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Teachers and Classes A Marxist analysis 1st Edition
Kevin Harris Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Kevin Harris
ISBN(s): 9781315407401, 1315407426
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 16.05 MB
Year: 2018
Language: english
ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION
Volume 28
TEACHERS AND CLASSES

TEACHERS AND CLASSES
A Marxist analysis
KEVIN HARRIS
First published in 1982 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
This edition first published in 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 1982 Kevin Harris
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-415-78834-2 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-315-20949-4 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-22259-5 (Volume 28) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-40742-5 (Volume 28) (ebk)
Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this
reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies
may be apparent.
Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and
would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to
trace.
Teachersand classes
A Marxistanalysis
Kevin Harris
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

London, Boston and Henley
First published in 1982
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street, London WC lE 7DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 lEN
Printed in Great Britain by
St Edmundsbury Press
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
© Kevin Harris 1982
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Harris, Kevin.
Teachers and classes.
(Routledge education books)

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Communism and education--Australia--New South
Wales. I Title. II. Series.
HX526.H35 371.1'04 81-8542
ISBN 0-7100-0865-1 AACR2
FOR ANN HALL
who provided me with the inspiration to begin this book and who,
along with Gary, Stephen and Rachel, also provided the material
conditions whereby I could complete it
Contents
PREFACE ix
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION 1
1 TEACHERS AND EDUCATION 5

Introduction 5
Schooling, education and Education 7
Teachers, education and Education 11
The resort to practical, immediate factors 12
The problem of 'individualistic logic' 16
(a) The 'anyone can, therefore everyone can' fallacy 17
(b) The 'interference-elimination' principle 18
Capitalism, Education, and the 'interference-elimination 1
principle 21
Teacher adaptations 24
Conclusion 26
2 CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLE 29

Introduction 29
Teachers and social class: the 'orthodox' problematic 30
Teachers and the 'orthodox' problematic: a critique 33
Teaching: a working-class occupation? 35
The Marxist concept of 'class' 37
Class struggle 43
Impediments to working-class gains 50
Conclusion 54
3 THE ECONOMIC IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 55

Introduction 55
Productive and unproductive labour 55
The 'new middle class' 59
Teachers, and the 'new middle class' 62
Proletarianisation 65
The economic function of teachers 67
The proletarianisation of teachers 70
Conclusion 73
viii Contents
4 THE POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 75

Introduction 75
The role of the State 76
The political function of schooling 79
The political function of teachers 90
Conclusion 98
5 THE IDEOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 100

Introduction 100
The role of the State 101
The legitimation of schooling 103
(a) Equality of opportunity 104
(b) The meritocratic theory 105
(c) Preparation and selection for employment 108
(d) Worthwhile knowledge 110
The ideological function of schooling 111
(a) The process of schooling 112
(b) The content of schooling 114
The ideological function of teachers 116
Conclusion 124
6 THE CLASS LOCATION AND CLASS POSITION

OF TEACHERS 127
Introduction 127
The class location of teachers 128
The class position of teachers 131
7 REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY FOR TEACHERS 142

Introduction 142
The point of revolutionary activity 143
The schooling-State relationship 144
The space and opportunity for struggle 145
The need for collective activity 148
Immediate strategies 150
Conclusion 153
NOTES 155
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 162
INDEX 169
Preface
In the course of undergoing teacher training, teaching for

twelve years, reading for three degrees in education, and lec-
turing in teacher-training institutions for a further twelve
years, I have come into contact with a vast number of books,
papers, lectures and addresses concerned with the role and
function of teachers. This book is a challenge to virtually every-
thing I have encountered in that field, and a challenge to most
of what today's students and teachers learn or accept about
their role and social function as teachers or future teachers.
The book is introductory in two senses. It has been written
essentially for those who are not deeply acquainted with Marxist
theory or the methodology of Marxist analysis, and thus offers
an elementary introduction to and application of certain aspects
of the Marxist research programme. On the other hand it is also
introductory in the sense that it offers the first sustained
Marxist analysis of the role and function of teachers under con-
temporary corporate capitalism, or at least the first that I know
of. A balance has therefore been sought - one between a simpli-
fied introduction to a particular mode of analysis, and at the
same time a rigorous application of that mode of analysis to a
relatively unexplored area. The overall aim has been to provide
something which both sophisticated Marxists and those as yet
unfamiliar with Marxism can take hold of and get their teeth in-
to, such that theoretic production might advance and result in
greater interest and more rigorous analysis in this area.
In compiling this book I have pillaged much from the unpub-
lished works of many of my friends and colleagues. John Free-
land, Michael Gallagher, Rachel Sharp, Peter Stevens and Ted
Trainer will find large amounts of their material reproduced
throughout the following pages. I have also benefited from dis-
cussions with Colin Evers and Carol O'Donnell concerning speci-
fic parts of the text, and especially from the invaluable comments
provided by Jim Walker who critically read an earlier version of
the complete text. In fairness to Jim I must note that I did not
incorporate all of his suggested amendments, and that while this
final version owes much to him, it is by no means a version that
he would fully endorse. The final responsibility for what follows
rests with me alone.
ix
Biographical introduction
I was a child of the working class - the working class in its

strictest sense. My father had left school at a very early age,
and moved through a series of unskilled labouring jobs, at least
at those times when jobs were available. My mother had had
even less schooling, and, forbidden from working by my father's
ethos, occupied herself in 'keeping the house 1 • Consequently we
lived on or below the poverty line in a depressed little slum in
the inner-city Sydney area, dependent for our existence on
whatever wages my father could bring home in return for his
physical labour.
Amidst all of this my parents held to one unshakeable belief;
namely that the conditions of our existence were dependent
largely on their lack of education and skills; and they resolved
that the same would not be the case for their children. Thus,
from as early as I can remember, it was continually drummed
into me that I should work my hardest at school, continue my
education as far as possible, get good results, and thus finish
up with a good job, security, money, and a decent standard of
life outside of the slums.
For reasons which I could not possibly recall or untangle I
managed to satisfy their desires and expectations throughout
primary school; and in those days it was one's performance at
primary school which determined which type of high school one
entered. At the top there were selective high schools offering
five-year courses leading to university entry; in the middle
were junior high schools offering three years of a largely
academic programme; while at the bottom were the 'junior techs 1 •
My class photo of the final year of primary school has forty-
seven boys jammed into it: two of us made it to a selective high
school, and so proud was the headmaster that he called a special
assembly for the purpose of congratulating us and wishing us
well.
High school proved to be something of a different matter. There
were few kids around who came from homes or areas like mine,
most were better dressed and equipped than I was, for whatever
reasons I didn't get on well with the teachers, much of the work
didn't interest me (French and Latin were compulsory), and in
fact all I wanted to do was leave - this especially so as my neigh-
bourhood friends reached their fifteenth birthday and went out
into the world of jobs, and money. My parents, however, would
not allow me to leave; and so, in quite an unmotivated manner,
I stuck it out, finally ending up with a mediocre pass which
1
2 Biographical introduction
earned me a Leaving Certificate and satisfied matriculation

