Led Zeppelin
23rd October 2005, 08:00
The school under the bourgeois regime
In bourgeois society the school has three principal tasks to fulfil. First, it inspires the coming generation of workers with devotion and respect for the capitalist régime. Secondly, it creates from the young of the ruling classes 'cultured' controllers of the working population. Thirdly, it assists capitalist production in the application of sciences to technique, thus increasing capitalist profits.
As regards the first of these tasks, just as in the bourgeois army the 'right spirit' is inculcated by the officers, so in the schools under the capitalist régime the necessary influence is mainly exercised by the caste of 'officers of popular enlightenment'. The teachers in the public elementary schools receive a special course of training by which they are prepared for their role of beast tamers. Only persons who have thoroughly acquired the bourgeois outlook have the entry into the schools as teachers. The ministries of education in the capitalist régime are ever on the watch, and they ruthlessly purge the teaching profession of all dangerous (by which they mean socialist) elements. The German public elementary schools served prior to the revolution as supplements to the barracks of William II, and were shining examples of the way in which the landed gentry and the bourgeoisie can make use of the school for the manufacture of faithful and blind slaves of capital. In the elementary schools of the capitalist régime, instruction is given in accordance with a definite programme perfectly adapted for the breaking-in of the pupils to the capitalist system. All the text-books are written in an appropriate spirit. The whole of bourgeois literature subserves the same end, for it is written by persons who look upon the bourgeois social order as natural, perdurable, and the best of all possible régimes. In this way the scholars are imperceptibly stuffed with bourgeois ideology; they are infected with enthusiasm for all bourgeois virtues; they are inspired with esteem for wealth, renown, titles and order; they aspire to get on in the world, they long for personal comfort, and so on. The work of bourgeois educationists is completed by the servants of the church with their religious instruction. Thanks to the intimate associations between capital and the church, the law of God invariably proves to be the law of the possessing classes. 1)
In capitalist society the second leading aim of bourgeois education is secured by carefully withholding secondary education and higher education from the working masses. Instruction in the middle schools, and still more in the high schools, is extremely costly, so that it is quite beyond the financial resources of the workers. The course of instruction, in middle and higher education, lasts for ten years or more. For this reason it is inaccessible to the worker and the peasant who, in order to feed their families, are compelled to send their children at a very early age to factory work or field work, or else must make the youngsters work at home. In actual practice, the middle and higher schools are the preserves of bourgeois youth. In them, the younger members of the governing classes are trained to succeed their fathers in careers of exploitation, or to fill the official and technical posts of the capitalist State. In these schools, likewise, instruction has a definitely class character. In the domains of mathematics, the technique of industry, and the natural sciences, this may be less striking; but the class character of the teaching is conspicuous in the case of the social sciences, whereby the pupils' outlook on the world is in reality formed. Bourgeois political economy is inculcated with all the most perfected methods for the 'annihilation of Marx'. Sociology and history are likewise taught from a purely capitalist outlook. The history of jurisprudence concludes with the treatment of bourgeois jurisprudence as the natural right of 'the man and the citizen', etc., etc. To sum up, the higher and middle schools teach the children of the capitalists all the data that are requisite for the maintenance of bourgeois society and the whole system of capitalist exploitation. If any of the children of the workers, happening to be exceptionally gifted, should find their way into the higher schools, in the great majority of instances the bourgeois scholastic apparatus will serve as a means of detaching them from their own class kin, and will inoculate them with bourgeois ideology, so that in the long run the genius of these scions of the working class will be turned to account for the oppression of the workers.
Turning, finally, to the third task of capitalist education, we find that the school fulfils it as follows. In a class society where capitalism is dominant, science is divorced from labour. Not only does it become the property of the possessing classes. More than this, it becomes the profession of a small and comparatively narrow circle of individuals. Scientific instruction and scientific research are divorced from the labour process. In order that it may avail itself of the data of science and may turn them to account in production, bourgeois society has to create a number of institutions serving for the application of scientific discoveries to manufacturing technique; and it has to create a number of technical schools which will facilitate the maintenance of production at the level rendered possible by the advance of 'pure' science - by which is meant science divorced from labour. Furthermore, the polytechnic schools of capitalist society do not merely serve to supply capitalist society with technical experts; they supply in addition those who will act as managers, those who will function as 'captains of industry'. In addition, to provide the personnel which will supervise the circulation of commodities, there have been founded numerous commercial schools and academies.
In all these organizations, whatever is linked up with production will endure. But everything which is concerned merely with capitalist production, will die out. There will persist everything which promotes the advancement of science; there will perish that which promotes the severance of science from labour. There will be preserved the methods of technical instruction - but instruction in technical methods altogether apart from the performance of physical labour will be abolished. There will be preserved and extended the utilization of science to further production. On the other hand, any hindrances to such utilization of science, in so far as capital tends to make use of science only to the degree in which at any given moment science tends to raise profits, will be swept out of the way.
