Is education one of the keys for revolution?

[Marxaveli]

By education, I don't just mean through casual, social discourse that we in engage in randomly and try to educate people about how capitalism and socialism work scientifically, but I mean through formal education in public education institutions.

In one my classes this week, we were assigned to read a portion of the book "Pedagogy" of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire - I had never heard of him before we were required to read him but this work has Marxism written all over it (Google the title and read it if you haven't already, it is a fascinating read).

In this work he describes how our current system of education, "the banking-system" is used to oppress students by defining teachers as experts and students as know-nothings, teachers as preparing and selecting the material to be taught, and "learning" to be a sort of "deposited" information into students cognitive process, rather than a dialogical form of questioning where both students and teachers act as teachers - engaging one another to think critically (the "problem-posing" system). In the current banking system, education is designed as a means to maintaining the status-quo to prevent liberation, thus students are treated as commodities to simply take in information that is sold to us as our own enslavement. Even in things like math and chemistry, we are taught empiricism. It occurs from a very early age: we are taught that 3+3=6 and to memorize it, but we are never taught why.

If we could adopt a "problem-posing" method for education instead of our current banking system, could this lead to more class consciousness and the possible circumstances of us finally "moving and noticing our chains" as Rosa Luxemburg so eloquently once said? I've had a few classes that used the problem posing method, and it was in these classes where I learned the most and really developed into a critical thinker. Had it not been for this way of learning, it is possible I may never even been introduced to Marxism, let alone become one.

[l'Enfermé]

This is why the emphasis on building "alternative culture" institutions is so important for a potential working-class movement. Educate, Agitate, Organize, not the hysterical "Agitate, Agitate, Agitate!" we have today instead.

[Let's Get Free]

Education is important. But education takes on the characteristics of the dominant institutions in its society. Thus, education in capitalism is corporatized. Schools and universities, originally oriented towards scholarship and learning for its own sake, becomes a feeder establishment for industry. The structure of the educational institutions patterns itself after the corporation, processing its students in the same depersonalized way that industry uses on its labor force. In place of monetary reward education hands out grades and conditions the students to accept the same system of extrinsic reward they will find in their jobs.

Noam Chomsky said "The whole educational and professional training system is a very elaborate filter, which just weeds out people who are too independent, and who think for themselves, and who don't know how to be submissive, and so on- because they're dysfunctional to the institutions."

[Philosophos]

It's the ONLY way. You can't start a revolution that is going to last without educated people (unless you want a revolution with blood all over the place and after 30 years at most it's going to fail). If you want to keep the educated people you must try even more but if you want to START the revolution you must educate them firstly.

[Marxaveli]

So the first big step is to change the way we are educated. We need a democratic education system based on the problem-posing one described by Freire, where students and teachers engage one another critically and learn from one another dialogically, instead of the banking deposit, Prussian-system of antiquity that we currently have. But this in itself is no easy thing to change - the system is the way it is for obvious reasons. You can encounter some classes in college that use this method (it is fairly common in philosophy and sociology classes at the college level), but we need it to spread to all courses, and more importantly, we need to get it into the primary K-12 system. Freire made it clear that you cannot go from the banking system to the problem posing system as a solution, the problem-posing system must be implemented from day 1. Granted, I had the banking system in high school, encountered the problem-posing system in college which allowed me to change, but people like me are probably the exception and not the rule. I would like to see what some comrades here have to say on this, discuss!

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't really think any teacher sees themselves as an expert. People who say that, from either side, know nothing about the reality of education in the formal sense.

In any case, whilst teachers are often not at all experts in their subject (many simply having one degree of study in their particular field), they are certainly experts in pedagogy, or at least they should be if they adhere to the notion of continuing professional development.