requirements by the barest minimum. My parents were delighted,
and offered to continue to support me as I tackled university. I,
however, had another idea.
Graduation from high school brought with it an immediate
change in attitude towards my neighbourhood friends. Whereas
two years earlier I envied their entry into the wage-earning
work-force and the attendant conspicuous benefits like sharp
clothes, money for cigarettes and movies, and so on; suddenly I
saw them as my father had always described them - 'wage slaves
who will never move out of this suburb'. On the other hand
there was I, still with only a school uniform, but with the world
literally at my feet. It was at that point that I made a spon-
taneous decision. The world and the university could wait: my
calling was to become a schoolteacher, whereby I could lead others
(those with less enlightened parents?) to the position I had
arrived at.
After completing a two-year primary teachers' course I re-
turned to a working-class primary school fully intent on liberat-
ing as many of the children as possible through the wondrous
medium of education. For five years I passed on my father's
message, constantly encouraging my pupils to do their best, to
go onwards, and to raise themselves from their miserable condi-
tions: I stood before them as the shining example that it could
be done, and offered every encouragement within my power. And
at the end of each of those years one or two or three from the
senior year gained entry into a selective high school. It appeared
to me as though my efforts with the junior classes were event-
ually paying off.
At the beginning of 1962 the state education system was radi-
cally restructured. The three-tier secondary school system was
replaced with geographically based comprehensive schools, where-
by all children in a particular area would go to the same high
school and there, after an initial common programme, 'sort them-
selves out' into different levels and /or areas of interest. The
new schools, however, did not suddenly materialise as physical
entities, nor were the smaller three-year junior high schools and
'techs' simply rased to the ground. What happened was that a
transition period was set into operation: all schools ostensibly
taught the same curriculum, all pupils sat for the same exams,
and those children in junior schools who wanted to go on were
to be simply offered places in the existing senior schools. Thus
a child sent to a 'junior tech' (now renamed, but bearing its past
history) was theoretically in the same position as a child sent to
a selective school ( also renamed, but also bearing its past
history). Theory and practice, however, didn't coincide. The
junior schools tended to have less qualified teachers, they were
traditionally in depressed areas, they were relatively ill-equipped,
and they continued to bear the stigma of what they once were -
the bottom of the heap. Simply calling a school 'Downtown High'
changed little when the signs and engravings still said 'Down-
Biographical introduction 3
town Junior Technical School', when half the school was set out
in workshops for wood and metal, when science laboratories and
libraries were either absent or obviously secondary appendages,
when the very pupils were either the younger siblings or
progeny of those who attended and remembered the real Down-
town Tech, and especially when the first intakes of the new
'high' schools were almost equivalent to what they would have
been had the tri-partite system remained.
It seemed to me that there was a particularly important job to
be done at that time; namely convincing the pupils of these new
'high' schools that they had the same opportunities as pupils at
'established' high schools, and also offering the same oppor-
tunities. This was my second calling. I applied for, and was
appointed to the very 'junior tech' I had bypassed twelve years
earlier.
My initial concern at this school was with the new intake of
first-formers, and I passed on the same message that I had
emphasised throughout my primary-school career: 'Work hard,
study, pass your exams, go on to a full high school, university
etc. and escape your conditions.' I was fortunate enough to be
able to keep contact with this group right through the new four-
year junior course, as well as picking up new classes as they
entered the school. Conditions were certainly different from
teaching primary school: interest was harder to maintain, moti-
vation was lower, there were far more discipline problems, pupils
left as jobs beckoned from outside, and so on. But my main con-
cern was to keep as many pupils on as possible, to assist them
through their fourth-year exam, and to encourage them to then
go further. Of the initial intake of just over 160 pupils, less than
thirty entered fourth form, eight passed their junior exam, five
went on to a full high school, and one matriculated and eventually
graduated from university. In subsequent years the numbers
varied marginally, mainly in response to a slight change in the
first-form intake procedures. I remained at the school for seven
years, thus witnessing the full progress through the school of
four intakes. Nearly 700 pupils entered the school, less than
fifty graduated with a junior certificate and went on to senior
years: I suspect there would be no more than five university
graduates among them. At the end of the seventh year I resigned
from teaching.
Those were the seven hardest-working years of my life. They
were shared with a staff as dedicated as you might ever hope to
find. And yet somewhere we failed, and failed miserably. I do
not think that we were bad teachers - certainly our inspection
reports were never unfavourable, and those that have remained
in the service are now in senior positions. On the other hand, I
do not think we were lumbered with bad children. It seems to me
now that the failure, the miserable failure, was in large part
inevitable, being built into the very structure of the situation in
a way which I did not understand, and which none of us under-
stood. It seems to me also that the situation was not and is not
4 Biographical introduction
peculiar to the particular conditions of that school at that time

(although some aspects may have been). I recall the celebrations
when my teachers succeeded with two of us back in 1949. I recall,
with some dismay, that the successes I counted as a primary-
school teacher were of the same low order, and that I never
really added up the failures. I suspect very strongly that the
propensity for teacher-failure, while it might vary slightly
according to particular contingencies, is deeply inherent within
the very structure of schooling under capitalism, such that
teachers, by and large, are destined to fail. The purpose of this
book is to advance our understanding of why this is so, and to
suggest strategies whereby the problem might be overcome.
A coda might be in order here. In one sense my parents were
perfectly right. It was those extra two years of secondary
schooling, followed by teacher training (itself made possible by
those extra years) which were very largely instrumental in my
gaining the sort of job, and income, which facilitated an escape
from the slums and the shedding of many burdens carried by the
working class. And later it was the furthering of my schooling in
the form of taking three university degrees which directly enabled
me to now occupy an extremely privileged social position. I am
perfectly well aware that it was education, as provided within
particular social conditions, which opened the doors for me. But
I am now just as well aware that it was the same educational and
social system which closed the doors on the vast majority of my
peers and my pupils; and I am by no means convinced that they,
and the millions like them, are less worthy or less deserving
human beings. I trust that I shall not be misunderstood as being
irrationally ungrateful in my commitment to the overthrow of the
very social conditions which enabled me to attain my position of
relative, personal, individual privilege.
Chapter1
Teachersand education
INTRODUCTION
Given that this book has kicked off with the dismal notion of
teacher-failure, it is important right at the outset to indicate
clearly just what it is that teachers are being charged with fail-
ing at. The Introduction might have made it appear that the fail-
ure in question was a matter of not getting all children through
senior high school or university. Well, teachers certainly do
fail to do that; but I take this to be a contingency related rather
distantly to the far more fundamental issue which I am concerned
to examine. Put bluntly and crudely (the charge will be sharp-
ened and refined later), teachers fail to Educate.
Now the charge, of course, lacks substance until we indicate
what is meant by 'Educate' - the capital E is deliberate - and
clarification here is all the more necessary because of the differ-
ent ways in which the terms 'educate' and 'education' are com-
monly used today.
There was a time when 'education' was used only in a general-
ised way to refer to any process or occurrence which influenced
a person's development, but over the last century particularly
we have seen the emergence of a far more specific application of
the term. In 1867, John Stuart Mill drew a distinction between a
wide meaning of 'education' - 'whatever helps to make the indi-
vidual what he is, or hinders him from being what he is not' -
and a narrow meaning referring to the 'culture' purposely trans-
mitted to new generations, 'in order to qualify them for at least
keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement
which has been attained' . 1 In the following years educational
theorists produced many variations on the theme of the 'nar-
rower' meaning. For instance R .M. Livingstone spoke of educa-
tional activities as being tinged with a 'vision of greatness';
T. P. Nunn declared that 'the primary aim of all educational effort
should be to help boys and girls to achieve the highest degree
of individual development of which they are capable'; 2 A .N.
Whitehead looked to education to produce people 'who possess
both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction.
Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start from,
and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as
high as art '; 3 D. H. Lawrence asserted that, 'Education means
leading out the individual nature in each man and woman to its
true fullness'; 4 and R. M. Hutchins insisted that, in contrast to
the family and the church, 'Education deals with the development
5
6 Teachers and education
of the intellectual powers. ' 5 And a century after Mill, R. S. Peters,

