This paper opposesthe view of the individual enshirined in. Thacherism the private persorr in the mardet) and its accompayning ideology of nationalism in favour of social critizenship, collective empowerment and internationalism is then focusses on education, with particular reference to teacher education; on the one hand, as it is currently used to foster com positive individualism and nationalism and on the other, as a potential for encouraging social citizenship, cooperation and internationalism.
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References
1.
The future of Thatcherism looks somewhat uncertain. Thatcherite policies are becoming increasingly unpopular. There have been mass campaigns against the poll tax, a bad Tory defeat in the Mid Staffs by-election in March 1990 and overall. Labour's best election results for 30 years in the May 1990 Council elections (although the Tones are drawing some comfort from the success of thor candidates in the Metropolitan London boroughs). Recent events in the Gulf have not significantly enhanced Thatcher's ratings in the opinion polls, as was the case during the Falklands/Malvinas conflict. The likelihood of enormous casualties, if war were to break out. would probably serve to further undermine her popularity, since the international media would, in this electronic age, beam to every home graphic details of the carnage. Thatcher would be implicated in this because of her high profile involvement in raising the stakes. These events, together with the complete failure to get inflation under control, mav serve to dimintsh the ideological force of Thatcher rhetoric and poltcy.
2.
2 Speech to the Conservative Political Cente, October 1989.
3.
Quoted in Hill, D. (1990a) Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Schooling, Teacher Education and the Radical Right in Britain and the USA, Hillcole Group Paper 3, London: Tufnell Press, p6.
4.
Cole, M. (1989) 'Introduction' to Education for Equality: Some Guidelines for Good Practice, London: Routledge, p9.
5.
Raynor, J. (1989) 'A National or a Nationalist Curriculum'?' in Moon, M., Murphy, P. (eds) Policies for the Curriculum. London: Hodder and Stoughton, p45.
6.
ibid. pp46-47. Thm last aspect of Raynor's analysis is more contentious. It could welt be that some sections of the population are becoming less. rather than more nationalist in response to Euroism and multinational ism.
7.
As far as Britain is concerned, as Peter Taylor-Gooby explains, the main thrust of the attack so far has been against the politically weak. Unemployment benefits have been cut, the majority of the jobless transferred from national insurance to means-tested benefit, entitlement rules made tougher, and the goal of full employment abandoned. Council house spending has collapsed, and official homelessness statistics increased twofold. At the same time betweea 1978/9 and 1986/7 the real value of reliefs on private pensions grew by over 50 per cent, on mortgages by 114 per cent, fringe benefit medical insurance by 400 per cent, and real incomes for those in work increased by 16 per cent. (Taylor-Gooby. 1987) 'Opting Out of the Welfare State', New Socialist, no 53 pp28-9.
8.
A commons Committee Report published in July 1988 revealed that poverty has almost doubled since Mrs Thatcher took office. Nearly one family in five lives on or below the official poverty line. At the same time, the number of benefit claimants has risen from 4.4 to 8.2 million, with another one million eligible for but not claiming benefits. (Daily Mirror, 1 July 1988.)
9.
We are not in total agreement with all the parameters of the debate, but welcome its attempts to move away from Labourism and individualism.
10.
Editorial Introduction Crrtica! Social Policy. Issue 26. Autumn 1989, p4.
11.
Given the historical and ideological genesis and continuities of the Welfare State, it could be argued that this exclusion and reinforcement was and is to a large extent inevitable. (See Cole. M., 1991a) Racism and Srhoolirrg: From the Origins ofthe Welfare State to the Rise of the Radical Right, London: Routledgc.
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Croft, S. and Beresford, P. (1989) 'User-Involvement, Citizenship and Social Policy' in Critical Social Polic.v, Issue 26, Autumn 1989, p5.
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ibid, p15.
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ibid, p5.
15.
ibid, pp5-6
16.
ibid. p6.
17.
ibid, p8.
18.
ibid.
19.
ibid, p15.
20.
ibid. pl6.
21.
Alcock. P. (1989) 'Why Citizenship and Welfare Rights Offer New Hope for New Welfare in Britain' in Critical Social Polrrc, ibid, p39.
22.
ibid, p40.
23.
ibid
24.
ibid, p41.
25.
Taylor, D. (1989) Citizenship and Social Power' in Critical Social Policy ibid, p29. See also Cole, M. (1991) op cit.
26.
Taylor, D.ibid. p27.
27.
