{"id":2483,"date":"2011-06-24T12:10:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T18:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lavozlit.com\/?p=2483"},"modified":"2011-06-24T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T18:10:09","slug":"education-from-the-lights-of-reason-to-universal-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2011\/06\/24\/education-from-the-lights-of-reason-to-universal-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"Education \u2013 From the lights of reason to universal ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Monday, 13 June 2011 22:36<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\"\"\u201cIn the end the bourgeoisie has not the means or desire to offer the people a real education\u201d
\n(Karl Marx. Texts on Education and Teaching)
\nThe radical liberal Enlightenment project of the emerging bourgeois to universalize the culture and education is experiencing a historical crisis, and public school as his agent agonizes. The bourgeoisie project has failed on the attempt of educating the masses, and putting them in touch with the cultural and scientific heritage of humanity. The reasonable doubt is: Would it be possible that, in any time of the history, the bourgeoisie as the ruling class really wanted to universalize the access to education?
\nFor the bourgeoisie, education was part of his project of build a more rational world – or rather, rational world- in opposing to obscurantism and cultural backwardness prior to the era of the bourgeois revolutions, especially the double revolution, the UK industrial and the French revolutions. This period of obscurantism and cultural backwardness refers to the heritage of feudalism.
\nStating in this way, our history would be incomplete. We are missing some key characters to the development of our plot, such as the social movements – heirs of the French Jacobins – and the nascent labor movement. Proletarian and semi-proletarian social movements, urban masses of people supported by the radical petty bourgeois, in the French case; or in the labor movement in the UK case, played a key role in the struggle for universal and public education.
\nThe pressure of the class struggle on one hand and the capitalist\u2019s needs on the other made the bourgeoisie to tolerate the expansion of public education. The development and diversification of the economy brought new needs in a booming and increasingly diversified job market; new jobs demand new professionals with better skill qualifications, require more educated workers, in addition to improving the skills of civil servants in the state machinery. Bureaucrats, technicians, specialists and other professions will justify the expansion of public education, at least until the early twentieth century, during the “progressive and civilizing” stage of capitalism in the era of \u201cunlimited\u201d growth, ended with the First World War.
\nUntil the 70s, the core countries of capitalism (USA and European countries), and even in some peripheral countries, education remained a state policy, being the private initiative somewhat marginal, except in the United States. It does not mean the ruling class\u2019 good will, but above all because of class struggle.
\nPublic education in Brazil<\/strong>
\nThe Military dictatorship (1964-1984) did not expand the access to schools due to good intentions: it was necessary to serve the capitalist interests; the economic fast growing, the so called “Brazilian miracle”, demanded a growing supply of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Therefore, high school, in public schools, became vocational education centers with a record expansion, encouraged by the State.
\nThe principle of this expanding access to education was very simple: a fast education to the broad masses and in some cases only rudimentary literacy, whose criteria to consider someone literate was to be able to read and write their own names, to incorporate them into the market work.
\nThis allows us to make a startling conclusion: the neoliberal, and even the reformers during the Lula government (Lula \u2013 former President) and the PT (claimed to be a left wing party), in a sense, continued the “work” of the dictatorship: a fast education to the broad masses of the population and a complicity, mixed with many blessings, with the expansion of private schools in Brazil.
\nFor the bourgeoisie, universal education is not a principle<\/strong>
\nNow we return to our plausible question. The bourgeoisie was compelled by the class struggle, by the organized social movements\u2019 strength and, for some time, by the needs of their own capitalist economy, to create a universal education, to enable the broad masses of so called “lower classes” – saying to the workers\u2019 children and even workers – access to state schools. Even denying, capitalists are obliged to confirm what Marx stated: the men make their own history under inherited conditions, as they can and not how they want, and this law also applies for the ruling classes.
\nThe bourgeoisie has unfurled the banner of the universal right to education against the decadent feudal nobility, tolerated its expansion during a long historical period and now the bourgeoisie is the principal enemy of public schools; is the great agent of universal ignorance, destruction of public education and the denial of education as a right.
\nWe can explain these facts from sociological and political points of view, etc.
\nBut we cannot lose sensitivity.
\nWe cannot lose the ability to be outraged.
\nWe can and must transform our tears and our outrage in the class organization and class struggle.
\nWe must lead the struggle against the capitalist society that dehumanizes mankind.
\nWe can and must fight for socialism!
\nSource: Costa, \u00c1urea. Fernandes Neto, Edgard. Souza, Gilberto \u2013 A Proletariza\u00e7\u00e3o do Professor: neoliberalismo na educa\u00e7\u00e3o (Teachers proletarization: Neoliberalism in the Education). S\u00e3o Paulo: Editora Instituto Jos\u00e9 Luis e Rosa Sundermann, 2009. 2\u00aa edi\u00e7\u00e3o.
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\nOpen the link to read a special issue about the\u00a0struggle for public education<\/strong> in the world<\/strong><\/a> written by\u00a0La Voz de los Trabajadores<\/em>, sympathizing section of the International Workers League (Fourth International) \u2013 IWL-FI \u2013 in the United States.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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