Scapegoating in Education

Recently Tory MP Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, endorsed the views of a ‘US education expert’ Michelle Rhee¹. Her views are neither new, nor will they raise standards, but they are likely to be adopted by Mr Gove apparently in order to “transform [disadvantaged] schools”. Let’s investigate why.

                The context of these ‘reforms’ (counter-reforms) is of course a British government with over a trillion pounds worth of debt (£1,000,000,000,000), a stalling economy which is likely to enter into a recession soon (down 0.2% Q1 year-on-year), rising unemployment (8.2% of work-force) and a tremendous budget deficit (8.2% GDP or £140,000,000,000)². These objective conditions call for a government committed to capitalism, which of course the coalition is, to implement draconian cuts so these debts don’t spiral out of control.

                Assuming the government borrowed money at an annual rate of 5%, which is a reasonable assumption, each year they will have to pay back £50,000,000,000 to their creditors just to cover the interest. That is approximately 3% of the whole GDP of Britain!! Furthermore, since there is a significant budget deficit, the debt is growing rapidly. This is clearly unsustainable. Therefore since substantial growth on a capitalist basis is ruled out in Britain in the foreseeable future, any government without a militant socialist programme must implement tremendous cuts to reduce their spending.

This explains why the Coalition government, led by the Tories, have implemented cuts in all parts of the public sector and welfare state. Recently, even the police were tempted to strike, and the doctors actually did strike, much to the chagrin of the government. This was because these workers, traditionally quite conservative workers, understood that the government in their respective sectors would only damage the quality of service provided and their quality of life so the Government’s finances could be improved. Teachers went on strike recently too for the same reason.

In education the coalition has already, among other things, reduced spending on schools and universities, frozen wages of workers (real term cuts), increased the retirement age and decreased pension payments. All of these changes result in a poorer education for students and a worse quality of life for teachers.

In education less money means at least one, if not all, of the following changes: less books, less stationary, less equipment, worse technology, poorer food, worse buildings, poorer furniture, less qualified teachers and increased class sizes. Fortunately for the ministers, they are paid such a wage that they can afford to protect their children from such unpleasantness and send them to private schools.

 However the public cannot and they rightfully demand an explanation for these declining standards and a worsening quality of provision. The government cannot admit that since it is committed to saving the banks, as their parties have destroyed all other major sections of the British economy over the last thirty years, that they are not prepared to re-open the latter, and that they have and will spend any amount of the tax payer’s money on the banks, students and teachers in schools have to suffer. Someone else must take the blame.

In steps Michelle Rhee who has ‘earned a reputation as a "witchfinder general of the classroom" in the US, identifying under-performing teachers and forcing them out of the profession’¹. The primary problem in education in her opinion, and in Michael Gove’s, is not the cuts, not the increasing class-sizes, lack of text books, paper and pens, but the teachers. Conveniently this solution costs essentially nothing, just the cost of employing a group of ‘experts’ to ‘inspect’ (bully and harass) teachers who are performing relatively worse than others, in terms of statistics, and force them out of the profession. Moreover, it helps to perpetuate the Tory myth that public sector workers are lazy and incompetent. Brilliant!

However, ignoring the fact that comparatively there will always be better and worse teachers, and that therefore the poorest performing, relatively speaking,  will be living in perpetual fear of losing their jobs every day, even if they are doing a good job in an absolute sense; ignoring the fact that this will result in many competent teachers leaving the profession by choice or otherwise and will scare many potentially excellent teachers away from education; ignoring the fact that this will increase the stress of the work-force tremendously, increasing the number of staff on sick-leave and decrease the quality of teaching; ignoring the fact that not everything a teacher does can be measured by statistics and conveniently made into a number, there is one small problem with the proposal: it totally ignores the damage done by the government to education which is the primary cause of regression in standards today!

In other words, even if such a monstrous scheme were to be implemented effectively, which is impossible, the quality of education will be most significantly affected by government cuts and the net effect will be a poorer quality of education overall.

In this epoch, a commitment to capitalism is a commitment to cuts and to lowering the standards of state provision. This is the primary cause of declining standards in education today, not ‘under-performing’ teachers. Only a genuine socialist government with a genuine socialist program can reverse such a trend. Anything else is just smoke and mirrors.

1.       The Independent 27^th June 2012
2.       Statistics taken from The Economist Jul 14^th 2012 edition and The Economist’s Pocket World in Figures 2012

Thatcher’s Actual Legacy- Castles in the Sky

Hollywood’s release of The Iron Lady at a time when the Conservatives are back in government in Britain, and moreover during an economic crisis, is terribly suspect and suggests yet again an uncomfortably strong link between the ruling class in Britain and powerful media companies. Whether or not the film was intentionally propagandistic, the film has ignited a debate about Thatcher and Tory policies in both Britain and America.