23 See the debates In Cole. M. (ed) (1988) Bowles and Gintis Ret-isited: Corresopnderrce and Contradiction in Educational Theory, Lewes: The Falmer Press and the writings of Henry Giroux arguing for a non-deterministic .politics of possibility' for and in schooling and educatton.
28.
Hili. D. (1990a) op cit. See also Grroux. H. (1989) Teachers' as lntellectu4als: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Learning, Massachusetts: Bergm and Harvey
29.
and a series of articles by Giroux and Peter McLaren; for example, Giroux. H. and McLaren. P. ( 1986) 'Teacher Education and the Politics of Engagement: The Case for Democratic Schooling' in Harvard Educational Review, vol 56, no 3.
30.
Cox, C.B. and Dyson, A.E. (eds) (1971) The Black Papers on Educatron. London: Davis-Poynter .
31.
For details, see Cole. M. (1991a) op cit chapter 6 and Cole, M. (1991b) 'British Values, Liberal Values or Values of Justice and Equality: Three Approaches to Education in Multicultural Bntain' and 'Reply to Mal Leicester' in Lynch, J., Modgil, C. and Modgil. S. (eds) Equity or Excellence Education and Cultural Reprodu (,tion. Lewes: Falmer Press.
32.
Jones, K. (1989) Right Turn. The Cotisertative Revolution in Educatrorr . London: Hutchinson Radius, pp 19-20.
33.
Baker, K. (1987) quoted in Matthews. B. ( 1989) 'Chaining the Brain: Structural Discriminations in Testing' in Cole, M. (ed) The Social Contexts of Schooling. Lewes: The Falmer Press, pp205-6.
34.
Baker, K. (1987) Speech to the Conservative Party Conference 7th October. Conservative Central Office.
35.
Jones, K.op cit, p23.
36.
ibid, pp23-24,
37.
ibid, p24.
38.
ibid, pp24-25. As weil as delivering ERA and the national curriculum, Baker also colluded with the media's use of the cultural themes of the Radical Right against local authority policies, particularly to make a case agamst antiracism. Owing to severe central government cuts and the resultant strains such as ratepayers' protests at uses in rates and trade union action agamst cuts in services that the councils had passed on, local governments were in crisis from the early 1980s. In this context and of course in the context of the ascendancy of the Radical Right in general, the noble attempts by local education authorities to introduce new projects to promote equality such as antiracist initiatives were able to be exploited for political gain. (ibid, p27). As Jones explains: 'Labour could be presented as the mere defender of minority causes, which had no purchase on the major issues of the educational agenda. Where these causes were not irrelevant, they were positively malign in their effects on family life and cultural cohesion. In this attack on "loony leftism". mmisters increasingly drew their weapons from the armoury of right-wing thought: the ideas of culture and nation developed on the right became central to the offensive against Labour in local government. Race and sexuality became front-line issues.' (ibid, p27). Thus Baker was able to reinstate Maureen McGoldrick accused of racism by 'loony left' Brent Education Authority. Furthermore, after accusations in the Mail on Sunday that that authority's 'Development Programme for Race Equality' involved the use of 'race spies' and in the wake of a BBC Panorama documentary which further developed themes of extremism and oppression, he was able in the run-up to the 1987 election to refer to Brent as an authority from which parents would leap at the chance of opting out of local authority control - a key feature of the imminent Education Reform Act (ibid, pp28-29).
39.
Whuty, G. and Menter, I. (1989) 'Lessons of Thatcherism - Education Policy in England and Wales 1979-1988', Journal of Law and Society, vol 16, no. 1 Spring
40.
, quoted in Flude, M. and Hamper, M. (1990) The Education Reform Act 1988: Its Origins and Implications. Lewes: The Falmer Press.
41.
Des (1985) Education for All (The Swann Report), Cmnd 9453, London: HMSO.
42.
Davies, A.M., Holland, J. and Minhas, R. (1990) Equal Opportunities in the New Era, Hillcole Group Paper 2, London: Tufnell Press, p21.
43.
Des (1988) Science for Ages 5 to 16. London: HMSO, 17.16, p92.
44.
Hill, D. (1990a) op cit, p15. The decade of media attacks on egalitarianism ('race', class and gender) in schools and in education is also set out in Hill, D. (1989) The Charge of the Right Brigade. Brighton: Institute for Education Policy Studies.
45.
O'Hear, A. (1988) Who Teaches the Teachers? A Contribution to Public Debate. London: Social Affairs Unit , quoted in Hill, D. (1990) op cit, p16.
46.
O'Keefe, D. (1990) The Wayward Elite, London: The Adam Smith Institute.
47.
