Schooling and Equality

Fact, Concept and Policy

Dave Hill, Mike Cole

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780749433703
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134572625
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This text covers the range of equality issues in school level education from the perspective and needs of educators, trainee teachers and students of education. It uses a blend of issues, concepts, facts and research to open up key issues and consider policy developments in the field.

Part I

Policy

I

Equality, ideology and education policy

Dave Hill

Editors’ introduction

Whether equality becomes a fact of life depends on how it is valued, on whether it is seen as an improving or destructive force within social, cultural and economic relationships. Dave Hill gives an account of how equality in the provision of education is assessed within the competing value systems, or ideologies, advocated from the different political positions across the arena of modern British politics. From Left to Right, the main criteria of social policy for socialism, social democracy; liberal-progressivism and conservatism are broadly defined, so that their influence – discriminatory or egalitarian – can be seen in the background history of education policy in England and Wales from 1880. The discussion then tightens into detailed analysis of political principles and post-war education policy, especially the recent evaluations of equality within radical Left and radical Right-wing agendas. Acknowledging the complex and shifting relationship between ideology and policy making, typified by the fracture of neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies within the radical Right, the chapter leads to an incisive assessment of the ideology informing New Labour in government.

Introduction

This chapter examines a number of the ideologies in education that have most influenced education policy and debate in England and Wales, from the Second World War to New Labour.

As political positions differ on the desirability of social and economic equality, so they differ on the need for equality and the equality of opportunity within education. Consequently, the policies that more or less flow from the different ideas and values that compose these ideologies are often explicitly framed in terms of their intention to promote either equality and equality of opportunity, or elitism and an unequal hierarchy of schooling.

The first section of the chapter begins with a definition of ideology.The second section, an historical overview, briefly describes key aspects of the ideologies that have clearly affected education policy from 1945 to the mid-1970s (particularly the ideologies of social democracy, of liberal progressivism and of the radical Left). The third section examines in more depth the political principles of the various ideologies underlying education policy.

The fourth section examines the more recent influence of radical Right ideology on Conservative education policies during the three Thatcher governments of 1979–83, 1983–87 and 1987–90, the two Major administrations of 1990–92 and 1992–97, and policy under the leadership of William Hague.

Since the election of New Labour to government in 1997, has radical Right ideology ceased to inform education policy? In the final section, this question is directly addressed in the analysis of New Labour education policy, and its impact on equality.

The concept of ideology

Ideology can be understood as a more-or-less coherent set of beliefs and attitudes that is regarded as self-evidently true, as ‘common sense’ in opposition to other belief systems. Examples of ideologies are socialism, conservatism, feminism, racism, and theism.

When people and political parties disagree about how society, schooling or the economy should be organized, they justify their views with a particular version of what is right and what is wrong (with a particular version of what is ‘common sense’).

The influence of an ideology can be overwhelming. As Eagleton puts it, ‘What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology’ (Eagleton, 1991: xiii). Althusser (1971) observes how individuals and groups are ‘interpellated’ or’called out to’ by different ideologies. In the ideological ‘Culture Wars’, in the battle over ideas about what is right and what is wrong, people are ‘hailed’ both by dominant ideologies and by oppositional ideologies, each with their variously constructed notions of ‘common sense’.

As an aspect of subjectivity, ideology is contested and commonly inconsistent, arising from multiple forces within different social experiences and histories. Ideological perspectives – and the resulting opinions – derive from and are structured by social class position and from factors such as sexuality, disability, ‘race’, gender, ‘nation’, religion. Ideologies arise substantially from individual and group histories and experiences of material, social and economic relations and conditions.

Ideology as true or false consciousness

There are two main perceptions of ideology in critical thought. The first is negative, viewing ideology as distorted consciousness.The other is positive, where ideology can be the positive expression of the interests and world view or weltangschaaung of a class-located person or group. Such an ideology would be ‘class conscious’.

