By comparison with Germany, France, Italy and the States, the schools movement in this country seems to make little progress. Part of the fault lies in the way we have been analysing vidual, hair at its longest or shortest, and behathe situation; in the mechanical linking of capitalism and education. Schools are not completely isolated from their social setting, and their cultural arrangements are affected by "outside" Issues. because Inis is so, nowever, 1L snowd not allow us to ignore the unique dynamic within the school, even though it should encourage us to avoid crass mechanical slogans. This article arms at expionag the curtural unks or repressive regimentation.
The school is lived through. Students are part of a social fabric and may find it difficult to stand back and analyse the threads with which their lives are interwoven. First the artificial notion of community which is engendered oy une school as a misulunon.
Ts no accident that most schoos are surrounded by high walls or fences. The reason is not simply tnat tney keep une students in, but. rather, that they keep most of the rest of the world out. They offer the first line of defence, une urst screen, in tnat tey symoonse tne school's function which is to determine, with some precision, which portions of "reality" from the outside world should be deemed suitable for internal consumption. Any community which forbids already existing freedoms is partial or mediated and must find artificial ways of expressing what it tries to make believe is real. Hence the substitution of the phoney symbols of community, the teams, the song, the spirit: reminiscent of the nationalist-inspired local street names that the "government" of a Latin American Banana Republic is allowed to erect with the permission of the Yankee administrator.
The school has to remain an unreal, filtered community, because une nature or its narrow middle-class training methods cannot succeed if unprotected from the contradictions of capitalist culture, while the contents of its courses cannot live up to a world where substantially different or broader experiences are available. The school has, then, to institute protective which is fraught with their own contradictions. The three levels are style, attendance, and education itself. They are linked by the dimension of ideology which is insipid in content and virulent in its application. It is necessary to reveal the contradictions on each level as they provide the clues to a strategy and to subsequent tactics which are the platform from which to smash bourgeois educational ideology.
By style I refer to the manner in which the school, as an institution, wishes to present itself. It takes in the student's dress, his uniform, the length of his hair, right through to behaviour in the streets, to what "gives the School a good/bad name", and to what differentiates it from other schools. The selection of these factors as the determinants of style, to be controlled by the school's administration, is quite arbitrary. It seeks conrormity solely tor its own sake, and its style is at odds with the surrounding society, where dress can be at its most indiviour (degree of inhibition) most subject to personal choice. once an arorary restraint Is placed on styles, which is the easiest way to manifest individuality, a system of policing must be instituted with it, to control the contradiction. The prefect system does this and institutes formal notions of "earned" authority as a reward. The selection of prefects is made on the basis of their conformity to the school's ar bitrary style.
The existence of prefects is also the tip of the iceberg of school privilege systems, each school differing from the others in tne permutations of the hierarchy of the permitted. At a certain stage, boys will be eligible to stop wearing their caps; at another, they will be allowed to walk the "wrong way down the corridors; at a third, they need not go out into the playground and can use the library, if it exists; etc. We all recognise the system of privileges unique to a school, at the peak of which stands the prelect system. Ine runcuon or une whole systell is that it is at once ubiquitous and trivial. Everyone obevs it. and when it is challenged even in discussion, everyone recognises its aosurally but feels it's "not worth doing anything about, it's so trivial", With the passage of time, it becomes more absurd and more traditional. Finally, the militants are left facing this enormous body of governing regulation with no more significant demand in their hands than a redistribution of the absurd privilege.
The existence of the prefects, then, shows that the administration knows that under most circumstances students will not accept the rules and must be coercea, and mat uney reintorce repressive culture, in particular by forcing opposition to the authorities onto the terms of the authorities themselves.
Little needs to be said about attendance. Its function is obvious; you can't mould someone you haven't got your clutches on. He cannot come and go as boredom dictates. His hours must be structured with precision. He will be students protested against the arrests and the induced to volunteer for this attendance because he knows that he won't make whatever peak is on his horizon, CSE, O-, A-, Q-levels, and graduate to the next range, unless he is punctual and regular. Just as punctuality and regularity of the bowels is a sign of probable success in treatment in hospital, so it is the virtue, if not the activity, which demarks the likely pupil at school.
