‘IN the past those who had the raw material – the coal, the oil and the basic commodities, or the infrastructure – the ports and communications – were the ones that had competitive advantage.
‘Today what matters is who has the ideas, the insights, the skills and the creativity.’
This is how Gordon Brown started his speech on Education yesterday. Just who is he trying to kid?
Just what was his war and occupation of Iraq all about, if it was not to steal Iraq’s oil which the UK and US ruling class cannot survive without.
No one knows this better than Brown, who is now being drawn into supporting an attack on another oil rich state Iran, by the US ruling class and President Bush.
Only the most stupid idealist outlook begins with the primacy of the idea over the material rich objective world with ‘I think therefore I am’. Most people know that Britain’s scientific advances arose out of the industrial revolution.
Today, capitalist Britain has neither the material resources (since its fear of a revival of the NUM will not allow it to mine its considerable coal deposits), the industrial base, (since Thatcher, Blair and Brown have wound it up), or the educational system (since Blair and Brown are privatising it) to survive as a major capitalist power, in the modern capitalist world.
Since Brown has it that education is the absolute requirement for success: ‘Our ambition must be nothing less than to be world class in education’. Here he admits that other countries are not only resource rich, they are also far ahead of the UK as far as education is concerned.
This fact causes Brown to beat his war drum. ‘We can no longer tolerate failure. No longer will it be acceptable for any child to fall behind, no longer acceptable for any school to fail its pupils, no longer acceptable for young people to drop out of education without good qualifications without us acting.’
What is required are absolutely faultless, perfect and absolutely brilliant teachers. ‘This is my belief:
that world-class performance comes from consistent brilliance from teachers in every classroom; professionals who seek continuous improvement, who teach better lessons tomorrow than they did yesterday because they are learning all the time; who when a pupil falls behind don’t assume it is a lack of ability but instead ask – ‘how could I teach that material better to enable my pupil to master it?’
He adds: ‘This is the challenge for teachers. We will assist them in rising to it.’ Teachers are to be the scapegoat for British capitalism’s failure. Brown is going to ‘assist them’ with sackings and school closures, and by handing education over to private employers who sponsor Academies.
He states there will be ‘annual improvement targets for all schools that fall below the threshold’. There will be ‘warning notices to trigger intervention powers, including new interim executive boards to take over the school management’.
There will be ‘complete closure or takeover by a successful neighbouring school in a trust or federation, or transfer to academy status, including the option of take over by an independent school.
‘There will be 150 more academies in the next three years, en route to our target of 400 . . . putting academies at the heart of their local school improvement plans. And more independent schools setting up academies to take over failing schools.’
Independent (private) schools are to take over state schools and make a huge profit doing so.
It is British capitalism that is bankrupt, not the teaching profession, who are now to be made the scapegoat for this bankruptcy.
The only way out of the crisis of the education system is to get rid of its source, bankrupt British capitalism, with a socialist revolution.
Only the revolutionary transformation of society by the working class will lay the basis for the required revolution in education. There is no other way forward.
