Anarchy 43/Reflections on parents, teachers and schools

275

Reflections on
parents, teachers
and schools

JOHN ELLERBY

What anarch­ists are after is per­sonal and so­cial auto­nomy—the idea that in­di­viduals and their organ­isa­tions should be self-reg­u­lat­ing auto­no­mous bodies. It is this which makes us ad­voc­ates of workers’ control in in­dus­try and which makes us en­thusi­astic about such ex­amples as we find of so­cial organ­isa­tions spring up from below, from people’s urge to sat­isfy their own needs, as op­posed to those which depend on a struc­ture of hier­archy, power and au­thor­ity in which one set of people give in­struc­tions and another set of people carry them out.

  The the­or­et­ical ap­pli­ca­tion of our ideas to the organ­isa­tion of edu­ca­tion is clear enough. The auto­nom­ous self-govern­ing school is the aim, and in view of the ob­vi­ous limits within which chil­dren may be said to govern them­selves, this means in prac­tice a school con­trolled by teach­ers by virtue of their func­tional re­spons­ibil­ity to chil­dren, and by parents because of their bio­lo­gical re­spons­ibil­ity for them. But the issue is more com­pli­ca­ted, for in both prim­it­ive and com­plex com­mun­it­ies it is recog­nised that all adults have a re­spons­ibil­ity towards chil­dren, which because of the vagar­ies and vicis­si­tudes of in­di­vidual parent­age, may have to be exer­cised on its behalf or on the child’s behalf. Once that is ad­mit­ted, we have of course ad­mit­ted that edu­ca­tion is the con­cern of the com­mun­ity. But what com­mun­ity? The state as in France, the local au­thor­ity as in the United States, or a mix­ture of the two as in Britain? And where does the re­spons­ibil­ity of the com­mun­ity begin and end?

  Should edu­ca­tion be com­puls­ory anyway? (And is the com­pul­sion to be ap­plied to the child or the parent?) Bakunin saw the ques­tion dia­lect­ic­ally:

  The prin­ciple of au­thor­ity, in the edu­ca­tion of chil­dren, con­sti­tutes the natural point of de­par­ture; it is leg­itim­ate, neces­sary, when ap­plied to chil­dren of a tender age, whose intel­li­gence has not yet openly de­veloped itself. But as the de­velop­ment of every­thing, and con­sequently of edu­ca­tion, im­plies the gradual nega­tion of the point of de­par­ture, this prin­ciple must dimin­ish as fast as edu­ca­tion and in­struc­tion ad­vance, giving place to in­creas­ing liberty. All ra­tional edu­ca­tion is at bottom nothing but this pro­gres­sive im­mola­tion of au­thor­ity for the benefit of liberty, the final ob­ject of edu­ca­tion neces­sarily

276

being the form­a­tion of free men full of re­spect and love for the liberty of others. There­fore the first day of the pupil’s life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as yet to stam­mer a few words, should be that of the great­est au­thor­ity and an almost entire ab­sence of liberty; but its last day should be that of the great­est liberty and the ab­solute aboli­tion of every vestige of the animal or divine prin­ciple of au­thor­ity.

  Eighty-five years later, Ethel Mannin in her utopian survey Bread and Roses took a more ab­solutely “liber­tarian” line:

  At this point you per­haps pro­test, “But if there is no com­pul­sion, what hap­pens if a child does not want to at­tend school of any kind, and the parents are not con­cerned to per­suade him?” It is quite simple. In that case the child does not at­tend any school. As he becomes adoles­cent he may wish to ac­quire some learn­ing. Or he may de­velop school-

going friends and wish to at­tend school because they do. But if he doesn’t he is never­the­less learn­ing all the time, his natural child’s creat­ive­ness work­ing in happy alli­ance with his free­dom. No Utopian parent would think of using that moral coer­cion we call ‘per­sua­sion’. By the time he reaches adoles­cence the child grows tired of run­ning wild, and begins to ident­ify himself with grown-

ups; he per­ceives the use­ful­ness of know­ing how to read and write and add, and there is prob­ably some special thing he wants to learn—

such as how to drive a train or build a bridge or a house. It is all very much simpler than our pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion­ists would have us believe.

