What the 'Black Paper' says

wholesale attack on the education of working-class children and students.

Whilst the views expressed in the document are not yet embraced by the Tory leadership, there is no doubt they are gaining ground.

The 'Black Paper' occupies a similar position to Tory education policy as Enoch Powell's views do to Tory immigration policy.

However, the thoroughly reactionary views embodied in the document (see main points inset) are today meeting some strange 'opposition' from those who are themselves busily engaged in slashing educational expenditure.

We refer specifically to Labour Education Minister Edward Short and Miss Alice Bacon, who defended Labour's education cuts at the 1969 Brighton conference.

War of words We must not be blinded by this war of words. Labour's education policy is holding open the door for the 'Black Paper' merchants just as Labour's immigration policy encouraged the reactionaries inside and outside the Tory We must say clearly-there is fundamental agreement between the Labour government and the Tories on the present education system of comprehensive schools for the working class and public schools for the ruling class.

Secondly, there is in fact collaboration between the Labour government and Tory local councils on supplementing the current squeeze on expenditure at all levels of state-sponsored education.

Comprehensive education, threatened by the Black Paper', was not an issue at the Tory Party conference.

Tory big business feels at the moment that the cuts begun by Labour are the best way to dismantle working-class gains in education.

The 'Black Paper' is above all an expression of middle-class revolt.

As always, this layer of society is squeezed between the power of the working class and monopoly capital in periods of upheaval.

The middle class is being ground down into penury and bankruptcy by big capital and the economic squeeze. True to form it turns on the working class whom it blames for its plight.

That is the meaning of 'protecting excellence' and 'fighting mediocrity' in tle 'Black Paper' The middle class wishes to preserve its petty privileges in the commercial and academic world. It boasts to its big business masters that it is 'more intelligent' than the working class and needs to be protected in separate grammar schools where its delicate 'intelligence' can be nurtured. Opposition Since much of its wealth has gone, it can now only offer mythical 'intelligence'. Hence the general opposition to comprehensive education and the clamour to defend grammar schools.

Whereas Labour's pledge to pass a Bill forcing a reluctant minority of education authorities to go comprehensive was a sop to the left wing, Boyle's pledge to the Tories to repeal it was a sop to the right-wing Tories who supported the 'Black Paper'.

The Tories and the Wilsonites are agreed that education -and for the majority working-class children this means comprehensive education—must be cut as part of the attacks on the living standards and wages of the working class.

Trained In the post-war period of inflationary boom, concessions were made to the powerful and confident working class. In Britain this took the form of the 'Welfare State'-the health service, free education and grants for working-class students. • The 1944 Education Act permitted working-class children to gain scholarships to grammar schools and to proceed later to universities and technical colleges.

Tory document 'Black Paper Two' is made up of conti ber of Tory educationists. Not all of them agree on ev iome of its main points from different contributors:

There are class differences in 'intelligence'. Working working-class children, the upper and middle classes, through their wealth, still have their 'prep' from Lindsay Anderson's film 'If' about life in a public school. are born 'less intelligent'. Encourage birth control for 'less intelligent' Use 'Intelligence Quotient' (IQ) tests to submerge 'mediocre' and allow those of 'superior intelligence' to succeed. Return to the bipartite system of secondary modern schools and restore grammar schools on a direct grant basis. Restore fee paying and provide scholarships for 'poor' children who are 'intelligent'. Select by examination at 13.

Restore streaming and grading. Reliance on 'chalk and talk' by tear methods' of learning, return to basic : The average teacher is not 'intelligent' Autonomy and less state interference panding too rapidly.

Instill respect for authority Who are its authors? Rhodes Boyson, headmaster, Tory candidate for Eccles, ex-Labour councillor. G. Bantock, Professor of education at Leicester university. Tibor Szamuely, Russian emigre, lecturer in politics at Reading. R. Pedley, headmaster of St. Dunstan's. Sir Cyril Bert, Professor of chology, London. H. J. Eysenck, Professor of Psychology, London. Arthur Pollard, Prossor of English, Hull. Richard Lynn, Research Professor of Psychology, Dublin. June Wedgewood Benn, teacher. G. B. Cox, ex-army educationist. Examiner. G. Crawford, eacher. Ralph Harris, general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs. A. E. Dyson, xaminer. Mrs. D. M. Pinn, headmistress. Max Beloff. Kingsley Amis. Angus Maude.

But the demands for skilled labour, more technicians and teachers engendered by the boom made even this tripartite system obsolete.