The third level, education itself, shows the most interesting and overt facets of ideology though this pervades the first two levels. There are probably very few students who really think of use values. The rationale is the production the time they spend at school is worthwhile. When they are there, they are emotionally elsewhere, creatively nowhere. Apathy is the limited recognition of this, and is a partially correct attitude. Once a critical effort is made at insight the category of vicious crooks, but this does into courses, their nature becomes manifest. It is essential that we do this. It is no "mere" intellectual pursuit; it is the way of creating a new education. Both the manner of teaching and the content of the courses are designed to Channel, not only into narrowing specialisation, but into learning "correct knowledge". The "guidance" they give in facing a subject amounts to a mas sive evasion of it, because any student who comes to accept that there is a prefabricated • one-dimensional knowledge, containing an implicit moral code, has consigned his education to a system as exciting as the Eurovision Song Contest. Only a brief look at the depth of some courses is possible here. Analysis of every course, in depth, has still to take place.
Considering the rendering of English; not only is there an extremely thin spread of the classical authors, but their treatment is an introduction to a form of criticism found sterile in the Universities a decade back. As a form of analysis, it leads you to believe that no book was ever written by an author living at a describable historical moment. It admits only literary influence. The author becomes the interesting subject for amateur psychoanalysis; did Strindberg hate his mother? Comment on his state of mind. And as for the appearance of contemporary authors in the English course-well, who can even spell Ferlinghetti. The trouble is that modern authors have this unhealthy and indelicate concern for the sexual (Viva Portnoy), which is not quite the thing for our galls. (There is a girl's school were Oscar Wilde must not be mentioned). When one looks at History studies, the only possible reaction is to wince. I had a history book at school which said. "The Working Class did make some contribution to the Industrial Revolution, and were even involved in some cultural pursuits including the formation of colliery brass bands, but on the whole, their effect was to hinder the industrial changes which were transforming England"
The study of Civics, or Current Affairs, is the final give-away. It is a predigested and easily assimilable account of How Things Really Work and How One Gets Things Done. The world view of the administrator, administering the "problem" family in the manner of the Poor demanding full disclosure of all confidential Law Executor is precisely the standpoint of school's administration. It is a world peopled omnipotent, all-seeing, paternalistic adults, guiding miscreant waifs down life's troubled paths. It precludes any mention of men who take their problems into their own hands. Th courses typify the contradiction at the educa tional level between the needs of declining bourgeois society to discipline its members minds into acquiescence, and the needs of a: iety of producers, whose minds must be oper to the potentialities of the creative productic malleable man (woman) power; the mode of operation that sustains it accounts for the pre dicament of student and teacher.
It is tempting to consign most teachers to not say why they have ended up there. Many began with liberal notions, and they certainly couldn't have imagined they'd make their for tune in teaching. However, over the years, wi the inevitability of dry rot, passivity and tire ness have taken over, bloody-minded repressi ness becomes easier than education. The libe aspirant ends up in the same ideological position as the administration and becomes incap ble of establishing contact with students. He capitulates to feeding in material data (even i the "creative" subjects) which are contradicte by the "facts" existing all around him; he mu encourage most students to be happy to leave school (and "earn money") at the age of fifte he must encourage others to go through min bending changes and help their friends thro them. He becomes the agent of the administr tion.
It is no use to attribute the break-down o the student's potential to the cigar-sucking ca talist directing operations from behind the headmaster's cane cupboard. The truth is tha the administration have taken capitalism's so lal goals to temserves and evolved cultura. means of seeing them through. This administ tive totalitarianismmakes them vulnerable at their own level; In The School. Their mode o operation, in all its absurdity, on each level, i characterised by this enforcement of regimen tion. The primary mode of counter-action is anti-regimentation, whether physical or men This cannot be taken to mean individuality o action which cannot confront well-organised authority. ANTI-REGIMENTATION REQUIRES ORGANISATION. Only an organise struggle can attain a free, realistic and viable education for all students. Organisation demands a vanguard, which, to become a politic anving torce, must remain aistinct and exem lary in its politics, so that however small it is it is a motor force, It must not contribute to isolation by a crass political style, or by failin to form common fronts to fight some issues. There must be both a distinguishing line between the vanguard and others, and a real me ing of its political leadership with the interest of the majority. It is at this point that agitati is really on the agenda. David Triesman