  Some of us think it is not that simple. But the point is aca­demic, for in prac­tice the deci­sion is that of the parents. Nowadays it is only highly soph­ist­ic­ated and edu­ca­ted people who bother to argue about whether or not it is desir­able that chil­dren should learn the three Rs. The law in this country does not in fact re­quire parents to send their chil­dren to school; it im­poses an obli­ga­tion on them to see that their chil­dren while within the com­puls­ory age, are re­ceiv­ing “an ap­propri­ate edu­ca­tion”. The oc­ca­sional pro­secu­tions of re­calcit­rant parents usually reveal a degree of apathy, in­dif­fer­ence or parental in­com­pet­ence that hardly pro­vides a good case for the op­ponents of com­pul­sion, though they do some­times rope in highly con­scien­tious parents whose views on edu­ca­tion do not hap­pen to co­incide with those of the local au­thor­ity. (Mrs. Joy Baker’s ac­count of her long and in the end suc­cess­ful struggle with the au­thor­it­ies will be re­viewed in a coming issue of anarchy). Usually, apart from a few of the rich, with their gover­nesses and tutors, there are not many parents with the time or skill to teach their chil­dren at home, and of those who could, many must feel it unfair to de­prive their chil­dren of the pleasures and so­cial ex­peri­ence of be­long­ing to a com­mun­ity of their peers, or may cherish the right of parents to have the kids out of their way for some of the time—and the recip­rocal right of their children to be outside the parental at­mo­sphere.

*   *   *

  Histor­ic­ally, in this country, the strug­gle to make edu­ca­tion free, com­puls­ory and uni­versal, and out of the ex­clus­ive con­trol of reli­gious organ­isa­tions, was long and bitter, and the op­po­si­tion to it came, not from liber­tarian ob­jectors, but from the up­hold­ers of priv­ilege and dogma, and from those (both parents and em­ploy­ers) who had an eco­nomic inter­est in the labour of chil­dren or a vested inter­est in ignor­ance. The very reason why it had to be made com­puls­ory ninety-four

277

years ago was because chil­dren were an eco­nomic asset. Read­ers of chap­ters 8 and 12 of Marx’s Capital will not dis­sent from the as­ser­tion that the in­dus­trial re­volu­tion was made by the chil­dren of the poor. As late as 1935 Lord Halifax, as Pres­id­ent of the Board of Edu­ca­tion, op­pos­ing the pro­posal to raise the school leaving age from four­teen to fif­teen, de­clared that “public opinion would not toler­ate an un­con­di­tional raising of the age” and the Bradford tex­tile manu­fac­turers as­sured him that “there was work for little fingers there.”

  The no­tion that primary ecu­ca­tion should be free, com­puls­ory and uni­versal is very much older than the English Act of 1870. It grew up with the print­ing press and the rise of prot­est­ant­ism. The rich had been edu­cated by the Church and the sons of the rising bour­geoisie in the grammar schools of the Middle Ages. From the 16th century on arose a grad­ual demand that all should be taught. Martin Luther ap­pealed “To the Coun­cil­men of all Cities in Germany that they estab­lish and main­tain Christian Schools”, ob­serv­ing that the train­ing chil­dren get at home “at­tempts to make up wise through our ex­peri­ence” a task for which life itself is too short, and which could be ac­cel­er­ated by sys­tema­tic in­struc­tion by means of books. Com­puls­ory uni­versal edu­ca­tion was founded in Calvin­ist Geneva in 1536, and Calvin’s Scottish dis­ciple John Knox “planted a school as well as a kirk in every parish.” In puritan Mas­sachu­setts free com­puls­ory primary edu­ca­tion was intro­duced in 1647. The common school, writes Lewis Mumford in The Condi­tion of Man:

  … con­trary to popular belief, is no be­lated pro­duct of 19th century demo­cracy: I have pointed out that it played a neces­sary part in the ab­solu­tist-

mech­an­ical form­ula. Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, fol­lowing Luther’s pre­cept, made primary edu­ca­tion com­puls­ory in his realm in 1717, and foun­ded 1,700 schools to meet the needs of the poor. Two ordin­ances of Louis XIV in 1694 and 1698 and one of Louis XV in 1724 re­quired regular at­tend­ance at school. Even England, a strag­gler in such mat­ters, had hun­dreds of private char­ity schools, some of them foun­ded by the So­ci­ety for Pro­moting Chris­tian Know­ledge, which had been in­cor­por­ated in 1699. Vergerious, one of the earliest renais­sance school­masters, had thought edu­ca­tion an es­sen­tial func­tion of the State; and cen­tral­ised au­thor­ity was now be­lat­edly taking up the work that had been neg­lected with the wiping out of mu­ni­cipal free­dom in the greater part of Europe.

  All the ra­tion­al­ist philo­sophers of the 18th century thought about the prob­lems of edu­ca­tion, and of them, the two acutest edu­ca­tional think­ers ranged them­selves on op­pos­ite sides on the ques­tion of the organ­isa­tion of edu­ca­tion: Rousseau for the State, Godwin against it. Rousseau, whose Emile pos­tu­lates a com­pletely in­di­vidual edu­ca­tion (human so­ciety is ig­nored, the tutor’s entire life is de­voted to poor Emile), did never­the­less con­cern himself with the so­cial aspect, argu­ing, in his Dis­course on Polit­ical Eco­nomy (1755) for public edu­ca­tion “under regu­la­tions pre­scribed by the govern­ment”, for

  If chil­dren are brought up in com­mon in the bosom of equal­ity; if they are im­bued with the laws of the State and the pre­cepts of the General Will … we can­not doubt that they will cher­ish one another mu­tually as broth­ers … to become in time de­fenders and fath­ers of the country of which they will have been so long the chil­dren.