in more complicated fashion, drew much the same distinction be-
tween an 'undifferentiated' sense of 'education' referring to
socialisation processes in general, and a 'differentiated' norma-
tive sense associated with the production of the educated man
(sic), who could be identified thus: 6
(i) An educated man is one whose form of life - as exhibited
in his conduct, the activities to which he is committed,
his judgments and feelings - is thought to be desirable.
(ii) Whatever he is trained to do he must have knowledge,
not just knack, and an understanding of principles. His
form of life must also exhibit some mastery of forms of
thought and awareness which are not harnessed purely to
utilitarian or vocational purposes or completely confined
to one mode.
(iii) His knowledge and understanding must not be inert either
in the sense that they make no difference to his general
view of the world, his actions within it and reactions to
it or in the sense that they involve no concern for the
standards immanent in forms of thought and awareness,
as well as the ability to attain the.m.
Now, regardless of the excesses and extravagances that tend
to creep into such discourse, it is clear that we do have two dif-
ferent general senses of 'education' in common usag·e today. On
the one hand there is that sense which is largely synonymous
with socialisation (and this we shall refer to as education with a
small 'e'); while on the other hand there is a sense which points
specifically beyond socialisation, usually in the direction of full
personal development with special emphasis being placed on cog-
nitive or intellectual development - and it is this general sense
(for we are hardly endorsing any of the specific statements
quoted above) that we are gracing with the capital 'E'.
With the distinction now made we can re-state our central
thesis thus: teachers in general educate in that they act as
agents of socialisation, but they fail to Educate in the sense of
going beyond socialisation to bring out and develop the full
capabilities of their charges.
How much bite this thesis has, however, is dependent largely
on what it is that teachers are called upon or looked upon as
doing: and there can be little doubt that the general body of
rhetoric concerning the aims, duties and functions of teachers
points well beyond mere socialisation and, if not quite to the
heights envisaged by Livingstone or Whitehead, then at least in
much the same direction. Academic education texts, curricula
preambles, graduation addresses, and teachers' journals contin-
ually represent the teacher as a figure leading (or striving to
lead) children in the highest cultural, personal, and intellectual
directions possible: and, while the function of socialisation often
gets mention, it tends to be raised as a general and incidental
process which teachers necessarily assist with, but which
teachers qua teachers should proceed beyond. In fact it is often
Teachers and education 7
this 'something extra' which is used to differentiate teachers

from all those other people who are influential in the formation
of children as social beings; and teachers themselves appear to have
been caught up in and by the rhetoric, for, as numerous studies
show, they perceive their work primarily in intellectual and moral
terms, and look on the task of general social training with com-
parative indifference. 7
Teachers are charged (theoretically) with the task and respons-

ibility of Educating - of going beyond socialisation - and this they
fail to do. But it remains to be seen now whether they could
possibly go beyond socialisation within the conditions placed upon
them.
SCHOOLING, EDUCATION AND EDUCATION
Teachers, or at least the teachers this book is concerned with,

work in schools. Now what goes on in schools is, at a basic
operational level of definition, schooling. In our ordinary, every-
day language, however, we tend to refer to what goes on in
schools as education; so much so that the two terms tend to be
taken as synonymous or coextensive. We speak of going to school
to get an education; the level of people's education is commonly
measured by or equated with the number of years they have
attended school and the awards gained there; schools themselves
are generally categorised and described in terms of being part of
the education system; and schools of course come under the con-
trol and auspices of education departments, local education
authorities, and ministers of education. The school/education
nexus is an extremely strong one; so strong in fact that the
equivalence of 'schooling' and 'education' is largely taken for
granted.
When we consider conjunctions which have come to be taken for
granted, or as part of 'the way things are', we often find that
both the strength and the tenuousness of the nexus become more
clearly revealed by the effect brought about when the nexus is
deliberately broken. This is particularly so with regard to the
schooling /education nexus. George Bernard Shaw complained
that his education was interrupted by his schooling; and Margaret
Mead has noted that her grandmother wanted her to have a good
education and so kept her out of school. These statements emerge
as credible and startling. Their credibility lies in the fact that
they were made by people generally considered to be highly
Educated; they are startling because they turn on the paradox
that schooling is antagonistic to, rather than compatible with,
Education. The statements entail far more than a begrudging
notion which any of us might make about 'not getting much of an
education at school' - they point to a distinct incompatibility be-
t ween the institution of schooling and the notion of Education;
an incompatibility so surprising on first contact that the actual
statements themselves have achieved the status of modern epi-
grams, and tend to appear regularly on desk calendars, as

epigraphs to books and articles, and among lists of 'quotable
quotes',
Now there are really two points at issue here; points which
actually concern different sides of the same coin, First, there is
the problem of the very conflation of 'schooling' and 'education',
and turning with this is the issue of which particular sense of
'education' is being conflated with 'schooling'. Consider care-
fully the following two statements. The first is by Herbert Gin tis,
and has been extracted from a broadly Marxist context : 8
The function of education in any society is the socialisation of
youth into the prevailing culture. On the one hand, schooling
serves to integrate individuals into society by institutionalizing
dominant value, norm and belief systems. On the other hand,
schooling provides the individual competencies necessary for
the adequate performance of social roles. Thus education
systems are fundamental to the stability and functioning of any
society.
The second is by I. L. Kandel, a liberal conservative, commonly
charged with being an essentialist : 9
The earliest and most persistent reason for the establishment
of schools as formal agencies of education is the desire on the
part of a group, society, or state to conserve and transmit its
cultural heritage to the younger generation and to equip this
generation with those habits, skills, knowledges and ideals that
will enable it to take its place in a society and contribute to
the stability and perpetuation of that society.
There are three things there deserving of particular note. First,
although they are speaking from quite different and opposed con-
texts, both Gintis and Kandel spell out the same message - that
the function of education is conservative, being directed towards
integrating new generations into the prevailing culture, and pro-
viding knowledge and skills geared towards ensuring social stab-
ility and perpetuation of the status quo. Second, both authors
use the words 'schooling' and 'education' interchangeably (and
in doing so they are anything but unusual or exceptional). Third,
it is abundantly clear that what they are really talking about is
socialisation: the point both authors are making is that schooling
is basically a socialising agency or institution.
Now I take it (without providing any argumentation at this
point) that Gintis and Kandel are perfectly correct in this regard.
Schools are agents of socialisation, and they always have been -
at least they have been ever since they became compulsory and
universal. Thus we find that the schooling/education nexus holds.
But where does Education come into the picture?
As far as our discourse is concerned it is largely smuggled in
through a sort of halo effect (of considerable ideological force)
arising out of our imprecise usage of a single word to refer to
two distinct processes - both of which relate to the development
of human beings, and more especially to development in the areas
of knowledge, values and skills, and thus to the daily practice
of schooling - but which relate in quite different ways. Schooling

has much to do with socialisation and the production of socialised
beings, but very little to do with Education or the production of
Educated people . 10
It is, of course, one thing to make such assertions and quite

another thing to provide convincing arguments for them. Now one
way to provide support for the assertions would be to undertake
a detailed analysis of the schooling process in order to see
whether what goes on there is more ascribable to socialisation or
Education. This very common form of empirical analysis, however,
is fraught with problems. On the one hand, due consideration
would have to be given to everything that went on in schools.
We would have to be aware that things like how movement takes
place around the building, the existence of separate staff and
student toilets, the dynamics of decision making, and the differ-
ent rituals of interpersonal relations (depending on who is relat-
ing with whom) are just as much a part of schooling as the teach-
ing and learning that goes on in the classroom is. Virtually all
empirical studies of schooling have assumed the teaching-learning
aspect to be central, and not surprisingly have assisted in build-
ing up an image of schooling as a place primarily concerned with
those activities more closely related to the notion of Education.
What has been sadly lacking, however, is attention to what has
recently become known as the hidden curriculum of the school.
But even if it were possible to study every aspect of schooling
another huge problem then arises; that of interpretation. It is
very dangerous to take empirical data at face value: appearances
have to be interpreted and penetrated, and different observers
mig·ht see different things, interpret them in different ways, and
penetrate them to different degrees. What is seen by one observer
as a class learning its seven-times table might be seen by another
observer as a highly structured exercise in participating in a
complex social ritual centred around compliance with authority.
Again it is not surprising that empirical studies of this type tend
to reinforce the preconceptions of the investi~ators rather than
throw light on the object under investigation. 1
A second means of supporting our assertions could be to