The very notion of 'formal' education denotes that there is a specific knowledge in the pedagogical world, and for all the talk of democracy (and I do agree that to some extent education can be democratised), those who propose this 'rebellious student' and 'indoctrinated teachers' crap often know nothing about the field, and are so dis-respectful as to reduce the profession of teaching to the role of a glorified nanny. It's not. It's a hard career and its practice is rooted in plenty of research in a rich literature. Most teachers are actually very good at what they do, but they don't set the curriculum. It's not really our job to indoctrinate children one way or the other, and you cannot blame teachers who merely follow the (admittedly biased) curriculum; not all teachers are politicised, or aware of the effect of propaganda, that is obvious.

[Philosophos]

I don't really think any teacher sees themselves as an expert. People who say that, from either side, know nothing about the reality of education in the formal sense.

I'm sorry to tell you that but there are lots of countries out there that actually believe that the teacher is a teacher because he shows to kids how to write and how to solve algrebra problems.

I talk with lots of teachers and professors in my acting class and I'm trying to tell them that the role of the teacher is to "negate" himself. That means that he has to make the kids independant. He has to make them think on their own. What I see (what they fail to understand) is that you have to be there only for the first steps. Show them the way and they won't need you again. BUT NOOOO they don't want that because they are "geniuses" and they can't allow the "stupid" people to become smarter than them.

To conclude I have to highlight that the bad teachers (or the ones that want to show off all the time) are some of the best friends of capitalism and the worst enemy philosophers/critical thinkers can have....

[Jimmie Higgins]

By education, I don't just mean through casual, social discourse that we in engage in randomly and try to educate people about how capitalism and socialism work scientifically, but I mean through formal education in public education institutions.

In one my classes this week, we were assigned to read a portion of the book "Pedagogy" of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire - I had never heard of him before we were required to read him but this work has Marxism written all over it (Google the title and read it if you haven't already, it is a fascinating read).

In this work he describes how our current system of education, "the banking-system" is used to oppress students by defining teachers as experts and students as know-nothings, teachers as preparing and selecting the material to be taught, and "learning" to be a sort of "deposited" information into students cognitive process, rather than a dialogical form of questioning where both students and teachers act as teachers - engaging one another to think critically (the "problem-posing" system). In the current banking system, education is designed as a means to maintaining the status-quo to prevent liberation, thus students are treated as commodities to simply take in information that is sold to us as our own enslavement. Even in things like math and chemistry, we are taught empiricism. It occurs from a very early age: we are taught that 3+3=6 and to memorize it, but we are never taught why.

If we could adopt a "problem-posing" method for education instead of our current banking system, could this lead to more class consciousness and the possible circumstances of us finally "moving and noticing our chains" as Rosa Luxemburg so eloquently once said? I've had a few classes that used the problem posing method, and it was in these classes where I learned the most and really developed into a critical thinker. Had it not been for this way of learning, it is possible I may never even been introduced to Marxism, let alone become one.

While I think some of these observations you describe about how schools sort of condition people for life in this system, I think it also suggests a idealistic view of education. I think materially, this is not the whole reason for eduction - on a basic level, capitalism needs a workforce that can do certain levels of tasks. Education adds value to workers as a commodity - a worker able to read and do basic math, is automatically able to do many industrial jobs, workers able to write essays and reports are now fit for paperwork on the job - any kid that can work on a time-schedule and sit for hours at a time is now ready to work.

So capitalism needs a certain level of common education - then the question becomes, how to they go about organizing this necessary material need for modern production? This is where some of the conditioning and conformity aspects come into play. Bismark introduced public education to turn peasants and plebeians and apprentices and whatnot into a capable working class. France introduced education to create a unified nation with one language.

So they don't educate us for sake of education, instead they educate us based on the logic of the profit system.

For elite schools there often is a more nuanced and dynamic forms of lessons and so on - problem solving and leadership and critical thinking are all developed, because the elite need these skills - we don't.