278

  William Godwin, who, in his En­quirer at­tacks the con­cealed au­thor­it­ar­ian­ism of Rousseau’s edu­ca­tional theor­ies, criti­cises in his En­quiry Con­cern­ing Polit­ical Justice (1793), the idea of na­tional edu­ca­tion. He sum­mar­ises the argu­ments in favour, which are those of Rousseau, adding to them the ques­tion:

  If the edu­ca­tion of our youth be en­tirely con­fined to the pru­dence of their parents, or the ac­cid­ental be­ne­vol­ence of private in­di­viduals, will it not be a neces­sary con­se­quence, that some will be edu­cated to virtue, others to vice, and others again en­tirely neg­lected?

  Godwin’s answer is:

  The injur­ies that re­sult from a system of na­tional edu­ca­tion are, in the first place, that all public estab­lish­ments in­clude in them the idea of per­man­ence. They en­deavour, it may be, to se­cure and to dif­fuse what­ever of ad­vant­age to so­ciety is already known, but they forget that more re­mains to be known … But public edu­ca­tion has always ex­pended its en­er­gies in the sup­port of pre­jud­ice; it teaches its pupils not the fort­i­tude that shall bring every pro­pos­i­tion to the test of exam­ina­tion, but the art of vin­dic­at­ing such tenets as may chance to be previ­ously estab­lished … This feature runs through every spe­cies of public estab­lish­ment; and, even in the petty in­sti­tu­tion of Sunday schools, the chief les­sons that are taught are a super­sti­tious vener­a­tion for the Church of England, and to bow to every man in a hand­some coat … Refer them to read­ing, to con­ver­sa­tion, to medi­ta­tion, but teach them neither creeds nor cat­ech­isms, neither moral nor polit­ical …

  Secondly, the idea of na­tional edu­ca­tion is foun­ded in an in­at­ten­tion to the nature of mind. What­ever each man does for him­self is done well; what­ever his neigh­bours or his country under­take to do for him is done ill. It is our wisdom to in­cite men to act for them­selves, not to retain them in a state of per­petual pupil­lage. He that learns because he desires to learn will listen to the in­struc­tions he re­ceives and ap­pre­hend their mean­ing. He that teaches because he desires to teach will dis­charge his oc­cupa­tion with en­thusi­asm and energy. But the moment polit­ical in­sti­tu­tion under­takes to as­sign to every man his place, the func­tions of all will be dis­charged with supine­ness and in­dif­fer­ence …

  Thirdly, the pro­ject of a na­tional edu­ca­tion ought uni­formly to be dis­cour­aged on ac­count of its ob­vious al­li­ance with na­tional govern­ment. This is an al­li­ance of a more for­mid­able nature than the old and much con­tested al­li­ance of church and state. Before we put so power­ful a ma­chine under the direc­tion of so ambi­tious an agent, it be­hoves us to con­sider well what we do. Govern­ment will not fail to em­ploy it to strengthen its hands and per­pet­u­ate its in­sti­tu­tions … Their view as in­sti­gator of a system of edu­ca­tion will not fail to be ana­log­ous to their views in their polit­ical cap­acity: the data upon which their con­duct as states­men is vin­dic­ated will be the data upon which their in­sti­tu­tions are foun­ded. It is not true that our youth ought to be in­struc­ted to vener­ate the con­sti­tu­tion, however ex­cel­lent; they should be in­struc­ted to vener­ate truth … (Even) in the coun­tries where liberty chiefly pre­vails, it is reason­ably to be as­sumed that there are im­port­ant errors, and a na­tional edu­ca­tion has the most direct tend­ency to per­pet­u­ate those errors and to form all minds upon one model.

  Godwin’s argu­ments are worth quoting at this length, not only as the classic state­ment of an anarch­ist posi­tion on this issue, but because they have had such ample sub­se­quent just­ifi­ca­tion. On the other hand he does not really answer the ques­tion of how we can en­sure that every child can have free ac­cess to what­ever edu­ca­tional facil­it­ies will suit its in­di­vidual needs.