examine the products or graduates of schooling in order to deter-
mine whether they have been socialised or Educated; and given
that we have fairly tight criteria for determining each, this
should not be too much of a problem. We could attempt to see
whether schooled people are able merely to perform social roles
and have the habits, skills, knowledge, beliefs, ideals, values
and norms that will contribute to social stability, or whether
they measure up to (say) Nunn's fully developed people or the
Peters prototype of an Educated person. And if this proved too
much of a task we could at least tune in to expert commentary on
the matter, where, despite the occasional principals who get
carried away with their own perceived achievements on speech
nights, the general drift of informed educational commentary
tends to bemoan the fact that our schools are either not Educating
enough people or not Educating people well enough, or both. The

same R. S. Peters, for instance, openly laments the fact that the
majority do not care about the ideals embodied in the concept of
'Education' and pursue ways of life which are 'largely the out-
come of habit, social pressure, sympathy and attraction towards
what is immediately pleasurable': 12 and in tandem with P.H.
Hirst he sets up the Educated person 'in stark contrast' to the
ideal and orientation towards consumption which, it is claimed,
has become the 'predominant feature of Western society' . 13 It
would appear, then, that our schools are doing a pretty bad job
of Educating (and a pretty good job of socialising); and I for
one have yet to read the work which heaps all praise on their
current Educative effects.
This proposed study of school graduates, however, might not
take us as far as we wish; for it could easily be argued that the
poor success rate of schools in Educating is a result of contingent
factors (like lack of funds) and that, given the prevailing circum-
stances, schools are really doing an excellent job. The fact that
they seem to be producing socialised people rather than Educated
people means only that they are contingently agents of socialisa-
tion, and nothing has been said which seriously challenges the
view that their real purpose is one of Educating. In the face of
this objection a new tack must obviously be sought.
A third possibility for supporting our assertions lies in analys-
ing the function that schooling performs within the total dynamics
of reproduction of social relations. This is the tack we shall, in
fact, be taking, albeit at a much later stage in this work. But
two preliminary remarks have to be made here. First, it might
appear that the dice have already been loaded in that we are
going to work within a context of reproduction of social relations;
a context which appears to exclude development, change or
betterment. This, however, is not so. 'Reproduction of social
relations' refers to the continuance of the same basic form of a
society, wherein there could be marked historical transformations
occurring, and not to an endless repetition of the same daily ways
replayed by each succeeding generation. For the last (say) 200
years Britain, America, and the Boro Indians have each been
engaged in the reproduction of particular social relations, but
while things have hardly changed at the day-to-day level for
the Boro there has, of course, been demonstrable change and
.development within the other two societies even while the basic
social relations have been constantly reproduced. Second, such
a tack requires setting down a categorisation of social relations,
and elaboration of a theory of the dynamics whereby these social
relations are reproduced. Again this will be filled out later; but
we can at least note here that we shall be categorising social
relations (or characterising the 'basic form' of a society not in
terms of governmental types (aristocracy, oligarchy, monarchy,
democracy) nor in terms of dominant types of production
(agrarian societies or industrial societies) but rather in terms
of modes of production (slavery, serfdom, capitalism, socialism) ;
and also that our following discussion will be concerned primarily

with the context of contemporary capitalism.
TEACHERS O EDUCATION AND EDUCATION
We asked earlier whether teachers could possibly go beyond

socialisation within the conditions placed upon them, and we have
now recognised two of those conditions as the context of schooling
and the context of capitalist social relations. Now schooling is a
process in which the directive agents are teachers, such that
certain claims made regarding the schooling process can also
generally apply to or be connected with teachers; and schooling
is also a process which (as we shall see later) is structured by
dominant social relations. We can therefore now amend our (un-
supported) claim regarding schooling having much to do with
socialisation but little to do with Education to read: 'Teachers,
under contemporary capitalist social relations, have much to do
with socialisation and very little to do with Education': which
gets us back, with a little more precision, to where we were
earlier. While the process of schooling can not (and will not) be
ignored, we must not lose sight of the fact that teachers are the
immediate agents of the process under consideration, and our
discussion must focus on and continually return to the work they
do and the function they perform. 14
It should also be emphasised very strongly here that the
extremely negative claim we have made about teachers is not in-
tended to constitute a personal indictment against them, especially
at the individual level, nor is it intended to slight the great
amount of effort many put into their day-to-day work - especially
that effort which is directed, even if circuitously - towards the
end of Educating. The claim that teachers fail to Educate does
not necessarily point to teacher-incompetence, and the argument
and analysis which follows has nothing to do with that. It may,
of course, be the case that some teachers are incompetent, lazy,
or merely serving time, but that is not our concern. What we
shall argue is that, even given the most able, enthusiastic and
idealistic teachers, teacher-failure-in-general is inevitable in
that it is brought about through the conditions placed upon
teachers or the structural circumstances within which they work.
Paradoxically, then, our analysis will actually serve to exonerate
teachers to a large extent from some of the more simplistic charges
of failure (and incompetence) which arc commonly levelled against
them.
Teachers might not take kindly at first to the charge that they
are failing to Educate, but on the other hand they are also not
likely to deny it. Teachers, more than anybody, know that their
lot is not always a happy one, and that the job of educating can
be difficult and frustrating, and the job of Educating· often near
to impossible. This is more the case in state or government schools
than in private schools, in lower-secondary forms rather than
upper-secondary forms of elementary schools, and in lower socio-

economic urban schools rather than upper socio-economic or rural
schools. Teachers who look at their work realistically do recog-
nise the general failure to Educate: what we must consider now
are some of the ways by which this failure is commonly accounted
for (not only by teachers) and how the common accounts mystify
and obscure the real situation.
THE RESORT TO PRACTICAL, IMMEDIATE FACTORS
If your car were to break down in the middle of a trip it is un-

likely that your first thoughts would be directed either to the
slackness of the quality control personnel in the Detroit factory
where the car was assembled twelve months ago, or to the wiles
of capitalist producers maximising profits by using sub-standard
materials. And even if your thoughts were so directed, it is un-
likely that your first action would be to sit by the roadside and
either write to the Consumer Affairs Bureau or else begin to
plan out a strategy for social revolution. It is more likely the
case that you would lift the bonnet and look for the immediate
cause of the failure, or call for an expert automobile organisation
to find and rectify the immediate cause. And since rectifying the
immediate cause is, after all, the only way of getting the car
running again, then seeking the immediate cause is an eminently
sensible thing to do.
Given this, it would seem anything but unusual for teachers,
when difficulties and frustrations mount, and things aren't run-
ning well, to seek about for immediate causes and even to call in
experts to rectify the problems identified.
Potential immediate factors exist in abundance for teachers to
call on. Often the lecturers at universities and other teacher-
training institutions end up bearing the blame for teacher-failure
because they, ostensibly being 'naive', 'academic', 'idealist',
'out of touch', etc., failed to prepare the teachers adequately
for the realities of the classroom situation. Or the problem might
be located in the actual physical conditions of the school itself,
such as run-down depressing buildings, poor equipment, over-
crowded classes, lack of facilities, etc. Teachers have also been
known to turn upon themselves, seeing problems arising out of
the actions and policies of power figures like principals and de-
puties, or as being brought about (for example) by a large pro-
portion of inexperienced teachers (or female teachers!) in a
particular school, or by the effects of 'soft', 'progressive', or
'weak' teachers within their ranks.
The pupils within the school are an obvious and common target,
and are frequently charged with not wanting to learn, or with
engaging in wilful destruction and resistance, overt disruption,
and open antagonism to any effort on the part of the teacher. On
the other hand, problems are often seen as arising from beyond
the school itself. It might be the general policies of the Depart-
ment of Education or the Local Authority which are held to blame,

