always existed in Britain's schools has started to express itself coherently and actively. Whereas previously school pupils have always been isolated and powerless in their dissidence.
groups designed to radicalise opinion and oppose the authorities in schools have sprung up in at least fifteen major towns. Their power must not be over-estimated: four hundred on the recent Schools Action Union demo in start, not a signal for the barricades! It does show that a basis exists for a campaign which, given hard work and a sense of direction, could become as powerful as the French "Comites d'Action Lyceens".
The symptoms of the faults in our secondary schools are known to all who have suffered in them. The obvious Is the petty authoritarianism. •Get-your-hair-cut, wear uniform the regulation blazer trom tne monopolist in the High Street), play rugby (or soccer), like-it-or-else, hold-your-hand-out-anddon't-question/disobey-me-again.
Concealed by this crap is the coherent theory.
that pupils should be taught to know their place society. Public schoolboys are taught leadership in its military quintessence, the army ender corps;
secondary school pupils are taught their role through being talked down to, and beaten, by the higher beings', the teachers; and girls are taught to be submissive and efficient.
Pupils are rarely granted any responsibility in the administration of schools, they were to have responsibility in the running of their lives, they would have booted out the ruling class long ago. The prefect system? In most schools these overseers are chosen by the head another way in which he represents the ruling class). Prefects are the future foremen: they are given petty privileges, and the right to punish, which sets them off from the rest their society. All this conditions the schoolkid to the conditions he will find when he leaves school.
Another aspect of authoritarianism, no less sinister for being more blatant, is compulsory religion in schools. The only meeting of the school en masse is the morning's conformity class, where the aumorities. like their counterparts the bourgeoisie, propound the Great Lie: they nowever doubly hypocritical, often disbelievers themselves. forcing God on pupils who, in most cases, don't believe either. But it encourages submissiveness. and the acceptance of codes handed down from on high.
A more subtle form of authoritarianism exists in the examination system, which forces us to learn what they decree, and conditions channeling learning into "safe channels. Look for example at recent hisory "A' level examinations: the emphasis is always on the 'great man' be it Henry VIII, Gladstone, or even Lenin. In the first place, it implies that the king, a personality, and not the economic trend, brought England out of feudalism. The Gladstone/Disraeli conflict frequent le Victorian bourgeoisie and proletariat neve figures. In rare questions on the Russian revolution (surely the most important single historical event this century), Nicholas II, Lenin, and particularly the subsequent dictatorship of Stalin, are superficially examined: the role of the proletariat (servile tools'), the ethics of Bolshevism, and the class nature of Russia before and after the Revolution, are always excluded.
Examinations set up barriers between the "successes' and failures, barriers which tend to follow class lines: though naturally the bourgeoisie is very willing to receive into its TASSUCH working-class children show sufficient intelligence to overcome class barriers installed in the schools. These pupils, set aside from their familiar working-class ideology, are easily indoctrinated with the ideals of their own technocratic efficiency and leadership.
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Bai-Ley Those who are to succeed in reaching the top rank of society, must be prepared to fight like hell to beat their fellows in examinations.
Someone whose ethics sink to taking all the short-cuts (including, possibly, efficient cheating) to grab at the success that someonelse defines for him (really, one who is prepared to fight to do as he's told) is the authorities' hero will deal Taus ruthlessly and unquestioningly in the world.
This striving to gain what somebody else decreees, and being judged by their standards, is a root of the pupils alienation. Alienation is a major factor in the classroom revolt, for pupils are seeing (if unconsciously) that examination and selection has nothing to do with education.
The former causes the fulfilment of industrial efficiency, the latter brings about the fulfilment of the individual.
The schools revolt has two connected aspects. The first concerns authoritarian conditions, the second the purpose of education. The basis of the first is clear.
Anachronistic and illogical rules should be removed. Ihe cane and school uniform (abolished in civilised countries) should be got rid of, as should the prefect system.
maintain democracy and order, power should vested elected school councils, representative of the students and staff, making freedom and responsibility the duty of all.
Naturally, should not be restricted to the sixth-form. Life can be just as hellish for a fourth-former; besides, such a restriction could lead to a new privileged elite, and a weaker council.
What of the purpose of education? Its aim should be to provide an environment in which individual Is encouraged mature emotionally and intellectually, to be able to take a critical place in society. For this the pupil would choose his own curriculum, to develop in the direction he finds most worthwhile. and self-discipline and genuine interest would replace examinations as the motive for study. The so-called fairer" means of issessment provide no replacement at all, for hey impl decisions being taken and judgments made, by somebody else. Besides, who can. and who wants to, assess a human. being? Only the capitalist class needs to sort out the brains required for its technocratic regime.
These are our grievances and proposals: what then of action? Obviously the grievances vary from school to school, so that groups inside ndividual schools are essential. However, the bigger the group, the less feeling there is of isolation and the greater the capacity to initiate and undertake action, such as leafleting, demonstrations etc. The strongest and most desirable organisation must be a national one. The largest organisations that exist at present are the Schools Action Union (strongest in North London) and the Free Schools Campaign (strongest in South-East London). Discussions about co-ordinated action are going on, and, if successful, could lead to activity on a much larger scale: occupations, etc.
