Education and the Working Class, by Jackson & Marsden

[p023] Education and the Working Class. By Brian Jackson & Dennis Marsden. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 28s. ‘The Grammar School’, said the Headmistress, ‘is concerned with manners (the girls should, for example, avoid dropping litter) and the creation of style: the public school virtues, in fact.’ This old girl may have been a bit extreme, but the Grammar schools, despite the 1944 Act, are still riddled with anti- working class bias. As the Crowther Report showed, the odds are stacked against a worker’s child getting a Grammar school place. The authors of this book bring out even more startling facts. . Compared with the 1951 Census, which showed male occupations as being 74 per cent manual and 26 per cent professional or clerical a table of the occupations of the fathers of children taking the ‘A’ level in ‘Marburton’ gave almost exactly opposite figures—64 per cent pro- fessional and 36 per cent manual. (Taking girls alone, the figures were exactly reversed—74 per cent pro- fessional and 26 per cent manual.) In fact, the educational system has a built-in class bias, and the various selection stages are social, not merely academic, selections. This is particu- larly true of Intelligence Tests which are mass produced and mass applied and which are particularly useful to bureaucracy in reducing complex human beings to figures on a scale. The authors of this book, however, are trying to find out what happens to working-class children. who _ get through the sieve. To some, the Grammar Schools are escape hatches to the middle class—and right nauseating specimens one or two of them are, as well. (‘ Oh, I never had any trouble at school. I’ve always been the kind of person that’s— what’s the word ? — Establishment. I’m always the kind of person that’s with the Establishment. My face always seems to be liked wherever I go.’) Others never settle down, and move from job to job. Very many become schoolteachers, not because of any real liking for the job, but because of the drift from school to College (or University) and back to school. This is itself a comment on the Education system, with its emphasis on marks, passing exams, getting certificates. Like one eager-beaver who was interviewed: ‘The way we teach, we teach for results. I want the passes, the schols, all those things. Tests all the time and scrub the teaching methods, forget about the educational side. Let me give you an instance, if a boy asks a question it might raise some interesting matters. Now, the o’her way you’d waste the whole period and follow up those matters. That’s not our way. We've got no time for any questions or anything that leads off the syllabus. I like

[p024] BOOK REVIEWS teaching our A stream boys, but you should see our C stream! I don’t like teaching them at all. I don’t know what it can be like in the Secondary Moderns. What I want is Head of a Department in a really good school. Id put on the pressure really hard. Really work those children, tests, tests, the results. That would establish me, wouldn’t it and get me a reputation? I. might slacken off, when I got established.’ The authors, like all empiricist sociologists, can only seek for solu- tions within the existing framework which they have accepted to start with. Thus, Messrs. Jackson and Marsden suggest partial improve- ments like extending Comprehensive schools and giving more information to working -class parents. They realise this is inadequate but confess that they do not know what to do. It is really not enough to examine - what is happening. We have to examine the social framework in which things happen. Education in Britain takes place within, and as part of, capitalist property relations. Its purpose is to sift out children to carry out necessary tasks in the system—either as unskilled workers, skilled workers, professional workers, cogs in the bureaucratic machine or tame intellectuals continuing and justifying the process. Education in such a framework can in general never be other than arid, mechanical, bureaucratic and soul-destroying. To free education, we must change the property relations which domi- nate and determine all aspects of social life. G.G. The little man The Abdication. By Lewis Broad. Frederick Muller, 25s. ‘Oh Thelma, the little man is going to be so lonely!’ ‘Well dear, you look after him for me while I’m away. See that he does not get into any mischief.’ With these fateful words Thelma, Viscountess Furness, signed her fate. For she returned from her trip abroad to find that she had been supplanted in the affections of the future Edward VIII. For her, there were to be no more of those ‘damned weekends’, as George V called them. Mrs. Simpson tests and get - ‘Edward VIII is: had indeed ‘looked after’ Edward, and Thelma’s future lay with Aly Khan. But the course of true love did not run smooth. Queen Mary wrote pained letters about the family honour. ‘Mrs. Baldwin considered that ‘Mrs. Simpson had stolen the Fairy Prince’. Mr. Geoffrey Dawson moved into action. Anonymous letters appeared in The Times. To those with nothing better to think about, the big question about ‘Did he fall or was he pushed?’ Mr. Broad considers that his offer of abdication was intended only as a bluff, to browbeat his opponents. Unfortunately, Mr. Broad says, ‘He was unable to adapt himself to play a part.’ ‘He could not play the politician.’ ‘Nature did not equip him with prudence and the qualities that make for skill-in statecraft.’ In other words, he was not too bright. So out he went. The formalities had to be gone through, of course. ‘He behaved as a Great Gentleman,’ declared Bald- win. ‘I have lost a throne,’ sighed Edward, ‘but I have won the Queen of my Heart.’ And a great big ‘ Urg’ from all of us. C.G. Age of Cromwell The Century of Revolution. By Christopher Hill, Nelsons, 25s. It would be too easy to be dis- appointed with this book. We can hope that Christopher Hill will pro- vide us with a consciously Marxist analysis of the 17th century, reveal-_ ing clearly the class forces under- lying the civil war and its con- sequences. He hasn’t done this here. § But he has written a very use’ book. Deep analyses of special events are most important, but a reader coming to them with no back- ground in the basic facts of the history of a period cannot appreciate them fully or judge them critically. And learning the basic facts for oneself, without being ground through a formal course, is very difficult. ‘The textbook writer in history will choose and interpret ‘the basic facts’ to suit the prejudices of himself and the buyers of the book. For a 21 Marxist, reading a standard textbook can be maddening: a lot of useless rubbish envelops and distorts the solid information, the real causes of events get hardly any mention, and the most important information is usually left out. From this it is almost impossible to learn or remem- ber anything, since the story doesn’t fit together. Christopher Hill’s story at least fits together. He points up the class relationships, and he does show the real change in the positions of various sections of the bourgeois class after the Revolution (the thing that Professor Trevor-Roper claims he can never find). He also gives bits of solid example to illustrate general points (ending of Royal monopolies, break-up of guilds and many others). And, of course, he doesn’t forget the ‘unfree’, and tries to describe their changing position. In addition, he always reminds his readers of the points where we simply don’t know enough to make a judgment. He has crammed everything into one short (and cheap) book, and so the pace is always breathless. Litera- ture, the arts, science, ideology all get a quick look in each period; it is clear that he isn’t so much at home here as in the politics and economics. The book needs to be read slowly. ‘Social’ interpretations are be-_ coming fashionable in studies of 17th century history, and we can expect a lot of nonsense to come over the Third Programme. As a book to be read once and then kept for reference, The Century of Revolu- tion will do a useful job in raising -the general level of knowledge of the century. Perhaps then Christo- pher Hill or someone else will pene- trate more deeply once again. J.R. ” Different roads The