06.06.1996

New Labour?

What’s Labour’s latest big new idea on education? David Blunkett has pulled that rather tired rabbit out of the hat again, demanding a return to traditional teaching methods. No one should really believe that all we have to do is go back to drilling by rote in order to make this country great again. Of course what really lies behind this is simple penny-pinching.

Blunkett is looking for a rationale for cheap, controlled ways of educating the working class.

For traditional teaching methods, the Labour Party could look at the old London County Council school curriculum, which contained a much broader provision for the arts and took in children from the age of four.

Or perhaps the Labour Party means to introduce a public school education for the working class? We would all appreciate the benefit of small classes, excellent playing fields, good buildings, highly qualified and well-paid teachers. No, this is not what is meant. What is meant is larger classes, teaching by rote, with lots of homework and the parents being held responsible for any failings of the children.

In reality there is little a school can do to overcome the effects of a home that lacks the material resources required to master the culture we live in. The root of the problem, for primary schools or universities, is that having systematically deprived the working class of the culture needed to sustain modern technology, those more concerned with what they can squeeze out of workers cannot provide an adequate education for today’s society.

Therefore the cost of higher education must be borne by the students themselves. Schoolchildren who cannot manage school work in big classes with poor resources and overworked teachers simply end up on the scrapheap. When capitalists have to scrap work as a result of poor methods of production, they at least have to pay for the raw materials and disposal of the waste. Capitalism, however, treats human beings as waste and does not care about the cost to the individual. The Labour Party clearly agrees.

John Bayliss