Re: The New Left and education (Australian context)

["Rosie Williams" <rosiewilliams575@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

With the attention that Labor frontbencher Mark Latham has been
recieveing in the media lately I thought it worth looking over his
writings on education, given my interest in education.

If the Labor Party is basing its endeavours on such background
ideas as are found in Latham's writings (Civilising Global Capital,
1998 and What did you Learn Today? 2001), it would appear that the
Labor Party in Australia is pursuing an agenda which does not seem
to have a basis in class analysis. It appears to me that it posits
education as a commodity (although self-perpetuating) which can
enable the economic participation of individuals in the existing
system rather than any acknowledgement that the system will exclude
individuals as a prerequisite to its functioning, regardless of
their personal potential. Latham would appear to be one of the most
influential Labor politicians of the moment so his underlying
attitudes, beleifs and explanations of disadvantage would seem to
be significant.

Latham couches his motivations for pusing an agenda of investment
in education as due to the inevitability of global economy/capital
on domestic employment markets. Investment in education is seen as
the best way for both individuals and the domestic economy to
compete in the new gloabl market. "The capacity of the nation state
and its governance to halt the spread of globalisation and the pace
of social change is not strong...This means using the learning
process to empower people to act in new ways - to develop new
skills and personal cpacity, so that change can be treated more as
an opportunity than a threat" (p233, Civilising Global Capital,
1998).

I would point out that his use of words such as opportunity are
indicative of a comittment to market economy principles and all the
fallacies of benefit of the economic rationalist ideals that it
implies. I am yet to find recognition in his writings that market
economies systematically exclude people materially and socially and
that any policy that attempts only to relocate access of
individuals to participate in this competitive market from the
basis of possiession of one form of cultural capital to another
does nothing other than endorse those processes of exclusion. There
is no acknowledgment in Latham's writings that education is an
active proces of exclusion via the role played by market forces
defining what is or is not valorised/reified as culturally worthy.

Variations in learning capability (which lead to inhibited market
competitativeness) are seen to originate in the home environment
and Latham advocates they are to be ameliorated there:

"In many areas, especially those suffering from intergenerational
unemployment, schools have not been able to break the cycle of
disadvantage arising in the home. In the reform of schools policy
new measures are needed to address the variations in learning
capability which students carry with them from the home learning
environment...For parents dependent on welfare support there can be
no excuse for not upgrading their skills and effectiveness as
educators in the home...Sanctions should be applied to those
transfer payment recipients unwilling to accept their proper
responsibilities as home educators"(op sit,p245). As the home
educating sole parent pensioner of a profoundly gifted child who
can not be properly catered for in the existing education system it
is easy for me to find fault with his logic, not to mention the
patronising/threatening tenor of his words.

I am in the process of beginning an electronic journal which seeks
to provide a forum to support the critical (in both senses of the
word) self-consciousness of the role of education in Australian
society. I would be interested in any critique of what Latham (and
the Labor Party has to say about education, perhaps with any
differentiation delineated) to assist me in forming my own opinons
and also as contributions to the journal which is in the earliest
stages of organisation. If anyone can provide advice and support in
the organisation of such a venture in any of its emerging facets it
would be much appreciated. I have set up an email forum for
discussion of organisational facets and reflection on the
philosophical, political and sociological premises on which the
endeavour is based. Feedback would be welcome:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minorities_in_education
http://www.ispdr.net.au/~arisres

Rosie


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