“A Marxist Education – Learning to
Change the World,” by Wayne Au, 2018
I’ll bet you didn’t think Marxism had anything to do
with teaching? Well, think again. Au is a prominent activist in Seattle who is
influential in fighting ‘one size fits all’ testing, charter schools,
profiteering, Bill Gates and rote, hegemonic corporate education. This book fleshes out his ideas, using
dialectical materialism and people like Paulo Freire, Lev Vigotsky and V.I.
Lenin to make the case for a transformational form of teaching.
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| Dialectic Spirals... |
Au starts with a brief introduction to dialectics and
materialism. He shows that these did not
just originate in ‘ancient’ Greece
or with Hegel or Marx, but in early Chinese philosophy, with some Egyptian
concepts and in Aztec ideas of the universe.
As any one who has studied the development of ideas, they arise in
different places because they respond to something universal in human
society. You only have to look at the Chinese
‘yin-yang’ symbol to see several aspects of dialectics in visual form. He challenges those who see Marxism as a
‘white man’s’ philosophy, given its reality among the proletariat in every country
in the world, including U.S.
black and Latino/a communities. As you might
imagine, he is a rarity as an education professor in the U.S.
In the process, Au takes on neo-Marxism or bad
readings of Gramsci and Althusser which attempt to downplay Marx’s emphasis on
economics, as false readings of Marx.
This debate centers around arguments about ‘base,’ ‘superstructure’ and
the supposed consequence of ‘economic determinism.’ Au concludes that schools are both sites of
indoctrination and control, but also resistance. Yet in the end, Au states that
“…the general functioning of schools cannot contradict the capitalist economic
base.”
On to the specifically educational material!
CHARTER SCHOOLS
Au’s statistics indicate that 60% of outcomes in U.S. education
are determined by the social environment children live in. Only 20% is due to the schools
themselves. This should be a ‘duh’ fact, but it is ignored in the
clueless hysteria against teachers and public schools. His stats also show that charter schools
either do as well as or worse than public schools. That is not counting their segregationist, anti-democratic,
fraudulent, anti-union, privatizing, real estate or ‘exclusive’ sides, where
they pick their student body and still have a higher rate of expulsions than
public schools. He shows instances of
charter schools that even after failing are allowed to keep all the public
assets they purloined. This is another
example of the ‘enclosure of the commons’ - which is still going on.
TESTING
Neo-liberalism is the prime culprit in our present
educational system, as it is everywhere else.
A market-driven approach to education fails society and students, and
only enriches corporations and a strata of education profiteers. Students become ‘consumers’ instead of
learners. Au sees ‘quantification’ as
key to neo-liberalism, which is why “No Child Left Behind” and ‘Common Core’
testing is pushed. Studies show that the
conditions in which the test is given influence 50-80% of student performance
on that test. Testing companies use
shabby, quick piece work methods to
score those tests. Unlike the bogus
concern for minorities, standardized tests are actually constructed to make
minorities and economic disadvantaged students fail. The NAACP and BLM have both come out against
charters and this kind of testing. Au
led a struggle started at Garfield High in Seattle against corporate
testing and it was successful. In this
context, the ‘benevolent’ Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was key in bringing
rote testing and charter schools to the U.S.
and to Washington
state. When you see the Gates Foundation
involved, run.
THEORY
Au studied both Lenin and Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky. He makes a somewhat labored case that
‘learning’ in either the class struggle or as a student occur in similar
ways. Most people start at a spontaneous
or emotional level, and only through dealing with the increasing contradictions
and challenges that develop can they rise to a more broad view of what is
actually going on. In the same way, the
job of a teacher or a revolutionary is to guide students or workers towards a
greater, more scientific understanding.
At the same time the teacher or revolutionary is also learning – it is a
dialectical, feedback process for both. This
process also flows into an understanding of auto didacticism, where people
learn on their own through books, film or experiences.
Au seems to think there are only two stages of
understanding, which actually hides a whole ‘process’ that might leave someone in
the middle, at a partial point. Much as
various kinds of ‘reformism’ are midway points between the status quo or
economic labor struggle only, and a revolutionary position. Or a partial understanding of some academic
topic, like algebra, which a student feels he will never need to know in full. Refusing to learn can also be a part of
directed learning.
FREIRE
Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Freire wrote “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and “Education for Critical Consciousness”
long ago, and both books are now foundational to some forms of teaching. Au tries to rescue Freire from liberal
educators who don’t understand Freire’s basis in dialectics and materialism. Essentially,
Freire thought that seeing the submerged structure of society allows students
to possibly break free from its constraints, and even … change it. In this chapter, he uses an example of
teaching ‘whiteness.’ Au seems not to
have realized the biologic fact that there is only one race, the human
race. So his Freire-like example for
students of deconstructing ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ as social constructs is
marred at a very definitional level. Accepting
the concept of ‘more than one race’ actually plays into the hands of
racists.
Freire borrowed from Soviet literary and
communications theorist Mikhail Bakhitin’s theory of the ‘dialogic’ – a
dialogue method based on dialectics.
In another example, Au takes apart a white woman
teacher who claimed that she could not teach or discuss racism with her
students because she was white. Au
counters his kind of guilt-laden identity politics, which actually reinforces
racism. He points out that if
‘intersectionality’ is true, then being ‘white’ is not a prohibition from
either understanding parts of racism or fighting institutional racism. Of course, intersectionality is only a half-way point to understanding that some 'intersections' have much more weight than others.
CURRICULUM
Au notes that curriculum is a crucial battle-ground
nationally, in school districts and in individual schools. He makes the point that there is no neutral
curriculum. As such objective reality
exists as part of our ‘standpoint’ perceptions, and the goal is to encompass
that reality from that standpoint. In
one instance, Au shows how fossil fuel companies used Scholastic Magazine to push a coal-mining agenda and how green organizations
and individuals got the magazine to stop distribution.
Au is an Asian-American and his final chapter lists
the various struggles he has waged over educational practices in the U.S. – some
successful, some not. His father was a
communist – probably a supporter of Mao - and taught his son some foundational
truths. One of these is that ideas and
action go together, and Au has certainly done that.
Other reviews on this topic: “Latest Developments
in Hungary,”
“In and Out of the Working Class,” “University in Chains,” “There is Only One
Race…” “The Servant Economy,” “The God Market,” “Monopoly Capital.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
August 29, 2018
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