The Hillgate Group (1986) Whose Schools: A Radical Manifesto. London: Hillgate, quoted in Hill, D. (1990) op cit, p17.
48.
Shaw. B.'Teacher Training : The Misdirection of British Teaching' in O'Keefe, D. (ed), op cit quoted in Hill, D. (1990) ibid, p16.
49.
The Hitlgate Group (1989) Learning to Teach. London: The Claridge Press. The overt justification given by the DES for this scheme is that they are responding to the demographic changes whereby fewer 18 year olds will be available for recruitment into teacher education and that these two routes would also address the chronic teacher shortage that has become more evident with the introduction of the national curriculum. The training that licensees are to receive need not involve the expertise available in teacher education institutions and could be entirely school based under the tutelage of 'teacher mentors'. This route into teaching satisfies people like Baroness Cox and Anthony O'Hear. They have praised independent schools for long knowing the value of appomting teachers who have not been through teacher education courses. The ubiquitous Cox has described teacher training qualifications as 'an expensive restrictive practice'. (Cox. C. (r989) 'Unqualified Approval' in the rimes Educational Supplement). There are no valid reasons for the Licensed Teacher route (other than in a very few exceptional cases involvmg primarily overseas trained teachers) and this must therefore be seen as nothing more than a crude attempt based on the ideology of the Radical Right to clip the wings of the teacher education institutions, in their eccentric minds, centres of Left-wing propaganda. There can be no doubt that further attempts will be made to enable the licensed teacher scheme, or variations on it, to become a viable alternative to the present B.Ed and PGCE routes, a route by which new teachers will enter classrooms 'uncontaminated' by both liberal and socialist teacher educators. Despite the fact that 49 out of the 97 LEAs in England had applied for DES funds to train licensed teachers, the scheme has so far been a flop. The government has also introduced an Articled Teacher Scheme where apprentice teachers train on the job. This is a two year PGCE with 80 per cent of a student's time being spent in school. For a critique of school-based teacher education, see Hill, D. (1990b) Initial Teacher Education and the Development of Teachers as Reflective Transformative Intetlectuals , a paper presented to the British Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, London: Roehampton Institute
50.
See O'Keefe, D. (1990) The Wayward Elite, London: the Adam Smith Institute and Lawlor. S. (1990) Teachers Mistaught: Traintng in Theories or Education in Subjects? London: Centre for Policy Studies.
51.
Department of Education and Science (1989) Initial Teacher Training: Approval of Courses Circular 24/89London: HMSO. Sexton, S. (1987) Our Schools - A Radical Policy, London: Institute for Economic Affairs, O'Keefe, D. (ed) (1986) The Wayward Curriculum: A Cause for Parents' Concern. London: Social Affairs Unit, O'Keefe , D. (1990) The Wayward Elite. London: The Adam Smith Institute.
52.
Hill, D. (1989) The Charge of the Right Brigade, op cit.
53.
Ball, S. (1990) Markets, Morality and Equality in Education. Hilicole Group Paper no 5, London: Tufnell Press, p1.
54.
ibid, pp2-3.
55.
Simon, B. (1989) 'Lessons in Elitism' in Marxism Today, September.
56.
Dale, R. ( 1989/1990), 'The Thatcherite Project in Education: the Case of the City Technology Colleges' in Critical Social Policy, Issue 27, Winter, p6.
57.
ibid, p8.
58.
ibid, p9.
59.
Kenneth Baker.Speech to the Conservative Party Conference1986 , quoted in Dale, R. (1989/1990) ibid , p10.
60.
Dale, R.ibid, p11
61.
As Michael Stoten has put it, 'The fundamental aims of educational progress and improvement must always be the same: to raise standards, attainment and life chances. In other words, to promote excellence ... Without equality excellence can only be partial and the divide between those who have success and those who don't will become greater. Without excellence those who suffer from inequality will not be able to play a futl part themselves in combatting and redressing discrimination and disadvantage ... All learners are of equal value and have unlimited potential for development' (Stoten , M., 1987) Equality and Excellence - A Framework for the Development of the Education Service in Brent. Brent Education Department, 25 June.
62.
Menter, I. (1989) Teaching Practice Stasis: Racism, Sexism and School Experience in Initial Teacher Education' in British Journal of Sociology of Education, vol 10 no 4, p471.
63.
Jones. C. and Street-Porter, R. ( 1989) 'The Special Role of Teacher Education' in Cole, M. (ed) op cit, p223.
64.
ibid, p221.
65.
See Cole, M. (1991b) op cit for a discussion of 'British Values' in the context of education in multicultural Britain.
