The public education system in many capitalist countries has been highly criticized for allegedly dumbing down students and/or killing their creativity. On the other hand, getting rid of schools would probably lead to a reduction in literacy and qualifications. Thus, it would be necessary to reform education somehow.
Here are some proposed options:
Socialist Values - Keep the current education system, but instead of teaching capitalist values, teach socialist ones. Grades, homework, tests, etc. remain a thing.
Montessori - Public schools all perform like the Montessori model: Students learn at their own pace, are encouraged to do student-led activites, and are guided by adults who act like mentors. Homework is minimal, if it is even assigned at all. Grades in Montessori exist but are done differently, instead of checking how well one has completed assignments, the mentor grades each student by how well they believe they are progressing.
Democratic Schools - Grades and curriculum are entirely abolished. Here, students are expected to be in charge of their own education and are even given the opportunity to decide many of the decisions made by the school. Children and adults are seen as equals to each other in this model. The most famous instance of this is the Sudbury School.
These are just the ideas I can think of right now. Which ones do you guys agree with, or do you have another idea not listed here?
Great answer, comrade. Can’t disagree with this.
If you’re interested in socialist pedagogy, you might enjoy Vygotsky.
Otherwise, bourgeois pedagogy isn’t all bad; it’s just subservient to capital. There’s some good stuff out there, but it needs the bourgeois excising from it, which could leave a decent skeleton. But the would need re-writing with a proletarian pen. Self determination theory is useful but it’s limited by a kind of cognitive dissonance as it doesn’t realise that the reason why pupils cannot self determine is because capitalism.
Have you read Melissa Benn’s Life Lessons? It’s okay, but not as good as your comment. As with other stuff, it accepts the logic of capitalism. It kind of had to, I suppose, as she was trying to write a framework for a National Education Service to inform Corbyn’s cradle to the grave education proposals. So it had to be ‘sensible’. (But that precludes a lot of necessary radicalism.)
(Melissa Benn is Tony Benn’s daughter. Better than his son, Hilary Benn MP. For those who don’t know the late, great Tony Benn, he was a Labour MP / British aristocrat, who renounced his seat in the House of Lords. Look him up if you don’t know him! One of the very few politicians who could make you think that electoralism is worth a try. His speech in Parliament on the eve of the Iraq war is a tearjerker.)
Ah thank you very much for your kind words, comrade!
Definitely agree that any existing pedagogies would need to be rewrote with a proletarian pen. Love that imagery.
I’ve not read Melissa Benn, no! But that sounds like a good place for me to start getting more up to speed with other material on the matter. Thanks for the recommendation :-)
You’re welcome.
There’s only so much time to read, but if you’re interested in this area, there’s Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids get Working Class Jobs by Paul Willis. That was recommended to me on here a couple of months ago. I found a copy, but I’ve not read it yet. So far as I know, it’s a Marxist analysis of British schools conducted in the early 70s.
If you wanted some shorter things to read on the bus, etc, Michael Rosen’s twitter and blogspot blog is good (I’m unsure if he puts his political / educational critiques on his ‘main’ website).
Brilliant. Thanks comrade :-)