Now having entered my last semester of an education degree, I have finally discovered an underlying Marxist strain towards the historiography of education. Now, a very right wing, or moderately right wing individual within our programme would never have had any problem identifying the bias of the programme. However, it takes a while before one realizes just where this bias comes from. It is not necessarily from the social justice aspect of the programme, and the teachers themselves. Indeed, social justice is an issue embraced across the political spectrum (it is a matter of individuals and leaders as to whether they support it, and of course the manner of this support can often differ greatly). Rather, the basis of this bias lies in history.
We are repeatedly told that our current pedagogy is an update and improvement on the old "Industrial" model of education. People were all taught the same thing in the same manner, with the idea that this way was best. When defined in this manner, the term "Industrial" is rather fitting, and variably true. However, what is the origin of the term historically?
Public education really began during the beginning of the Industrial period - and hence another reason why the term could be fitting. A professor recently exposed that education was promoted because it was realized that a more educated workforce, be it literate or numerate, could produce more wealth. Therefore, the nature of the education system throughout the Western World was based around the promotion of Capitalism. Such an interpretation could only be viewed as Marxist.
This is only more true because of all the facts that such an interpretation overlooks in pursuit of this line of argument. It ignores, first of all, that the basis of education in the West had nothing to do with economics. It had everything to do with Nationalism, that Napoleonic bastard. Before industrialization had taken hold of even most of Europe, no less the world, nationalism had taken over.
It is worth remembering that most of Europe's states were formed during the 19th century. The issue they had to confront was the fact that simply living within a geographical expression didn't make you a German, or Italian, or French, or British. People spoke different dialects and languages, and observed different religions, and had often experienced different histories and economic experience. The issue was to unify the country. One could do it through force (as was often done in the South of Italy), but it was seen as a much better long term fix to educate the next generation.
A conspicuous example of this process is outlined in the book, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania. Romania was a largely agrarian, pre-industrial state (even more so than its neighbours). Nonetheless, Romania pursued an extensive educational policy as a means of unifying a country that had been turned into an empire following the First World War. Here, teaching one way meant teaching all people in Romanian, teaching them Romanian history, and so forth. If you were Ukrainian, you lost your schools. If Jewish, you gradually began to lose your civil rights.
To do thing one way in education can be seen as "Industrial" but it is in reality a policy of assimilation. Schools were the first step in forging a great, strong state. If industry came as the result of these practices, perhaps all the better. However, it is to be remembered that in Interbellum Europe, many popular movements, in spite of such educations, emphasized a return to the land and promotion of the peasantry, be they the Nazis (in pursuit of a pure, untainted Germany), the Fascists, the Estado Novo, Franco's Spain, or the Legion of the Archangel Michael.
Indeed, it should be viewed either with irony (or is it too appropriate) that the only state that actively tried to force industrialization in Europe was also the state to name the Industrial model as a critique of its enemies. The Soviet Union, hypocritically as it so often was, lambasted its foes for a system it not only embraced, but adhered to more than almost anybody else.
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