Brian Salter

The Great Debate: making an ideology

Subtitle: ACIs environment manager, Xavier Oh, reports on what the worlds airports are doing to combat climate change.

Elite Ideologies in Conflict : the Case of Higher Education

Writing in 1961, A. H. Halsey argued that the ‘pedagogy of cultivation’, or higher education as the cultivation of a chosen few for a distinctive life-style as a status group, has persisted in England as a core element of ‘ideology, planning and decision making at the highest levels’.1 The university is portrayed here as a critical cementing agent in the maintenance of elite solidarity and consciousness. Seven years later, post-Robbins, post massive university expansion, he reiterates this point of view and describes the ‘historical continuity ... of de facto control of elitist institutions [i.e. the universities] by likeminded members of the elite’.2 This, he observes, demonstrates in turn ‘the extraordinary stability of the British system of elite recruitment to positions of political, industrial or bureaucratic power’.3 What we intend to do in this chapter is to show that at the ideological level Halsey is completely wrong. Far from there being an elite consensus on the purposes of higher education, there is in fact a severe elite conflict between positions with such substantial and opposing structural roots that they cannot be reconciled.

Youth Culture and Political Discontent

The development of political discontent amongst school-students is a severe embarrassment not only to the school authorities but also to those theorists who hold that the school forms part of a harmonious learning experience producing largely harmonious results. Ironically, this group includes both bourgeois political scientists and Marxist sociologists. On the one hand, political socialisation theorists maintain that the school reinforces the learning of supportive attitudes already begun in the family and on the other hand, many Marxist sociologists argue that the school is an instrument of social control perpetuating the hegemony of the ruling class. Both assume the socialisation experience to be an integrated process in which the various component parts interlink without too much difficulty. Yet as we have shown in Chapter 5, political opposition has emerged within the school itself and among those who should be passing without complaint along the socialisation conveyor belt — the school-students. It is a clear example of the inadequacies of integrated models of socialisation which do not allow for diversity and discontinuity at both the individual and system levels of analysis.

Education and Political Change in Britain

The central purpose of this book has been to present a political perspective of the British educational system. Up to the present, political scientists — in contrast to sociologists, psychologists and economists have devoted little of their attention to formal education. The study of political socialisation contains most of what political scientists have to say on this topic but, given their concentration upon the family, this has not amounted to much, and in any case we are sceptical of the theoretical foundations of this literature. This reticence is ironic in view of the fact that many social scientists have recognised the ultimately political purpose of formal education — to reinforce established patterns of political power. In the course of this book we have tried to show how the British educational system fulfils this task, and equally important, what constraints prevent its successful accomplishment.

Education and the Hegemony of the British Ruling Class

Power in British society is not shared equally amongst either individuals or the groups that make up the social fabric. The disagreements are considerable as to how inequitable the power distribution is and while some see small differentials others believe that power in contemporary British society is as unequally distributed as ever. The relationship between perceptions of inequality and a moral evaluation of it is far from simple. For some the moral outrage at the injustices of inegalitarianism knows few bounds, while others are prepared to justify gross inequalities or voice their concern at the steady erosion of power differentials. Another group accepts inequality as either inevitable or desirable but would wish to see it based upon new, invariably more meritocratic, foundations. The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the case that a morally reprehensible inegalitarianism still exists in Britain. We are analysing this perspective in preference to the others because it is one that is widely supported, because it has a strong theoretical and empirical basis, and because it challenges some of our own assumptions about how the distribution of power in contemporary British society is perpetuated.

Political Activism Among School-Students

One of the more interesting features of the past fifteen years of politics in Britain has been the unexpected politicisation of groups previously quiescent. Students, women, homosexuals, prisoners and various types of local community groups are the more obvious examples of fresh faces on the political scene. In many cases these new types of political activism are characterised not only by the unexpected nature of their sudden emergence but also, a related point, by their simultaneous rejection of a prescribed social role. They have frequently assumed a different political role (that is, active rather than passive) and have campaigned for a redefinition of their social role. Clearly these two aspects are inter-related since the social role in question often included the characteristics of passivity and subordination.