Obviously anyone taking a stand against the bourgeois state's educational system is, ultimately, taking a political stand against that state. It would be disastrous to alienate the support of any student who, while feeling in opposition to the educational system as such, frustration through a Revolutionary analysis - yet realised the TOOL their this could happen if the schools movement became avowedly political. Furthermore, once the movement becomes political in nature, there is a likelihood of splits between different political groups which have seldom worked effectively together. Besides political youth groups exist already; it would seem pointless, at this time at least, to set up yet another one, when there is such enthusiasm and potential for fighting this issue over the schools themselves.
teachers and school students to discuss the topic "The Head, the Teacher, and the Child.
Many of the speakers were concerned to stress the interdependence of politics and Michael Duane, formerly headmaster of Risinghill Comprehensive, spoke first. He suggested that the present educational system encourages the formation of a fascist character structure': the child, his identity stunted at school, searches for authority externally. The unfree child becomes the conforming adult unable, because untrained, to examine This position.
Dave Picton, from the editorial board of Rank and File, urged an extension of democracy, to break the hierarchical pattern which places the teacher over the child and the headmaster over the teacher. His view, however, that submitted, irritated many of the militants present.
Among those who disagreed with Picton was I his UCCA form.
ED BY THE AGIT-PROP STREET PLAYERS FOR THE FUKD WOKKERS OF DAGENHAM.
do?
HAROLD: Injunctions!
BARBARA: Yes! Take them to Court for breach of contract!
(The JUDGE advances shakily, and sits on a GRABALOT huddling chair with HAROLD. BARBARA and Around nin He rearing an old mop on his head JUDGE: Will the Prisoners - or - defendants step forward? (The advance en masse.)
accomplices register extreme consternation.)
JUDGE (recovering): You are arraigned before Her Majesty's Court for preventing the employers at Ford's from making all the profit that they so richly deserve.
Adrian Mitchell Leon Russell on A Smile, A Song & A Handgrenade 12" LP TRA 171 40/9 Advance Notice...
meet him at:
* THE BLACK DWARF BENEFIT NIGHT event yet -* SUNDAY APRIL 27th at the ROUNDHOUSE * THE BLACK DWARF BENEFIT will bring you Groups, Films, Food, Drink, even a Rifle Range for aspiring Guerillas.
Make sure you will be there by sending 15s P.O. or Cheque to the Black Dwarf, 7 Carlisle Street, LONDON WIA 4PZ or to The Roundhouse, Chalk Form Road, NWI. (Tickets C1 on the door).
* THE BLACK DWARF BENEFIT NIGHT Socialists, he said, must press for workers control: "that is, control of education by the labour movement". The idea of isolating the schools and pressing for reform from within was unrealistic - "schools are not oases, but are part of a society which must also be changed He opposed a programme which involved only the abolition of uniform, prefects, assembly, because it was too alluring to the middle class rebel; SAU must broaden its demands or it would degenerate into middle class Floor speakers divided between those who felt that insufficient, and who asserted the need to align moderate demands WeLC quite the schools with the whole labour movement; and those, principally teachers, who considered that, in order to gain educational change, it was unnecessary to launch a "headlong assault on Pupil action, one speaken opined, was demands be moderated before being | used against pupils who did not conform. essential. Without it, two weapons could be Working class children could be expelled; middle class children blackmailed by means of up the nation's productivity. I just thought I' make that point..• JUDGE: Thank you Barbara. Now then, fellows. What have you got to say?
WILDCAT WORKER (advancing and pointing his rear at the JUDGE): Kiss my arse! JUDGE: I didn't quite catch that. What did he say?
BARBARA: He wants you to kiss his bottom, sir.
JUDGE (Leaping up): Twenty years! Off with his head! Off with his head!
GRABALOT: Wait a minute! Not so fast. We'd better be careful. There are more of them than there are of us. Look! (He points at himself and his friend,) One, two, three, TOur... (He points at the WORKERS) One, two, three, four.. (He points at the audience,)... Five, six, seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand JUDGE: Case dismissed! Case dismissed!
"Two very talented artists stand up and face the accusing fingers of the good and godly" - Tribune "Please buy this record" - John Peel
The Black Dwarf 28th March 1969
----- pull-quotes -----
March 7 in Conway Hall, London, attracted about two hundred people
education, and to deplore the consequences of this relationship in present-day society.
GRABALOT (to WORKERS): You hear that? I'm taking you to Court... and here's the
WORKERS (in unison): No penal clauses! (The JUDGE falls off his chair, and his
* RED SUNDAY AT THE ROUNDHOUSE THE HEAD, THE TEACHER, AND THE CHILD. meeting organised by Rank and File on| Bob Labi, from the Schools Action Union.
STUFF YOUR PENAL UP YOUR BONUS — A PLAY CREATED AND PERFORM- MORE VISUAL THAN VERBAL, THIS EXCERT REFERS TO FORD'S ATTEMPT TO BREAK THE STRIKE THROUGH THE COURTS. GRABALOT: What shall we do? What shall we | BARBARA: And, if 1 may say so, for holding
If Karl Marx still lived in Chalk Farm you would be able to Come and make Revolution at London's biggest left