or the irrelevant curricula which have been imposed on the school
and the teachers, or the attitudes of the pupils' parents, or
general aspects of the prevailing local culture or sub-culture:
teachers often bemoan the fact that they have neither the time
nor the influence to combat and counteract parental and /or
local cultural attitudes. And if all else fails, there is always the
resort to vaguely metaphysical factors presumably fermenting
somewhere beyond the school walls, like 'the collapse of modern
society', 'the breakdown of moral values', or 'the signs of our
times'.
Now it can hardly be denied that these 'immediate factors', or
at least the most serious of them (and the list is hardly exhaus-
tive), really do exist and really do bring about problems, just as
faulty fuel pumps and corroded spark-plugs cause cars to break
down. There are, of course, incompetent, over-idealistic, and
out-of-touch university and teachers' college lecturers, just as
there are kids who are resistant and antagonistic to teachers'
efforts . 15 There are principals and administrators who are adept
at making their staff's job harder rather than easier; and one
does not have to travel far to find continued instances of schools
wherein the actual physical conditions constitute a hindrance and
a frustration for teachers. Imposed departmental policies, exam-
ination board requirements and board of studies curricula do not
always sit easily on specific schools; and in certain physical
areas the value system of the school and its teachers is in sharp
contrast to the dominant value system surrounding it, such that
teachers, in their relatively brief contact with the children, are
hardly able to have much of a counter-balancing effect. The
mistake, however, and it is a serious mistake, is to regard any
of these things, or any combination of them as strictly autonomous
or isolated issues: while they do, of course, have a measure of
relative autonomy, they cannot be understood or investigated
properly in isolation from the overall context of which they are a
part.
Before developing that most crucial of points, however, we
should recognise that teachers, like our motorist, expend a great
deal of effort in trying to rectify immediate problems; and again
like our motorist (although usually more indirectly) they often
call in experts to study and rectify those problems. Since teach-
ing does not have a well-developed internal feedback system, this
latter action provides employment for professional educational
psychologists, sociologists, and technicians, among others; and
not only does this contribute to an overall lack of control within
teaching itself, but it also tends to set up a cyclic, self-fulfilling,
and self-perpetuating context for identifying the problems that
need to be overcome. The factors, as identified, tend to be
immediate, practical, and overt; and it is on these matters that
research and study tends to be concentrated. Thus, during this
century educational research has trained its efforts on the
psychology of the child, the methodology of teacher training,
classroom procedures and interaction, teaching styles, testing

and evaluation of teaching and learning, the production of teach-
ing aids and equipment, social-class values, and so on, The cycle
becomes a vicious one in that a large proportion of available time,
money, and effort tends to be directed at investigating and cur-
ing clearly identified 'ills' within a given context such that those
'ills' gain further prominence as the things which have to be
overcome, while the context itself tends to be accepted without
serious question. Further to this, the 'ills' remain as the focus
for further investigation when future problems arise. As a very
elementary example, consider the vast amount of research (vir-
tually constituting an industry) that has been done over the past
fifty years and is still being done, on intelligence testing or
classroom interaction analyses (even if with the intention of
assisting the Education of children) compared with the paucity
of research directed at the very functioning of compulsory
schooling under capitalism. To take the analogy of the car a
little further, the trends have been to repair faulty fuel pumps
(and train others to repair them) without questioning why fuel
pumps tend to be faulty; and to develop more efficient fuel pumps
without questioning either the 'place' of the fuel pump as a sub-
system of the internal combustion engine or, at a much broader
level, the very place of the automobile within a specific set of
social relations. The process has, in general, been one of focus-
ing on relatively autonomous parts, or sub-systems, rather than
developing scientific theories of the contexts in which those sub-
systems or parts are instrumental pieces.
The strategy to be adopted in this book will be that of attempt-
ing to develop an overall theory to explain and account for
teacher-failure within capitalist social relations; but we can, at
this stage, quickly demonstrate that the immediate factors pre-
viously pointed to regarding failure to Educate could hardly be
regarded seriously as isolated or autonomous ones. Let us pro-
ceed on two fronts.
First, if we assume that the immediate factors identified above
are the actual fundamental causes of teacher failure, it would
then follow that, in overcoming or curing them we would overcome
or solve the general problem. Put concretely, if we staff teacher-
training institutions properly, motivate children adequately, em-
ploy relevant curricula, equip schools better, reduce class sizes,
and so on, then teachers would succeed in Educating children.
This, however, would leave us with a different and far greater
problem on our hands: how could we possibly integrate whole
new generations of Educated people into a system of social rela-
tions which requires the vast majority of its participants not
only to spend the greater portion of their lives engaging in
alienating, routine, dull, mindless and meaningless labour (or,
given present circumstances, no labour at all) but also to accept
the lack of social privilege presently attendant on performers of
such labour (or on the unemployed)? How could we induce these
Educated people to sweep the streets, work on production lines,
and operate the check-outs at supermarkets let alone clean floors

and toilets in office blocks, especially while these jobs are given
low social status and relatively low financial remuneration? Put
simply, our existing system of social relations could not handle
new generations of universally Educated people: and if we were
to overcome all the immediate problems we would also have to
restructure our entire social system as well. Or, conversely,
only through major radical social restructuring in the first place
would we be in a position seriously to attack those immediate
problems which are now clearly manifested.
Second - and again assuming that the factors identified are the
actual fundamental factors underlying teacher-failure - we might
ask why, having identified them, and why, given the continually
outspoken concern for Education, they are not being overcome?
The answer, at its simplest level, is that they cannot be over-
come independently and in isolation from much larger issues.
Cleaning up the teacher-training problem requires far more than
swapping one set of lecturers for another; it raises fundamental
questions (and practical issues) regarding why certain types of
people are employed in the first place whereas others are not.
Equipping schools better and reducing class sizes requires a vast
redistribution of money by ruling authorities: why are they re-
luctant to make such a redistribution, and why in the face of the
problems identified is spending on education generally being
slashed at present? Eliminating or reducing the bad effects of
departments, local authorities, boards of studies, and principals
requires in effect vast changes in social relations, not just a
little bit of internal reorganisation. And getting children to
cooperate with, rather than be antagonistic to, their teachers'
endeavours requires far more than clever motivation steps, good
learning and teaching theory, and the establishment of warm
classroom climates: this, too, would require vast changes in
overall social relations - not the least of which would be the
creation of conditions whereby schooling really did overcome the
differential social privileges which now accompany children at
birth and tend to remain with them right throughout their lives.
What is being suggested, then, is that there is far more to the
problem than simply identifying and overcoming immediate
'isolated' factors. On the one hand these immediate factors cannot
simply be overcome: rather than being discrete isolated factors
they are intricately tied up with much larger and far more basic
issues; they cannot be attended to in isolation, and any serious
attention to them must have ramifications reaching right into the
very core of our basic social (and economic) relations. On the
other hand, if we were somehow able to solve all the immediate
problems (without affecting basic social relations) we would be
likely to be more than embarrassed by the large number of
Educated people around who would not have the opportunity to
live and function in harmony with their Educated nature. And
being Educated, that is one thing they would quickly become
aware of. They could thus represent a threat to social stability . 16
One final point. A commonly proposed factor for the failure to

