What Kind of Education Is Needed?

The Communist View

Public discussion on the kind of education needed in society today tends to take the form of a debate between the advocates of “scientific” and “humanist” education. The communist view is that education is concerned with the development of the whole human personality, as an individual person and a member of society; that it should be based on science and the scientific method, but that its purpose should equally be the creation of cultured personalities for whom music, art, literature and public affairs are part of the fabric of life.

Such education should be available for the whole community, not merely, as in capitalist society, for an intellectual elite.

The advance of scientific knowledge and the use of scientific method are of primary importance to man because, through enlightenment, they free him from the blind forces of nature, and through labour and struggle enable him to master his environment.

Technological progress in recent times has extended man’s control over nature, to the point where it is possible to provide for all normal material needs. This is the economic base on which the good life for all citizens can be built. Such a life involves the creation, in the broadest sense of a cultured community — a community providing the maximum opportunity for the development of the potential of all its members.

Communists have a lofty view of human powers — mental, moral, and physical: a view of man changing himself and his environment through the exercise of those powers in collective labour.

The promotion of culture involves the all-round development of the whole community, including the care of physical health and welfare, and preparation for working life, as well as the things of the mind and spirit, the sciences and arts.

Far from posing “humanist” and “scientific” concepts of education against each other, Communists seek their synthesis in the production of the whole man, the all-sided personality, for whom all life and experience form a unity.

To what extent can these educational ends be achieved in the class-divided society of capitalism, which has different systems of education for the rulers and the ruled?

It is the opinion of Communists that any developments in the direction of greater equality of opportunity are wholly desirable; that important reforms and improvements can be achieved within the framework of capitalism, and that such improvements will both have an absolute value in themselves, and will assist to pave the way to the planned socialist society of the future.

As to the immediate situation in education in Australia, it is necessary to ensure, in the first place at pre-school, kindergarten, primary and secondary levels, that greatly increased government finance and assistance be directed to the maintenance and development of the State (public) school system, and to the State system alone.

Private and denominational schools are, in essence, the creation of particular groups within the community, schools of privilege or special economic or religious interests, and, in one sense or another, are exclusive. Such an action as that of the Menzies government in using public funds to provide financial assistance to private schools in the A.C.T., especially when public (State) schools throughout Australia are starved of essential equipment and short of staff, is an obvious piece of class legislation, unethical, and contrary to the public interest.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of governments to ensure that the State (public) school buildings, equipment and staff are in accordance with modern requirements, and, as to buildings and amenities, are at least at the standard required by government ordinance.

As matters stand at present, private schools in most States have to meet the requirements of the Health Act; public (State) schools do not. It is not surprising that the general standard of buildings and amenities of the private schools in most States are far superior to those of the State schools.

Education needs to be free, compulsory and secular. There must be no offence to the religious opinions of any student: but any attempt to reintroduce religious influences or controls or ally forms of indoctrination in supernaturalism, can only be harmful.

All pupils should be provided with a minimum body of knowledge to provide for life in the world today, syllabuses should be so designed that scientific principles become part of the child’s intellectual inheritance, and so that appreciation of literature, art, music, form a part of his normal development.

Education should include some systematic training in the manual arts, agriculture or home science, and the child’s physical well-being needs to be safeguarded by adequate grounds, sporting and gymnastic facilities and medical care. Ethical and moral training should be a matter of constant concern of all teachers, and the closest relations in this matter should be maintained between home and school, with facilities provided to ensure that such relations are practicable.

Furthermore moral education needs to go beyond abstract consideration of the “golden rule”, and to provide for the purposeful training, in a practical way in the virtues of co-operative endeavour, international friendship and the equal rights of peoples.

All militarisation, the glamourising of and mental preparation for war, should be excluded from the schools, along with racial discrimination.

Above all, the immorality of nuclear war and positive inculcation of the concept of world peace, need to form part of the regular pattern of teaching.

These are urgent, practical tasks in preparing for life in the atomic age, the age of automation, which, if humanity is to survive, must also be an age of international peace.

Educational developments in the socialist world, and, especially in the Soviet Union, provide striking confirmation of the correctness of communist theory when applied to the education and upbringing of young people.

A brief survey of the spirit and structure of education in the U.S.S.R. should therefore be of profound interest to those interested in education in all countries.

Socialist Theory and Practice

With the rise of socialism and, in particular of Marxism, the kind of education required for a socialist society was first expressed.

Higher education for all became for the first time a serious political objective, and, from the beginning, socialists were not satisfied that the kind of education which had been suitable for a leisure class could be merely taken over and used by a socialist community.

They were critical of an education based on a social division into intellectuals, professional and leisured people, on the one hand, and workers on the other.

In this connection Karl Marx wrote of the need for

an education that will, in the case of every child over a given age, combine productive labour with instruction and gymnastics, not only as one of the methods of adding to the efficiency of production, but as the only method of producing fully developed human beings. [10]

And again:

the combination of remunerative productive labour, mental education, physical exercise and polytechnical training elevates the working class considerably above the level of the higher and middle classes. [11]

Marx was concerned with education for life, for useful people, not education for a leisured class, and he saw the need for maintaining the organic connection between labour and culture.

Both Marx and the other socialists ridiculed the pretensions of the middle and upper class intellectuals, who were usually presented as the highest product of the educational system. They saw them as one-sided people lacking in the all-round development which socialism sets as its objective.

Changing Man

Socialism sees all labour, physical and mental, as a unity, and sets out to end the distinction that exists between them in a class society, by seeking the end-product of the worker-intellectual. The socialist man is an all-round person, at home in physical labour, with technical skills, and a scientific understanding of nature and man’s place in it. A cultured life in socialist society includes physical welfare and an interest in the world of spirit and mind as reflected in the arts and sciences.

Under capitalism, both worker and intellectual tend to be one-sided, partially developed. Socialism sets out to achieve a synthesis in personality, to produce people for whom both productive labour and intellectual life are requirements for satisfactory living. Under communism, the distinction between mental and physical labour, essentially a class distinction, will have disappeared.

The new man, already appearing in socialist society, meets the requirements of the epoch in which mankind through science and automation, takes control of his environment.

Soviet Educational Developments

When the Soviet Union came into existence it was faced with an immense educational task: a population over 80% illiterate; a community of peoples, some of whom did not even have a written language; few universities or training institutes; a very small number of teachers at either university or school level.

In the midst of restoring a wrecked economy, this task was undertaken with such success, that in 15 years the problem of illiteracy was basically solved and each of the constituent republics had an educational system functioning in its own language.