Comprehensive schools were introduced to meet the new needs of capitalism. It was discovered that some late developers' could easily fail the 1l-plus examination but might still be trained and become skilled later.

Not only did the comprehensive school overcome such wastage of talent problems, but it was more economic.

Instead of local authorities having to provide facilities, stafi, buildings and administrators in three separate units grammar, technical and 'secondary modern' — they need only • provide one unit and thereby save money.

Hence comprehensive education made some headway even under the Tories.

After all, this was not going to affect the children of the upper-middle and ruling classes who have their 'prep' schools and public schools regardless.

Target Comprehensive education is no more 'socialist' education than the nationalized British Railways is a 'socialist' industry. oppositior of the 'thr enough to use 6.00, 6.25, 6.45, 7.55, 8.25, 8.50, 11.40, ibutions from a ery point. Here to 'discovery se Rs'.

The comprehensive system has more and more begun to house all the problems of education in general under one roof instead of three.

But nevertheless it marked a big step forward from selechigh up in total government spending, is target number The Wilson government has used the Prices and Incomes Board to hold back teachers' pay, thereby driving many teachers to seek jobs elseIt has cut the rate-support grant to local authorities, thereby encouraging Tory councils to cut educational expenditure which is the biggest item of their budget.

This has resulted in some boroughs in sacking part-time teachers (Coventry), reducing the supply teaching service and decreasing pupil-teacher ratios.

To defend the pound the government has raised bank rates to an all-time high, putting education authorities into crippling debt with the banks.

At the end of the first quarter of 1969 the local councils' outstanding tempordebt reached £2,023 million compared with £933 million, eight years earlier.

Cut back It has cut back the school building programme in a series of package deals to satisfy the international bankers.

It has just recently abolished the maximum limits on class sizes and is investigating the possibility of a six-term year to cram students into the universities to save money on new buildings.

These actions have encouraged the Tories even further.

As reported in Workers' Press on September 30 a pamphlet published by the Tory education centre, 'Education and Labour's Axe', proposes to "put up school meals from Is. ba. to 2s. od., charge the full price for junior school milk, allow the university stating ratio to deteriorate by 10 per cent, introduce student loans instead of grants and extend Miss Alice Bacon, by waving the 'Black Paper' in the eyes of Labour delegates at Brighton succeeded in defeating the agricultural workers' resolution which correctly declared that the government's cuts would make this the worst year for education since the 1930s.

In this way she uses the 'Black Paper' to attack educaThis provides perfect cover for the 'lefts' to refrain from attacking the government. Either Wilson, they say, or the 'Black Paper'.

The Communist Party, too, allows Wilson to get off the hook by calling for unity of 'progressives' to defend comprehensive education from the 'Black Paper'.

This presumably includes Short, Bacon and Wilson himself, all 'supporters' of comprehensive education.

No dissent At the same time Stalinists on the National Union of Teachers' executive on October 4 sat through a meeting which expressed 'quiet satisfaction' at the Coventry settlement, which resulted in 133 sacked part-time teachers and the 'most stringent cuts in other fields of education.

No voice of dissent was raised. The meeting thanked those members of the executive who conducted the negotiations !

The Stalinists may well find their liberal - progressive 'friends' performing some strange tricks in the near future.

The 'Black Paper' was not unsympathetically reviewed by 'The Teacher' (NUT journal) October 10 :

'Black Paper Two contains a great deal of good sense.' And 'The Times' Education cessful in their pay claim and Wilson's education cuts continue unchallenged, the pressure in the class rooms will become unbearable for many teachers.

There is not space in this article for analysis of the putrid philosophy of 'intelligence' behind the 'Black Paper' and its authoritarian leanings. But thousands of teachers are coming into struggle against the Labour government's incomes policy and education cuts.

The teachers must find their place as allies of the working class to overturn the Wilson leadership in the labour moveOnly the development of a revolutionary leadership and the taking of power by the working class can open the road for the development of socialist comprehensive education for all and the ending of class privilege in education. Edward Boyle, ex-Tory Minister of Education. 11.0-11.55 a.m., Schools. 1.40 p.m., Schools. 3.0-3.55, Racing From Newmarket. 4.10, Westward News Headlines. 4.12, Peyton Place. 4.40, The Gus Honeybun Show. 4.55, Thunderbirds. 5.0, National News. 6.0, Westward Diary. 6.25, Sports Diary. 6.35,