Educate universally is that a significant proportion of any popu-
lation is simply too dumb to be Educated in the first place. Now
it is not being denied that there are rare cases of biological mal-
formation which seriously impair the ability of some people to
learn and develop; and in this case such people might be des-
cribed as being inEducable. But the similarly undeniable facts
that some children learn some things more slowly than other
children at certain times in their lives, that some are less moti-
vated than others to learn certain things at certain times or in
certain places like schools, and that some perform lower than
others on 'general ability' tests administered at specific times -
which are the grounds on which most of the 'dumb I are so de-
clared - in no way tell against the Educability of such people.
This being the case, the proposition (which represents struc-
tural features as personal faults) will not be entertained further
here, for the mere act of paying continued attention to it could
bestow it with more dignity and credibility than it is worth.
THE PROBLEM OF 'INDIVIDUALISTIC LOGIC'
It was noted in the previous section that the immediate factors

we were concerned with could not be attended to in isolation.
From certain perspectives however, it often appears as though
they could be. Teachers in a run down, poorly equipped school,
could reasonably expect that a few hundred thousand dollars
directed their way from the newly announced multi-million dollar
education budget would not only solve at least some of their
problems, but also that this action would be sufficiently isolated
so as not to have large-scale, far-reaching ramifications. The
grant would be a great benefit to them, without having serious
effects elsewhere.
Now this is to a certain extent correct. It is also an application
of what I shall be calling 'individualistic logic'; that is, a form
of thinking and arguing which focuses on the individual instance
in isolation from, and without proper consideration of, the in-
fluence and effects which the larger overall context imposes upon
the particular instance in question. The purpose of this section
is to indicate how 'individualistic logic' can lead us into mistaken
theories and conclusions, and thus erroneous conceptions regard-
ing teacher-success in Educating.
The expectations of the teachers in the above example are, as
has been suggested, reasonable. They become less reasonable,
however, when made simultaneously by 20,000 schools, or when
it is realised that half of the budget has been set aside for
teachers' salaries, a further third for new building projects, and
a fixed amount for curriculum development. What has to be recog-
nised here is that, although any one school might be allocated,
say, half a million dollars, not every school can be allocated half
a million dollars; and that allocations in one area interfere with
allocations in other areas even to the point of possible elimination

of some allocations. This recognition opens up to us the two
major problems of 'individualistic logic'; the 'anyone can, there-
fore everyone can' fallacy, and the 'interference-elimination
principle'. Each of these requires detailed discussion, and this
especially so when we realise that, despite failure in general,
some teachers (if not all teachers) are, to a greater or lesser
extent, instrumental in Educating some pupils.
(a) The 'anyone can. therefore eve1°yone can' fallacy

There is a basic rule in logic which indicates that if every A is
B then any A is B. If it were the case that every person had red
hair, then it would necessarily follow that any person we bumped
into would have to have red hair. The reverse, however, does
not hold: if any A is B it need not follow that every A is B. If
any person has red hair we cannot deduce from this that every
person has red hair. Now this is a law which seems to be well
understood and, in most cases, properly applied. People don't
go round claiming that if anybody is rich then everybody is rich,
or that if anybody is a lawyer then everybody is a lawyer.
They do, however, go round making extremely similar claims;
such as 'if anybody can become rich then everybody can become
rich', or 'if anybody can become a lawyer then everybody can be-
come a lawyer'. The difference, of course, is that these claims
point to what can be rather than what is, and are thus much
more tentative and conditional, but they are instances of the
very same fallacy. In these instances the issue is compounded,
however, by an ambiguity in 'every', and also by the introduc-
tion of empirical considerations, and thus the matter needs to be
explored a little further.
'Every' is ambiguous between its disjunctive sense, referring to
each instance taken separately (in this case being equivalent to
'any'), and its conjunctive sense referring to all instances taken
together. Now the statement 'if any A can be B then every A can
be B' can only be true in general if 'every' is used disjunctively,
in which case the statement is only trivially true or tautologous.
However, if 'every' is used conjunctively, then the statement 'if
any A can be B then every A can be B' is false in general, and
it can only be true in particular if it is empirically possible for
every A, taken together, to be predicated with B. For instance,
the statement 'if any man can dye his hair red then every man can
dye his hair red' could only be true if all men were capable of
dying their hair ( which would be very difficult for those in comas,
totally paralysed, or bald) and if there were sufficient red dye in
the world to go round. Similarly the statement 'if any person
can become President of the United States every person can'
could be true only if it were possible for everyone simultaneously
to be President, or if the Presidency carried a term sufficiently
short enough to give everybody a go, and since these options
are not on, then the statement is either tautologous or false,
just as the statement 'if anybody can become a lawyer then every-
body can become a lawyer' is also either tautologous or false out-

side of societies where everybody practises law.
The committing of this particular fallacy is not always expressed
in the classical 'if any, then every' form, which often makes it
both harder to detect but easier to pin down. It has been com-
monly suggested that if Abraham Lincoln could go from log cabin
to White House then everyone can, or if a grocer's daughter can
become Prime Minister of Britain then everyone can. Here we
have two shining examples of the fallacy in operation, purporting
conclusions which are clearly false and which, because of their
specificity, cannot even be excused as tautologies. Similar
examples are the claims that, 'If, given my background, I could
become a doctor, everybody can'; and 'Since I (or some teachers)
can succeed in Educating pupils, every teacher can.' These
fallacious arguments (or examples of 'individualistic logic') impute
to everybody, as discrete individuals themselves, things which
not all of those discrete individuals could achieve when put to-
gether in the same situation. All subjects and all instances are
individualised out of the context in which they occur or act, and
thus the real situation is badly misrepresented. This will become
even more evident in the following sub-section.
(b) The 'interference-elimination' principle

The 'interference-elimination' principle has already been touched
on when we considered the issue of the empirical possibility of
every person, taken together, being able to be predicated with
the same outcome. Let us approach it this time, however, through
detailed consideration of a further practical example.
It could be argued, and often is argued, that people living in
a capitalist society are not mere victims of the system. After all,
no one these days is forced at gun-point to sell his or her labour
power to the capitalists; and anyone (it might be suggested) can
go on the dole, or join a rural commune, or go in for subsistence
farming, or start a small business.
This much is, of course, correct - up to a point; but as we
have seen in our previous section it could and probably would
be fallacious to infer from this that everyone can go on the dole
or become self-employed, and so on. What has to be recognised
now, however, is that while any individual person might adopt
one of these alternatives, very few people taken together can
adopt any one of them. This is simply because each individual
who adopts one of the alternatives interferes with everybody
else's opportunity to do the same and eventually when a certain
point is reached they eliminate the possibility of anyone else fol-
lowing suit.
For instance, it was once possible for an individual to withdraw
labour, claim that a suitable job was not available in a particular
area, and then draw unemployment benefits. But in doing so that
individual (unwittingly?) made it harder for the next person to
succeed with the same action, and the more who did succeed the
harder and harder it became for those next in line. As the num-
bers built up the regulations were changed, and eventually will-

ingness to take any job offered anywhere became a condition for
getting the dole. Then, with the growth of structural unemploy-
ment, and the build-up of dole applicants for other reasons, the
regulations were once again tightened up - married women were
excluded from eligibility, de facto relationships became recognised
as marriages, people had to produce stronger evidence that they
were attempting to find employment, and finally indicate their
willingness to enter retraining programmes . 17 Paradoxically as
unemployment increased the dole became harder to get, such that
each successful candidate actually made it harder for the next
person to succeed, and the situation has now been reached where
people are being refused the dole basically because too many
others are receiving it (although that, of course, is not the
reason actually given).
An even better example is afforded by the idea of going off and
working for yourself or starting your own business. Undoubtedly
some people have done this, and are still continuing to do this.
But capitalist social relations require both a large work-force sell-
ing labour power to a small number of capitalists, and the accumu-
lation of capital in fewer and fewer hands. There is thus a dis-
tinct limit to the number who can be self-employed; and it is a
reductio ad absurdum to envisage the continued proliferation of
small businesses, for a stage would have to be reached where
there would be no employees about to staff them. Clearly every-
one cannot start up a small business; in fact few can, and each
one who is successful interferes with, and eventually eliminates,
the possibility of the next person doing so. Much the same
applies to the establishment of rural communes; and we have seen
recently as they have tended to proliferate and succeed that they
have also been faced with changing restrictive legislation, escalat-
ing rates and land prices, increased harassment, and so on; such
that those who originally 'showed the way' could in fact be seen
as having made it harder for others to follow. 18
We see then, from these and preceding examples, that there are
situations wherein the notion that 'anyone can, therefore every-
one can' simply does not hold at a practical level because the suc-
cess of one or some interferes with and virtually ensures the
failure of others. Such situations exist where there are pragmatic
restrictions placed on the number who can benefit, and they are
clearly obvious in instances of things like races where there can
only be one winner, or allocations of funds when, at a certain
point the kitty must run dry. They are less obvious but just as
insistent, however, within the context of social relations where,
in order to maintain a particular form of social relations, there
has to be say, a limit on the number of unemployed or the self-
employed or the number of doctors or professors who can be
accommodated comfortably. And in such situations to claim that
anyone can become self-employed or reach professorial status, to
'strengthen' the claim by citing a number of individuals who have
succeeded, and then to generalise to the conclusion that every-
one could do the same, is to commit both a logical and a practical