Firstly, as a negative concept, ‘Ideology may be conceived in eminently negative terms as a critical concept which means a form of false consciousness or necessary deception which somehow distorts men’s (sic) understanding of social reality’ so that ‘the cognitive value of ideas affected by ideology is called into question’ (Larrain, 1979: 13–14). For Marx, ideology is in some respects a distorted consciousness. It conceals social contradictions and conflict (the class struggle) and it does so in the interests of a dominant class (Larrain, 1979:48). In this sense, ideology can create ‘false consciousness’ because it fools people into going along with an exploitative and oppressive system, into thinking, for example, that competitive individualism, consumerism and capitalism are ‘only natural’ (see Chapter 5 of this volume for more examples, drawn from the work of Bourdieu and of Althusser).

Secondly, Marx (and Lukacs, the Hungarian Marxist) also define, in contrast, a fundamentally positive aspect of ideology, which renders it more akin to ‘true consciousness’. Consciousness results from material conditions of existence, people’s everyday conditions of living and working, so the ‘mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. . . (therefore). . . [i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx, 1962: 362 in Eagleton, 1991: 80).

However, the issue is complex.There is no complete congruence or agreement between a social class and its ideology (Eagleton, 1991:100—106); social classes are not homogenous. Furthermore, following Gramsci, the hegemony, or overall dominance, of a particular ideology is strongly contested. There are clashes of opinion, ‘culture wars’ between different ideologies. In the struggle between ideologies, ‘meanings and values are stolen, transformed, appropriated across the frontiers of different classes and groups, surrendered, repossessed, reinflected’ (Eagleton, 1991: 101). Nonetheless, the complexity of the nature of ideology should not mask the link between social class (complex through that notion is too) and class consciousness – in other words, the material basis of ideology.

Left, Right and Centre

This chapter places ideologies along a Left—Right continuum, so it is useful, initially, to explain what this continuum is. The Left-Right ideological continuum is in common use (see, for example, Jones et al, 1991:109–75) and relates principally to economic and social policy (Jones et al, 1998:72–73). Social policy, of course, includes education policy.

Some basic definitions are useful here:

• Politics is the allocation, distribution and control of scarce resources in society, such as wealth, income, education, status, and power. This includes the power to influence ideas and policy, for example through control of the media and of schooling and education, and through control of the law and law enforcement.

• Socialism is a Left-wing ideology founded on the use of the state (local or national), or of other collective means (such as through workers’ control/ownership) to limit or change the power of the ruling capitalist class. Socialists believe in the collective good and social justice, in contrast to an emphasis on selfish individualism. The Lefts major objectives are social/collective control of the economy, the egalitarian redistribution of wealth, income and power in favour of working people and their families. Crucially, the goal of equality for socialists and Marxists to achieve not only the equality of opportunity but far more equality of outcome too. Ultimately, radical or Marxist socialists wish to transform and replace capitalism with socialism – collective and non-exploitative control of the economy.

• Liberal-progressivism is a view of society and education centred on the individual. It is often associated with the ‘permissive’ society of the 1960s, when legislative tolerance replaced the punitive repression of divorce, prostitution, abortion and homosexuality. During the ‘swinging sixties’ liberal-progressivism was championed by the Guardian, facilitated by ‘the pill’ and ‘the women’s movement’ (against exploitation of women) and a reaction against the Victorian authoritarianism still evident in the first half of the 20th century. In schools, this authoritarianism was underpinned by teacher-centred and whole-class-based pedagogy, and corporal punishment. In contrast, liberal-progressivism focuses on the interests and responses of each child, to whom schooling is accountable (along with the teacher).

• The main principles of the Centre (whether liberal progressive or social democratic) in British and West European politics lie in between those of the Left and of the Right. Social democrats and liberal progressives both wish for a fairer economy and society with more equal opportunities and, to an extent, more equal outcomes, while, however, accepting the mixed (private/public sector) economy in which capitalism and private enterprise play the major part.

The Centre (especially the Liberal Party in its various manifestations) has often been associated with liberal-progress...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I: Policy
• 1. Equality, ideology and education policy
• 2. Global capital, neo-liberalism, and privatization: the growth of educational inequality
• 3. Policy, equality and educational research
• 4. Excluded voices: educational exclusion and inclusion
• 5. The National Curriculum, the hidden curriculum and equality
• 6. Promoting equality and equal opportunities: school policies
• Part II: Facts and Concepts
• 7. Social class
• 8. ‘Race’
• 9. Gender
• 10. Sexuality
• 11. Special educational needs
• 12. Policy, equality and inequality: from the past to the future
• Conclusion
• Index