279

  In practice, in this country today people who want to try an anarch­ist ap­proach to edu­ca­tion have two pos­sible courses of action: to work in the private sector—in­de­pend­ent schools of one kind or an­other, a minor­ity of which are pro­gres­sive, or to work in the normal school system and try to in­flu­ence it in a “pro­gres­sive” direc­tion. These two courses are by no means mu­tu­ally ex­clus­ive, and there is plenty of evid­ence of the in­flu­ence of the former on the latter.

  It is sur­pris­ing and cer­tainly sad­den­ing, con­sider­ing the number of people in­ter­ested in “pro­gres­sive” schools, how few of them there are and how they seldom in­spire other people to start them. For ex­ample, the pub­lica­tion of Summer­hill a com­pil­a­tion of the writ­ings of A. S. Neill brought about a great deal of in­ter­est in his school and his ideas in America; there was an embar­ras­sing pro­ces­sion of over­seas vis­it­ors to Neill’s little school in Suffolk, but how few of the ad­mirers and vis­it­ors set about start­ing more schools on similar lines. A few did: one of the con­trib­u­tions in this issue of anarchy comes from people who are trying to.

  Why shouldn’t the parents of a group of babies in the same age-group get together and plan a school for them well in ad­vance, so as to ac­cum­ul­ate the funds re­quired before they are needed? They could as several groups of parents do, run their own nurs­ary school when their chil­dren reach the ap­pro­pri­ate age and then de­velop from the primary stage onward. The wealthy who are also in­tent on edu­ca­ting their chil­dren in in­de­pend­ent schools, have found a vari­ety of ways for fin­ancing them by way of Deeds and Coven­ant, en­dow­ment pol­icies and so on. (John Vaizey es­tim­ates that at present some­thing like £60 mil­lion a year is spent on school fees and £15-£20 mil­lion of this is found by tax-avoid­ance).

  Many of us on the other hand, are more con­cerned with changing the ordin­ary primary and second­ary schools which the vast ma­jor­ity of chil­dren at­tend, changing the teach­ing methods and changing parental and so­cial at­ti­tudes. Some will simply say that this can­not be done—this would be the view of the second­ary modern school-teacher who con­trib­utes an honest ac­count of his prob­lems else­where in this issue. But others will say that it would be fool­ish not to try to take ad­vant­age of the present wave of in­ter­est in edu­ca­tion and in the state of the schools.

  The anarch­ist, seek­ing func­tional, as op­posed to polit­ical, answers to so­cial needs, and con­trast­ing the so­cial prin­ciple with the polit­ical prin­ciple, sees in the state’s con­trol of edu­ca­tion a usurp­a­tion of a so­cial func­tion. (His­tor­ic­ally of course, the Edu­ca­tion Act of 1870 didn’t “usurp” any­body’s func­tion, but if you ac­cept the con­cep­tion of an in­verse rela­tion­ship between the state and so­ciety—the strength of one re­sult­ing from the weak­ness of the other—you can see how the so­cial organ­isa­tion of popular edu­ca­tion was, so to speak, at­rophied in ad­vance, by its polit­ical organ­isa­tion. That this has not been the dis­aster—though some would say it has—that anarch­ist think­ers like

280

Godwin pre­dic­ted, has been due to the local dif­fu­sion of con­trol, the di­ver­gent aims of teach­ers and the re­sili­ence of chil­dren).

  Func­tion­ally, the ad­min­istra­tion of the school is the con­cern of parents and teach­ers, and if we really seek a so­ciety of auto­nom­ous free as­so­ci­a­tions we must see such bodies as <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: parent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tions">parent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tions as the kind of organ­isa­tion whose even­tual and “natural” func­tion is to take over the schools from the Ministry, the County Coun­cils, the Dir­ect­ors, In­spect­ors, Managers and Gov­ern­ors who, in a so­ciety domi­nated by the polit­ical prin­ciple are in­evit­ably their con­trol­lers. I don’t know whether schools so ad­min­istered would be any better or any wrose than they are at present, but I do believe that a “self-regula­ting” so­ciety would run its schools that way. Among in­de­pend­ent schools in this country which ex­em­plify this kind of organ­isa­tion, there used to be Burgess Hill School (de­scribed by one of the parents in this issue of anarchy) which was owned by a Friendly So­ciety of parents and teach­ers and there still is King Alfred School, governed by a so­ciety of people in­ter­ested in modern edu­ca­tional methods and “ad­min­istered by an ad­vis­ory coun­cil of pupils and staff”. I have not heard of any parent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tions in the ordin­ary school system which aspire to such func­tions, though with the de­velop­ment of a vari­ety of organ­isa­tions in the last few years con­cerned with in­ter­est­ing parents in edu­ca­tion, one can imagine the mem­bers re­flect­ing after a time on whether their own in­tense “par­ti­cip­a­tion” had not rendered the usual com­plic­ated and ex­pens­ive bureau­cracy of school ad­min­istra­tion super­flu­ous.