error. It is also, as previously suggested, to mystify and mis-
represent the situation. To note all the individuals who, in vary-
ing ways, have succeeded in withdrawing their labour from capi-
talists in no way invalidates the fact that under capitalism the
vast majority of people are forced to sell their labour power to
capitalists in order to survive. To note all the individuals who
have risen from adverse circumstances to high professional posi-
tions in no way invalidates the fact that, given a certain set of
social relations, very few will ever be able to rise from adverse
circumstances.
Such applications of 'individualistic logic' abstract the indi-
vidual from the overall context of which he or she is part. In
doing so they often result in the production of logically invalid
conclusions and implications; but more importantly they fail to
account for the interactive effects among individuals within social
relations or the effects imposed on individuals by social relations,
and thus result in the production of theoretically misconceived
and empirically false conclusions. And they have one other import-
ant mystifying and misrepresentative effect as well - they attri-
bute blame to the individual in situations where barriers to
success are actually structural parts of the context in which the
individual exists and seeks success. If, for instance it is claimed
that 'anybody can find a job therefore everybody can find a job',
and examples are then provided of certain individuals finding
jobs, it becomes relatively simple to lay the blame for unemploy-
ment at the feet of the unemployed, maintaining that it is their
fault that they do not have jobs, whereas in fact there may not
be enough jobs available to employ everyone. In much the same
way individuals come to bear the blame for not becoming rich in
situations where available wealth is limited, or for not 'getting
on' in social situation,s which place structural restrictions on the
number who can 'get on'.
In concluding this section we can look briefly at how 'individu-
alistic logic' can be applied to teachers with regard to their role
as Educators. Given, as we have noted, that some teachers are
instrumental in the Education of some pupils, it could be suggested
that all teachers could Educate all pupils; and from within the
ranks of teaching it would not be unusual to find a teacher claim-
ing that if only others had the same dedication and expended the
same effort they too could be successful.
Now Education (and schooling) are not practices or processes
undertaken by isolated individuals in atomised contexts. Just as
individual labour is undertaken in cooperation with other indi-
vidual labour within the context of a mode of production, and can-
not be understood or analysed properly, either in nature or form,
without reference to that context, so too does Education take
place in a 'cooperative' system within the context of a mode of
production, and similarly cannot be analysed adequately in isola-
tion from that context. Since the particular context we are con-
cerned with here is that of contemporary capitalism the question
which is really before us is not whether it is possible to Educate

all (or even most) children in vacuo, but rather whether it is
possible to Educate all (or most, or many) children within the
context of contemporary capitalist social relations. It is necessary,
therefore, that we give some consideration at this stage to cer-
tain aspects of social relations under capitalism which bear on
the issue of Education. It must be noted, however that what
follows is a sketch of surface factors and not an analysis of the
dynamics of social relations.
CAPITALISM, EDUCATION AND THE 'INTERFERENCE-

ELIMINATION' PRINCIPLE
A capitalist society can be characterised, very roughly, as being

comprised of four layers. At the bottom, or base, is a labour
force performing menial and largely unskilled work in return for
weekly wages - here we find the factory workers, miners,
production-line workers, shop assistants, members of the typing
pool, bus conductors and so on. This labour force is economically
exploited, oppressed, and relatively underprivileged; it is also
politically and ideologically oppressed to the extent that the
majority either fail to recognise the real nature of their situation
or else more or less willingly accept the broad defining features
of the status quo as being immutable and not subject to change
through their own agency.
Above this group is a second very large group performing
servicing and managerial functions, some in return for weekly
wages and some as salaried labourers. 19 The work of this group
tends to be more skilled, and is usually mental rather than manual.
Included here are public servants, employees in banks and insur-
ance offices, accountants, teachers, private secretaries, and low-
level managers. This group is also economically exploited and
oppressed, but has economic privilege over the former group,
usually justified in terms of reward for attaining and making use
of relatively expert and esoteric knowledge; and it bears (as
well as being the object of) ideological representations which tend
to distinguish it and elevate it from the former group in spite of
the large number of commonly shared characteristics that exist.
Next comes a relatively small group of experts in complex,
specialised fields. Here we find the doctors, lawyers, academics,
economists, architects, engineers and computer programmers;
some of whom work for fixed salaries but many of whom determine
their own fees and income. This group is economically privileged
and bestowed with high social status, and the justification for
that privilege and status is once more usually given in terms of
reward for attaining and making use of expert and esoteric
knowledge.
Finally we have the capitalists themselves - a very small class
characterised by its ownership and/or control of the means of
production.
Now there are two things to note especially about the non-
capitalist groups. First, they are hierarchical groups in terms
of status, income, and formal (school type) knowledge. The 'top'
group has higher status, earns more money and is deemed to
have or require more expert knowledge (of the type provided by
schooling) than the 'middle' group which in turn has higher
status, earns more money, and is deemed to have or require more
expert school-type and school-provided knowledge than the
'bottom' group.
Second, their membership is, in a very large sense, propor-
tional. This is not meant to imply that the proportions remain
static ( the second group, for instance, has grown enormously
over the last century), only that a sense of proportion must
remain. There must, for example, be far more workers in fac-
tories than there are owners/controllers (and the number of
workers will determine the number of overseers required) just as
there have to be far more people building bridges, roads and
cars than there are designing them. What this means is that,
regardless of people's abilities or desires, the 'top' group must
be kept proportionately small - which it is by means of continu-
ous selection devices and quotas such that many who have the
capability to enter it (see below, pp. 104-10) are selected out
and confined to lower places. The entry of any person to this
privileged group is thus achieved at the deliberate exclusion of
a large number of similarly capable others: things are so struc-
tured that there really is no room at the top - a 'top' which is
reached formally by the acquisition of expert knowledge in
schooling-type institutions and from which social status and
economic privilege then flow.
Now if any mode of production (which includes social and pro-
ductive relations) is to be maintained and reproduced this re-
quires at least that each new generation be initiated into the
prevailing culture, integrated into the dominant value, norm and
belief systems, and formed so as to contribute to the stability
and perpetuation of the mode of production in question. And
this is precisely what (using Gintis and Kandel) we identified
earlier as the function of schooling. This is not to say that
schooling is the only place wherein this reproduction takes place,
or that such reproduction is the only function of schooling. It
certainly is, however, one function of schooling; and we are left
with the question of where Education fits in with schooling under
capitalism.
Schooling under capitalism is successful in its reproductive
aspect only if the vast majority of the population which passes
through it (that is, the entire population, given compulsory
schooling) ends up in the two major groups identified above,
which together, although in changing proportions, have always
encompassed at least 80 per cent of the work-force under capital-
ism. In this way schools undertake what is euphemistically re-
ferred to as their selection function. But among the basic charac-
teristics of people in these groups is their general acceptance of
and compliance with the 'need' to spend the major part of their
lives doing menial or boring work, their acceptance of the pre-
vailing social relations which they themselves perpetuate (which
includes acceptance of their own social oppression and exploi-
tation), their acceptance of their own economic exploitation and
oppression, and their acceptance of the selection devices and
mechanisms which have placed them where they are. Basically,
people in these groups accept things as they are (or better, as
they are ideologically represented) and perpetuate the existing
order of things largely unquestioningly as if that order were
given, right and immutable; with the majority of them earning
their living undertaking jobs which they recognise variously as·
alienating, dirty, menial, or boring - subordinating their labour
to demands which have little if any correspondence to their
special talents or the fulfilment of their inner needs. 20 Signifi-
cantly absent are visions of greatness, the drive for cultural
improvement, people who have been led as deep as philosophy
and as high as art, manifestations of the achievement of the
highest degree of individual development possible or the leading
out of the true fulness of each person's nature, serious ex-
tended development of intellectual and critical powers, and most
of the features which mark out the Peters prototype of the
Educated person. The characteristics which do exist and mark
out this group are in fact quite opposed to those which, accord-
ing to liberal theorists, mark out Educated people - so much so
that we can say that schools, in selecting these people, are
socialising them to fit a certain set of social relations, but they
are hardly Educating them!
Educated people are a threat to any oppressive or repressive
social system, and no such system would deliberately or con-
sciously subsidise its own demolition by producing an abundance
of potentially subversive people. A small number can be tolerated,
assimilated, and even put to very good use, and any society
which espouses liberal-democratic ideals is committed at least to
the appearance of producing some Educated people; but if the
liberal-democratic facade is only a mask covering an exploiting
and oppressive society, then the number has to be strictly
limited.
None of this is meant to suggest, however, that Education is
reserved for the people in the third, specialist category; or that
we are gracing them with the title of being Educated. Our point
is a strictly negative one; namely that under capitalism (or any
repressive or exploitative system) Education is kept from rather
than provided for the vast proportion of the population.
We see, therefore, that on two counts it is just not on to
seriously contemplate the Education of all children, most children,
or even many children, within the context of capitalist social
relations. On the one hand, even if we were to accept an eq ua-
tion between the small specialist group and Educated people we
would find the 'interference-elimination' principle in operation,
such that the Education of some would have to be achieved at
the expense of the non-Education of many. On the other hand,