Political Education: its Emergence as a Curriculum Innovation

Many persons have referred to the fact that political education in British schools has been taught mainly in an implicit and indirect fashion.1 The efficacy of this is challenged by the proponents of political education and their aim is to place the teaching of politics in the curriculum on the same basis as the traditional subjects so that it forms an identifiable part of the weekly if not the daily lessons. The Politics Association, through its mouthpiece, the journal Teaching Politics has been pushing this line since its inception in 1969.2 The Association’s efforts have been reinforced by a series of B.B.C. radio programmes that discussed the pitfalls, and more noticeably, the benefits of political education, and the launching of a research project to set up and monitor school-based courses in political education.3 The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the pressures behind this drive to place the teaching of politics in schools on a more formal basis. It is of interest to us because of the very explicit understanding of political education its advocates have been forced to evolve. This contrasts vividly with several of our other chapters which draw out the political implications of education from sociological and economic data. Whereas contemporary educational elites have been concerned with the economic implications of the educational system, this chapter examines one response to the present challenge, so much of which is emerging within the educational institutions, to our established political values.

From Political Socialisation to Political Education

In the 1960s the study of political socialisation blossomed into an important subdiscipline within the political science profession. Thanks to his synopsis of the pertinent literature, which was published in 1959 under the title Political Socialization Herbert Hyman is invariably credited with triggering off this research boom.2 After ten years of flourishing field work Fred Greenstein, probably the most prolific and sophisticated political scientist engaged in this subdiscipline, could still describe the research in political socialisation as a growth stock.3 His quantitative measure was the number of American Political Science Association members who in 1968 listed political socialisation as one of their professional interests.4 Furthermore as the 1960s progressed so the number of political socialisation publications increased.5 On the basis of these kinds of quantitative measures this interest has not abated, and in 1973 Dennis felt that the foundations of political socialisation research were so secure that the future could be devoted to filling in ‘the gaps in present empirical knowledge’ and to crystallising ‘current new developments’.6

Class, Education and Politics in Britain

In an introduction to a section entitled ‘Education and Politics’ of an Open University set text B. R. Cosin has written, ‘What I am attempting, therefore, in this part of the Reader, is less to set out even a basic introduction to one conceptual scheme than to outline elements of three such schemes, which may be displayed as more or less common to both sociology and the study of politics. This is a fortunate overlap, since the socio-political study of education is overwhelmingly sociological rather than political.’1 Although the disciplinary overlap of these conceptual schemes may have helped Cosin to overcome a dilemma in the organisation of his book, it is to be regretted that he was forced to pursue such a tactic in order to incorporate material on education and politics. In spite of our regrets Cosin is undoubtedly correct in his assessment of the paucity of political material in the socio-political study of education. The purpose of this book is to increase the percentage of that political material in three complementary ways: by collating and analysing the information that already exists (the field is not quite as barren as Cosin implies), by drawing out clearly and systematically the political elements that are to be found within the literature of educational sociology, and by presenting collections of our own data.

Social Stratification in Higher Education: the Preservation of Traditional Patterns

Although the educational elite is undeniably split in its conception of what higher education is, or should be, about, it is another question altogether whether this has any significant de-stabilising functions for the system as a whole. Intra-class conflict of this nature may be a periodic necessity endured by the elite as it shifts its posture towards a changing environment, while at the same time resting assured of ongoing support mechanisms. On the other hand, an emergent educational ideology may serve to undermine the efficacy of these mechanisms in a too hasty redefinition of elite needs. There is little doubt that many of the upholders of the traditional university ideal were wary of the expansionist implications of the manpower planning approach to higher education for precisely this reason. The Niblett Report, for example, was as we have shown expressly concerned with the desirability of keeping a close rein on the students from non-university backgrounds.1