EDUCATION FOR THE GOOD SOCIETY - Support

The Education for the Good Society Projectcan be seen as a response to the narrowingof the vision of education and to the Left’spartial response, by connecting the meaning ofeducation with the kind of society we want tobuild for the future. 5 It has to be morally courageous,yet thoroughly grounded. Moreover, aprogressive vision is not about constant innovationor permanent revolution, something thatis increasingly associated with the radical right.Education for the Good Society may be about arecognition of old truths and beliefs about whatshould be treasured – for example the joy oflearning; inspiring teachers and how educationcan transform lives – to be applied to the age inwhich we live and to the future we seek to create. 6Expansive and restrictive education:the neo-liberal turn and its effectsIt is worth pausing in order to reflect on thepromise of education. In its most ambitious form,education is a most remarkable endeavour. Theidea of devoting years of our lives to learningand reflection, which some would say requires alifetime, is what helps mark us as human. Educationfosters the skills and knowledge to participate inthe world and can provide ways of seeing beyondour current condition. Such a vision of education,for all and not just a few, did not simply happen.It had to be fought for and we are struggling forit still. What we are fighting for is the idea of anexpansive education that develops the talents ofall individuals throughout the life-course, helps usunderstand how we live together, contributes toa vibrant economy and promotes the ability anddesire to participate in wider society.Over the last 30 years an expansive and humanvision of education has been over-shadowedby the ‘neo-liberal turn’. 7 Forces of the Right insuccessive governments, including New Labour,have promoted a marketised view of educationin which the main aim has been to gain the bestresults to secure social advantage; this is educationas the means by which we learn to compete. Aview of education that reduces a noble venture to acommodity has permeated the popular psyche. Theinterests of competing schools, colleges and profitmakingcompanies in an education market are theinstitutions to create possessive, calculating andcompeting individuals. Education has also becomethe object of electoral politics, as governmentshave stirred up a climate of permanent revolutionin order to seek political advantage. In a worldof markets and political manipulation, the voiceof the teacher has been marginalised and experteducational research belittled, and there is littlegenuine regard for the learner. An artificialquasi-market, with its narrow culture of targets, aburgeoning of bureaucracy and a regime of overtesting,has acted as a surrogate for the real thing.It has produced a system that essentially servesan elite and fosters wider discontent. Nothing isallowed to settle and, like the market, everythingthat is solid melts into air.Yet there have been quantitative gains. Post-16participation rose rapidly under the Conservativegovernments of the 1980s, although this wasfuelled by economic recession and the collapseof the youth labour market. Later in the decade,the GCSE common examination developed, asurprising outcome from Thatcherism, althoughmuch of the early 1990s was spent trying to reversesome of developments through, for example, thedivision of GCSEs into A–C grades and below.New Labour subsequently provided the educationsystem with more teachers, assistants and betterbuildings, one of the major achievements of13 years in office. As a result of New Labour’sinterventions, it is generally accepted that students(and their teachers) are working harder than everto promote educational attainment and, as a result,more young people are staying on beyond 16 andin higher education. However, the prime motiveof New Labour’s policies was economic efficiencyand it was part of a now flawed political economy.This was based on not only a deregulated financialsector, rising house prices and increased personaldebt, but also supply-side measures to educate andtrain people for jobs that did not exist.However, quantitative gains cannot conceal asense of concern about the restrictive mindsetof neo-liberal education, which has reduced themost impressive of human achievements to anindividualised, commodified, utilitarian act withlittle meaningful sense of a better future. It alsohas proved to be a regime of winners and losers.The losers, usually from low-income groups, areoften filtered out of general education and offeredinstead a future in vocational education, althoughincreasingly without a prospect of a job or a5 ‘Education for the GoodSociety’ is part of the widerdeliberations of Compass: NewDirection for the DemocraticLeft in building an alliance fordemocratic and social change. SeeJonathan Rutherford and HetanShah (eds), The Good Society,2006, www.compassonline.org.uk/publications/item.asp?d=182.6 A debate about ‘radicalconservation’ can be found in therecent Compass and Soundingspublication edited by MauriceGlasman, Jonathan Rutherford,Marc Steers and Stuart White,The Labour Tradition and thePolitics of Paradox, www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/Labour_tradition_and_the_politics_of_paradox.pdf.7 The concept of the ‘neo-liberalturn’ refers here to thedominance of ideas and practicesin wider economic and publiclife over the last 30 years, whichhave emphasised privatisation,competition and performativity.Education for the good society | 9