The film perpetuates the myth that Thatcher was a tough but brave leader who made very difficult and unpopular decisions but did what was necessary for the country in difficult times. The implicit class condescension, making difficult but necessary decisions for the people which the latter couldn’t possibly understand, is typical of conservative propaganda. Let’s investigate whether or not there is any basis to it.

In an article on Wikipedia, it is written that in 1979: “After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher … emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions.” Let’s analyse the legacy of such policies.

De-regulation of the financial sector generally, and in London in particular, has in the long term contributed to and exacerbated the greatest economic crisis in history. Bankers were encouraged to de-regulate, a policy supposedly based on the neo-liberal economics their bourgeois stooges were conjuring out of their heads at the time. The ‘free market’ (capitalism) was supposed to drive innovation through competition with companies breaking their necks to produce the best services for ‘consumers’. They could only do this if the state didn’t go meddling in ‘their’ affairs. Whether or not they actually believed that these theories had any basis is hard to establish. What is certain, though, is that their policies have been shown to be complete balderdash.

Coming to power at a time of heightened class struggle in a period of economic stagnation, Thatcher inherited a militant working class movement. This in her opinion was one of the most potent factors contributing to Britain’s declining world position and economy. Taking on the working class and defeating the trade unions would reverse the trend. Typically, workers wanting decent working and living conditions were seen as the enemy. Thatcher took on many sectors of the working class, most notably the miners, and won, defeating militant strike movements using police brutality and criminalising many ordinary forms of industrial action; the leaders of the labour movement being reluctant to cross the legal threshold.

Not content with this victory, Thatcher and the Tories shut down a significant proportion of British Industry wholesale. For example, by 1990, 97 out of 174 (56%) state-owned mines had been shut down completely, the remaining 44% being privatised. Eventually 150 suffered the former fate. This devastated the communities in which the miners worked, increasing unemployment in those communities to unprecedented heights. Many, if not all of those communities today are still suffering from these closures.

An infant can understand that this policy’s primary aim was to rid Britain of the most militant section of the working class; “the enemy within” in Thatcher’s own words. But the Tories had the audacity to suggest that Britain didn’t need its own industry. Apparently we could have a prosperous economy based almost entirely on finance and the service sector in ‘The City’. Apparently we would make so much money from these sectors that we could import all of the things we used to produce without any disadvantages. Again this has been shown, in the long term, to be nonsense. Britain’s economy is predicted to grow by only 0.3% this coming year (i.e. by nothing). Thatcher’s policies have caught up with Britain, policies continued under Brown and Blair whilst the conservative party were too unpopular to remain in power.

Having a prosperous society based almost completely on finance capital was a utopian fantasy dreamt up by the conservatives. It was an attempt to solve the problems of Britain on a capitalist basis which is impossible.

As Marx explained it is the contradictions of capitalism which causes economic crises: the continual driving down of wages whilst prices continually rise; the lack of a planned economy in a society with very definite needs; the concentration of capital and the increasing productivity of labour welding the labourer to the machine for longer and longer hours. The policies of Thatcher had no scientific content and were the desperate attempt of a class in terminal decline to resurrect the system which they represented, at any cost.

Today, the coalition government are continuing with the same policies of Thatcher. They have frozen wages and fired workers at a time of depressed demand. They have even refused to regulate The City, to the amazement of Europe, at a time when no-one doubts that this contributed to the crisis. They are attempting to privatise not only the NHS but the education system. In the words of Trotsky, they are “tobogganing to disaster with closed eyes.” Unfortunately, they are not being opposed in any meaningful way by the Labour Party.

Ed Miliband and the reformist Labour Party leaders are not opposing cuts to public services and privatisation in general but are only opposed to the rate at which they happen. They are not supporting workers in struggle but are opposing their industrial action on the grounds of national unity. They too believe that this crisis can be solved on a capitalist basis, but a more ethical and responsible capitalism, yet they fawn before The City and capital in general. They are trying to square the circle!

George Galloway’s recent landslide victory in Bradford is proof that the old argument made by Labour party tops that left wing policies are un-electable is rot. Labour will only gain strong support with a radical socialist program to oppose cuts and build a sustainable economy. There is no alternative. Until that happens, the coalition will stumble from one disaster to another as their heroine did.