The school under the bourgeois regime (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/10.htm#076)
In bourgeois society the school has three principal tasks to fulfil. First, it inspires the coming generation of workers with devotion and respect for the capitalist régime. Secondly, it creates from the young of the ruling classes 'cultured' controllers of the working population. Thirdly, it assists capitalist production in the application of sciences to technique, thus increasing capitalist profits.
As regards the first of these tasks, just as in the bourgeois army the 'right spirit' is inculcated by the officers, so in the schools under the capitalist régime the necessary influence is mainly exercised by the caste of 'officers of popular enlightenment'. The teachers in the public elementary schools receive a special course of training by which they are prepared for their role of beast tamers. Only persons who have thoroughly acquired the bourgeois outlook have the entry into the schools as teachers. The ministries of education in the capitalist régime are ever on the watch, and they ruthlessly purge the teaching profession of all dangerous (by which they mean socialist) elements. The German public elementary schools served prior to the revolution as supplements to the barracks of William II, and were shining examples of the way in which the landed gentry and the bourgeoisie can make use of the school for the manufacture of faithful and blind slaves of capital. In the elementary schools of the capitalist régime, instruction is given in accordance with a definite programme perfectly adapted for the breaking-in of the pupils to the capitalist system. All the text-books are written in an appropriate spirit. The whole of bourgeois literature subserves the same end, for it is written by persons who look upon the bourgeois social order as natural, perdurable, and the best of all possible régimes. In this way the scholars are imperceptibly stuffed with bourgeois ideology; they are infected with enthusiasm for all bourgeois virtues; they are inspired with esteem for wealth, renown, titles and order; they aspire to get on in the world, they long for personal comfort, and so on. The work of bourgeois educationists is completed by the servants of the church with their religious instruction. Thanks to the intimate associations between capital and the church, the law of God invariably proves to be the law of the possessing classes. 1)
In capitalist society the second leading aim of bourgeois education is secured by carefully withholding secondary education and higher education from the working masses. Instruction in the middle schools, and still more in the high schools, is extremely costly, so that it is quite beyond the financial resources of the workers. The course of instruction, in middle and higher education, lasts for ten years or more. For this reason it is inaccessible to the worker and the peasant who, in order to feed their families, are compelled to send their children at a very early age to factory work or field work, or else must make the youngsters work at home. In actual practice, the middle and higher schools are the preserves of bourgeois youth. In them, the younger members of the governing classes are trained to succeed their fathers in careers of exploitation, or to fill the official and technical posts of the capitalist State. In these schools, likewise, instruction has a definitely class character. In the domains of mathematics, the technique of industry, and the natural sciences, this may be less striking; but the class character of the teaching is conspicuous in the case of the social sciences, whereby the pupils' outlook on the world is in reality formed. Bourgeois political economy is inculcated with all the most perfected methods for the 'annihilation of Marx'. Sociology and history are likewise taught from a purely capitalist outlook. The history of jurisprudence concludes with the treatment of bourgeois jurisprudence as the natural right of 'the man and the citizen', etc., etc. To sum up, the higher and middle schools teach the children of the capitalists all the data that are requisite for the maintenance of bourgeois society and the whole system of capitalist exploitation. If any of the children of the workers, happening to be exceptionally gifted, should find their way into the higher schools, in the great majority of instances the bourgeois scholastic apparatus will serve as a means of detaching them from their own class kin, and will inoculate them with bourgeois ideology, so that in the long run the genius of these scions of the working class will be turned to account for the oppression of the workers.
Turning, finally, to the third task of capitalist education, we find that the school fulfils it as follows. In a class society where capitalism is dominant, science is divorced from labour. Not only does it become the property of the possessing classes. More than this, it becomes the profession of a small and comparatively narrow circle of individuals. Scientific instruction and scientific research are divorced from the labour process. In order that it may avail itself of the data of science and may turn them to account in production, bourgeois society has to create a number of institutions serving for the application of scientific discoveries to manufacturing technique; and it has to create a number of technical schools which will facilitate the maintenance of production at the level rendered possible by the advance of 'pure' science - by which is meant science divorced from labour. Furthermore, the polytechnic schools of capitalist society do not merely serve to supply capitalist society with technical experts; they supply in addition those who will act as managers, those who will function as 'captains of industry'. In addition, to provide the personnel which will supervise the circulation of commodities, there have been founded numerous commercial schools and academies.
In all these organizations, whatever is linked up with production will endure. But everything which is concerned merely with capitalist production, will die out. There will persist everything which promotes the advancement of science; there will perish that which promotes the severance of science from labour. There will be preserved the methods of technical instruction - but instruction in technical methods altogether apart from the performance of physical labour will be abolished. There will be preserved and extended the utilization of science to further production. On the other hand, any hindrances to such utilization of science, in so far as capital tends to make use of science only to the degree in which at any given moment science tends to raise profits, will be swept out of the way.
The school under the bourgeois regime (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/10.htm#076)