So I think we can't just advocate better, more cooperative, and health methods for education, we actually need to have that linked to a real material fight over public education: with more power for students and teachers, less for the bureaucrats and the charterizers.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To the comrade's OP: the "banking system" is actually very useful for left education. There's a slippery slope towards the post-modernist fetish for "critical xx" where "xx" is some subject matter.

My position on education is inspired by the Renaissance and by ancient Greek philosophy on the aristoi ("the best"): http://www.revleft.com/vb/educate-educate-agitate-t143439/index.html


Should the left, though, internally revive Renaissance education of sorts, which goes beyond this dichotomy?

It would be very difficult to be an appropriate master in all the fields suggested below, but the emerging result (perhaps from dedicated party schools) would be educated, professionalized aristoi ("the best") with enormous expert power as a base of power, especially in relation to political programs.

So, here are the suggested fields for an intensive degree or certification program:

1) Communications (ranging from making presentations to writing case studies)
2) Labour law
3) Labour history
4) Labour economics
5) Heterodox economics
6) Political economy
7) Democratic theory and general political science
8) Sociology
9) Marxism within #3 to #8

Qualification examinations beyond World Socialist Movement levels of difficulty could combine multiple-choice questions, short-answer questions (or longer questions, each consisting of a few short-answer questions), mathematical problems, and case studies.

Such a curriculum is necessarily pedagogical.

As I said in the agitation thread, Meritocratic/"Aristocratic" education, Top-Down but Non-Oligarchic agitation, and Participatory-Democratic organization poses the winning combination.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Or, how about - god forbid - we actually let the students themselves decide what they want to learn!!

You are just posing ideological propaganda as substitution for a full and wholesome education.

Education is only partly about the content - it is the teachers' ability to promote independence and intellectual/personal maturity and self-fulfillment in students that is also key.

Sadly, DNZ, you are too focused on your narrow political program to see that. What if someone doesn't give a shit about Kalecki et al.? You still gonna ram some heterdox institutions crap down their throats?

[Avanti]

education is key to mental servitude.

the less educated you are, the easier it is to see through lies.

reading and learning on your own hand is great, but not to be educated. to be educated seems to be about being affirmed and accustomed to "civil society", which is an artificial creation of bourgeois "niceness", and it is built on what?

on that all human beings are rational and inherently nice...

on that the system ultimately is good and the bad parts can be changed...

that voting meaningful...

that it good to pursue a career....

that programmes and scribbles on papers are meaningful...

that it is wrong to hit people who irritate you...

education turns people into gelded horses. into castrated cats. education destroys the human spirit.

theories are meaningless. what matters really is sensations. what is reading "das kapital" compared to the sensation of beating the crap out of a skinhead? of making love to a beautiful dreaded punk girl on the top of the roof of an ugly tenement building in a beautiful sunset? of jumping naked into the river a beautiful summer's day with a lover? of drifting around a green forest outside a collapsing city?

that is life.

life is sensations. not thinking. not education.

sensations.

[ZvP]

A combination of education and social movements have helped eliminate racism, sexism, etc. (to an extent, of course) I feel like the same applies for class consciousness and a revolutionary mindset of the people. I think just as important as a change in education of history, economic and etc is encouraging critical thinking skills. Schools in capitalist societies intentionally deprive students of critical thinking skills and indoctrinate them with pro capitalist propaganda. Everyone needs to be encouraged to think for themselves but we also need to spread class consciousness and expose people to the atrocities that occur all over the world under capitalism, considering so many in western countries live in somewhat of a bubble. Finally, and most importantly IMO we need to debunk the lies and propaganda surrounding communism.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A combination of education and social movements have helped eliminate racism, sexism, etc. (to an extent, of course) I feel like the same applies for class consciousness and a revolutionary mindset of the people. I think just as important as a change in education of history, economic and etc is encouraging critical thinking skills. Schools in capitalist societies intentionally deprive students of critical thinking skills and indoctrinate them with pro capitalist propaganda. Everyone needs to be encouraged to think for themselves but we also need to spread class consciousness and expose people to the atrocities that occur all over the world under capitalism, considering so many in western countries live in somewhat of a bubble. Finally, and most importantly IMO we need to debunk the lies and propaganda surrounding communism.

