Gramsci on education

[Michael Hoover]

> Today's New York TImes has a debate between Howard Gardner and E. Don 
> Hirsch 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/091199debate-intro-edu.html>, 
> the "progressivist" vs. the "traditionalist," respectively Hirsch 
> argues that there's no connection between progressive politics and 
> progressive education - quite the contrary, in fact, and he summons 
> Gramsci to prove his case. Hirsch writes:
> There have been recent signs that the politics of education is 
> belatedly becoming more sophisticated. As long ago as the 1930s, 
> Antonio Gramsci, a brilliant Communist opponent of Mussolini, 
> denounced the new "progressive" ideas that were being introduced into 
> Italy from the United States. He argued that social justice required 
> educational conservatism because only if the poor worked hard in 
> school to accumulate the "intellectual baggage" of the rich could 
> they earn money and wield the levers of power. 
> Anyone who knows Gramsci better than I do - what do you make of this?
> Doug

Guy named Entwhistle (can't recall first name but I'm pretty sure it 
wasn't Who bassist John) wrote a book on Gramsci's view of education in
the late 1970s.  Title was something like _Conservative Education for
Radical Politics_ and author tried to show how conservative were AG's 
academic standards.  

If memory serves, Lenin noted that 90% of what was taught in Russian 
schools was useless and the other 10% was distorted.  Still he advocated 
learning accumulated knowledge of which marxism and communism were a
part.  Gramsci would have agreed with Lenin and he would have added that 
the key is to establish standards of literacy, numeracy, and knowledge 
that will further the interests of working people and the achievement of 
socialism, quite different from claptrap of Hirsch.

AG points to problems associated with teaching selected knowledge through-
out population, establishing standards, and creating new knowledge.
Following Marx, he directs attention to interests that lie behind certain 
curricula and he posits that distinction between expert and lay-person 
will not always exist.   Michael Hoover