commentators such as Rikowski, see the Academies Programme, Specialist Schools, the Blairite reduced powers of Local education authorities, the PFI and the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiations as being a prelude to, a pre-privatisation programme of schools and education.
Their agenda for education is that education should produce a tiered, hierarchicalised labour force labour force that has its labour power, its skills, personality characteristics, knowledges) developed (or restrained and moulded) to fit the hierarchically tiered labour market.
This substantially reproduces the existing social class relations in the labour market, in incomes, wealths, life chances, life quality.
Most working class kids get working class jobs (whether blue collar or white collar), most so-called middle class kids (sons and daughters of the managerial and supervisory strata of the working class) get middle class jobs; most upper class kids, the scions of the capitalist class, learn to rule and boss.
Rich kids get to Oxbridge, middle strata to the Russell Group (Old) Universities, and a proportion of the lower supervisory and skilled (blue collar manual and white collar) sections of the working class get to the 'new universities - pretty much vocationalised skill development factories.
The other aspect of the capitalist agenda for education is to reproduce ideological conformity and acquiescence - to restrict and define 'rebelliousness' as under-age drinking, fucking, and..hey... wearing 'alternative' or 'yoouf' clothes. Or piercings.
But, oh no, not being exposed to, listening to, questioning, developing 8 seriously alternative ideas- 8 such as socialism. So here, schools and uni e versities function as what Althusser termed 'Ideological State Apparatuses'. Some radical left principles for education systems: Part of an Eco-Socialist Manifesto Our alternative would need to include the following:
• Vastly increased funding for education, resulting in, for example, smaller class sizes, better resources and hugely improved low environmental impact
buildings set grounds conducive to children's development of a love The other aspect of the capitalist agenda for education is to reproduce ideological conformity and acquiescence - to restrict and define 'rebelliousness' of nature as well as of their communities;
• A complete end to selection and the development of fully comprehensive schooling, further and higher eduCallon,
• A complete ban on private education;
• Schools and colleges on a 'human scale' within or as local to communities as possible;
• Greatly increased provision of free school transportation, including, where possible 'walking buses;
• Free nutritious school food, prepared onsite with the use of locally sourced produce where possible;
• Cooperation between schools and local authorities, rather than competitive markets;
• Greatly increased local community democratic accountability in schooling and further education, rather than illusory 'parental choice;
• Increased powers for democratically elected and accountable local government to redistribute resources, control quality and engage in the development of anti-racist, antisexist, anti-homophobic policies and practices;
• The enactment of egalitarian policies aimed at achieving greatly more equal educational outcomes, irrespective of factors such as social class, gender, 'race', sexuality or disability, whilst recognizing that what education can achieve is limited unless part of a thoroughgoing social transformation to eliminate poverty and discrimination;
• An anti-elitist, antiracist, flexible common curriculum that seeks support the transition from current social relations to those based on socialist cooperation and ecological justice, to be negotiated by local and national governments in cooperation with workers' and communities; rich and varied, allowing They deserve the best we can give - and that's not just the dinners themes, natural and human processes to be explored in a range of ways - artistically, musically, scientifically, politically, ecologically;
• Place-based learning, concerned with the meaning of everyday life: critical studies of environmental impacts of capital on local scales alongside historical injustices arising out of the circuits of capitalist social, political and ultimately economic relations;
• Teaching and learning to foster critical awareness, sensitivity towards and confidence and ability to challenge ecological and social injustice, a planetary consciousness rooted in an internationalist global citizenship, and empowerment to act in defence of the oppressed, of other species and ecosystems;
• The abolition of punitive testing regimes and the exploration and establishment of alternative creative assessment practices;
• Teachers educated to exercise authority in democratic and anti-authoritar1210 ways, engaging in critical ecopedagogy, with a commitment to developing their school and community as sites of ecological and political awareness and activism;
• A breaking down of 2008. boundaries fixed within educational systems e.g., representatives between childhood dependency & adult responsibility • The curriculum to be and between subject specialisms;
• Teachers and administrators who role models of integrity, care and thoughtfulness in institutions capable of embodying ideals in all of their operations, avoiding hypocrisy in a separation of academic and theoretical ideals from reality;
• A recognition on the part of teachers and officials that all knowledge acquired in schools and FE and HE institutions carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world;
• A fostering of cultures within classrooms and schools and further/ vocational education and higher education institutions which is democratic, egalitarian, collaborative and collegiate promoting an educational system the aim of which is the flourishing of society, collectives, communities and ecosystems.
Now that would be Socialist Education! • Dave Hill is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Northampton, England. He is series editor for the Routledge Series Education and Marxism, and the Series Education and Neoliberalism, both series to be published in This article is a substantially edited version of a much longer article submitted to Socialist Resistance: the full version can be accessed via the website