Agree in some respects, but just as the current curricula in most capitalist countries is the 'curriculum of the victors', so we must not make the same mistake ('mistake') by imposing our own propaganda on young students.

Education is best when students are allowed to think independently and choose their own path. That can't be done if overt propaganda is in the way. I say overt, because of course no curricula will be 'neutral', and I don't think it should be, but it should expose students to a variety of opinions without leading them to a 'correct' choice.

[Avanti]

the best type of education is organic, based around stories, since humans are better mentally equipped to deal with people than with abstract concepts. like stories and games which learn valuable social and survival skills.

the current education system is amounting to a mental and spiritual holocaust of mankind, and is centred around making humans docile, no matter what the students are taught. the important is not what the youth learns, but how they learn.

the very idea to make everybody sit in unbroken rows and watch a blackboard the entire day is so anti-human it almost consists of torture. but yet we are accustomed to it.

we need a less complicated society.

we need to burn down all the schools.

they are worse than mental hospitals.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Well, I will disagree on the popular enthusiasm on education here. "Education" is not so important as Propaganda. Revolution is a fight to establish working class consciousness on to the masses. Education is certainly the basic necessary ingredient for producing revolutionary persons, but the medial war over information and the public mind is quintessential for revolutionary strategy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Boss, I'll respond to you expertly/"aristocratically" in the other thread. WCOP, didn't the original revolutionary soc-dems equate the two? "Propaganda and agitation" in Russia was the same as "Educate! Agitate!" in Germany. Education is a quintessential component of the "medial war."

[MaximMK]

Education is very important. Today we have so many protests around the world sparked by the economical situation. It is all expected to happen because of capitalism. But these protests lead to nothing but reforms of capitalism and prolong its existence. Class consciousness must be spread people must be educated on communism what it stands for etc. They must organize in one clear goal instead of having thousands of people with different goals in the same protest witch will end without result for they do not fight for the same thing and are not there for the same reason.

[Tenka]

the very idea to make everybody sit in unbroken rows and watch a blackboard the entire day is so anti-human it almost consists of torture. but yet we are accustomed to it.


The U.S. public schools I went to were not like this. There was actually a very unwelcome demand for physical activity, and I was always glad to be home and sit down.

[Marxaveli]

To the comrade's OP: the "banking system" is actually very useful for left education. There's a slippery slope towards the post-modernist fetish for "critical xx" where "xx" is some subject matter.

My position on education is inspired by the Renaissance and by ancient Greek philosophy on the aristoi ("the best"): http://www.revleft.com/vb/educate-educate-agitate-t143439/index.html



Such a curriculum is necessarily pedagogical.

As I said in the agitation thread, Meritocratic/"Aristocratic" education, Top-Down but Non-Oligarchic agitation, and Participatory-Democratic organization poses the winning combination.

I see what you mean as far as the banking system of education being useful (perhaps even necessary) for teaching the principles of scientific socialism and Marxism. However, my concern was in the context of the current education system as it is. A banking system of education in capitalist society, naturally serves bourgeois interests. I think a problem posing/critical pedagogy system of education is a necessary starting point - and it isn't totally out of the question, I've had a few instructors that used this method. My sociology professor a couple years ago, and a philosophy teacher I had used this style to encourage critical thinking about cultural norms, value systems, and ideologies. Although I became a Marxist outside the classroom, I think this problem posing method played a role in opening the gates for me to become class conscious. When the masses begin to realize that capitalism is not in their interests, I think this is where the banking system of education can become useful for teaching the curriculum that you outlined above. Workers must necessarily be disillusioned with capitalism, to some degree, before they will even consider learning about or embracing socialism/communism.