[lbo-talk] School Debate: Central Focus

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Wed Feb 15 11:48:10 PST 2012


Eric Beck quoted David Levine: ‘Schools were carceral institutions -- they were frequently justified as the best source of crime prevention,’

In England, state schools were brought in with the express purpose of putting a stop to the independent Chartist and other socialist schools that were being set up across the country. The great promoters of publicly-funded schooling, Kay-Shuttleworth and William Forster were trying to close down institutions like the Blackburn Women’s Union, whose school statutes included a clause: ‘to instil in the minds of our children a deep and rooted hatred of our corrupt and tyrannical rulers’ (Manchester Observer, 26 June 1819)

I tell the story of the Chartist schools and their suppression, here, under the heading ‘when there really were free schools’, third section of this article http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10254/



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