While Healey sharpens the axe for the next public sector cuts; while the bureaucracy of the National Union of Teachers mixes gestures of protest (outside school hours) with abject capitulation; while tne "Rank & File' grouping seeks to head teachers away from the main issues that workers face by centring its demands on class size and teaching load.....tne Conference of Socialist Teachers will be meetBut one of the obstacles that socialist teachers now face is this: a few steps behind the cuts, a rightwing movement is developing that aims to drive a wedge between teachers and other workers, by pinning the blame for the crisis not onto Government policies of education on the cheap but onto 'left-wing' teachers. William Tyndale School is the latest example of this.
How well are teachers equipped to deal with the threat from the right? The answer is that they are seriously handicapped by their traditional special relationship' with the State. "technological society' For its part the labour movement, content with the expansion of education and the growth of comprehensives, was quite willing to hand over the organisation of learning to the experts.
The policies of the "progressives really came into their own during the long post-war boom, when the "expansion demand matched the needs and capabilities of capitalism. It was then that team and inter-disciplinary teaching, and 'child-centred' learning, came into their own as State-backed projects. These changes, it was claimed, could both "make school more agreeable to all its members [the working class] and meet the functional requirements of society [capitalism] more effectively.
But the circle could not be squared like this. A policy of expansion on the cheap, with few purposebuilt schools, was thrown into confusion as the 'equal opportunity' offered to working class children in school was exposed as a fraud by the workings of the labour market outside. They began to use the space given them by "progressive" methods to express resistance to the whole education process. - 230 2150 Tyndale headmaster Terry Ellis ever old hat the educational ideas here, politically this represents a new and dangerous development. The aim is to win workers' support for policies that are a smokescreen for the cuts crisis, and thus to promote authoritarian solutions to the social crisis as a whole.
BBC1 9.25 defeat the right.
Against this, the Tyndale teach- workers movement.
The Days of Hope series ended with a highpoint of the British class struggle, the 1926 General Strike. Again, surprisingly little was seen directly of the masses in action, although their advances in self-organisation and education were the major gain to be set against scratch, in nine days — what couldn't But this aspect was largely sacrificed. by Allen-Garnett-Loach for an over-ex tended examination of the traitorous activity of the TUC leaders - Thomas, Pugh and Citrine, unwillingly abetted withdrew their support from the miners after nine days, despite the fact that the mine-owners still intended to press ahead This expose, although brilliantly depicted, was the repulsive class collaboration of J.H. Thomas with the Tories and bosses was pointed out not SORE THUMBS The experience of the masses, who were rapidly growing in stature and con The one or two scenes in the film which did illustrate this cruers are demanding an 'independent inquiry to clear up the affair. But this approach suffers from all the illusions foisted on teachers by their involvement with a progressive wing of the State. In no way can it win the support from trade unionists which is essential to Nor should the Tyndale affair be seen as a fight between the progressives' of the Inner London Education Authority and the Islington Labour Party. ILEA, which over the last year has tried to victimise strikers and gays, is only too willing to use William Tyndale to further repress and isolate teacher militants. It knows that success here will strengthen its hand for the coming battles over the cuts.
It is 50 years since a Labour Party conference passed a soon-forgotten resolution calling for a workers' inquiry into education to determine how the present books.. used in schools, and the predominant methods of teaching...foster bourgeois psychology and to how far, under a workers' administration, this might be counteracted and a proletarian attitude might be cultivated".
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ing on 25-26 October to discuss how teachers can be organised together with other workers on demands that can throw back Wilson's efforts to make the working class pay for the crisis