regardless of whether we accept this equation or not, it becomes
obvious that Educated people are potentially subversive under
capitalism, and that the production of too many of them could
interfere with and possibly even eliminate capitalist social rela-
tions themselves. What capitalism requires for its continued re-
production is a series of well-socialised, new generations, or a
continued production of well-schooled people. This much it has
provided for, and it is of more than passing interest to consider
why this much alone is generally spoken of and referred to as
'education'.
TEACHER ADAPTATIONS
If it is the case that, under capitalism, only a small proportion of

each generation can become Educated, where does this leave our
teachers?
Generally they are left in an invidious position: invidious be-
cause it is contradictory, and contradictory because it is des-
tined for failure at the level of ideals and geared towards success
at a level which few teachers would consciously aspire to or be
totally satisfied by.
Schooling is basically a socialising agency, not an Educative
one; and capitalist liberal democracies cannot afford to Educate
very many people. The unkindest cut of all, however, is that a
society espousing liberal ideals could not admit openly to those
points, and so they are covered over - in fact inverted - by
means of ideology. People are led to believe that schools, while
having a socialising function, are for Education ( even though
there might be practical immediate problems mitigating against
this, like lack of funds), and that the aim within a liberal demo-
cracy is to Educate as many people as possible. Thus R. S.
Peters :21
Most schools which are concerned with education have also to
act as agencies for selection and training for careers. Such
schools, under modern conditions, have taken over many func-
tions of the home .... These subsidiary tasks of the school
should not be lost sight of, though few would dispute that its
essence should be education.
and:
though education is the essence of a school, schools must also
fulfil functions of a more instrumental nature . . . they must
have regard to the needs of the community for citizens who
are trained in specific ways.
Teachers, as suggested earlier, are charged by the educational
theorists (including their lecturers) and by prevailing ideology
in general with the noble ideal of Educating (it is actually an
aristocratic ideal which sits as an uneasy contradiction within
ostensibly egalitarian social formations); while at the same time
they are placed in institutions invested with the central social
purpose of moulding new generations to fit an existing social

order, which under capitalism means denying Education to the
vast majority of the people. The invidiousness of this position
was extremely well grasped almost seventy years ago, when com-
pulsory schooling was in its infancy, by D.H. Lawrence (who
failed to find a publisher for these words) :22
Jimmy Shepherd, aged twelve, and Nancy Shepherd, aged thir-
teen, know very well that the eternal flame of the high ideal
is all my-eye. It's all toffee, my dear sirs. . . She's got her
thirteen-year-old eye on a laundry, and he's got his twelve-
year-old eye on a bottle-factory. Headmaster and headmistress
and all the teachers know perfectly well that the high goal of
all their endeavours is the laundry and the bottle-factory. .
The high idealists up in Whitehall may preserve some illu-
sions around themselves. But there is absolutely no illusion
for the elementary school-teachers. They know what the end
will be ....
The elementary school-teacher is in a vile and false position.
Set up as a representative of an ideal which is all toffee ..
[h]e is caught between the upper and nether millstones of
idealism and materialism. . . .
The elementary school is where the two meet, like millstones.
And teachers and scholars are ground between the two.
The adaptations which teachers make to this situation (usually
after a short period of teaching wherein the reality of their
experience is seen not to coincide with the ideals put forward by
lecturers, administrators and theorists, or with the ideals they
first carried forth and probably still treasure as ideals) generally
lead to one of two basic courses of action.
The first of these entails, to a large part, a playing down of
Educative ideals and the role of Educator; and this is often
accompanied by disillusionment and a negative attitude towards
teaching itself. Education might be pursued if and when possi-
bilities present themselves, but the primary role of the school as
socialiser is recognised and accepted (even if with indifference
and joylessness) as is the idea of the relative ineffectualness of
the teacher to do much about the condition of Jimmy and Nancy
Shepherd. Teachers who make this adaptation often come to con-
sider themselves as little more than integral parts of a system
which they can do virtually nothing about except serve, especially
if they want to retain their jobs. They tend to hold few practical
hopes about Educating; and survival, for them and their pupils,
becomes the name of the game. At the worst their careers are
measured out in years, the years in terms, the terms in weeks,
and the weeks in lessons put over and got through. This is not
to suggest, however, that such teachers necessarily turn into
inhuman agents, mechanically working away. Many, having pene-
trated the illusions of their context, perform admirable work in
mitigating some of the worst effects of schooling for their pupils,
doing what they can to make the socialising process as pleasant,
warm and human as it might be.
The second common adaptation is to cling to the ideal of

Education, to seek success wherever it might come, and to use
instances of success to substantiate the notions that Education
as an ideal is on, and that Education as a practical outcome is
possible. Teachers making this adaptation te'nd to become
supremely individualistic in outlook. They work out criteria for
measuring Education within the ambit of intellectual and moral
parameters (exam results serve well here), they count up their
successes, and they measure their personal effectiveness in terms
of the number of their successes (often in proportion to the
particular contingent factors militating against them). Their
careers are measured in terms of the number of children they
have Educated, and 'Educated' is often defined according to
rather mundane criteria like getting third-graders through the
third grade syllabus, teaching children basic literacy and /or
numeracy, or the number of passes achieved in a particular
exam. A teacher who has made this adaptation is very likely to
apply 'individualistic logic' ( 'If I can Educate then every teacher
can') and also to look very heavily to immediate practical causes
(especially the presence of dumb and/or uncooperative kids 'whom
you can't do much with') when Education fails to eventuate. The
immediate result of this is self-exoneration from criticism or
blame. Those common criticisms levelled at schooling and teachers
in general are not regarded as applying personally, and any per-
ceived personal failures are accounted for by referral to immed-
iate contingent factors. This then often leads, in a circular
fashion, to a defence of schooling in general as being Educative
(or at the worst, potentially Educative) based solely on the fact
that personally defined individual instances of success have been
achieved. General social training can then be safely looked on
with indifference while being practised under another name.
Now it should be obvious that both of these adaptations have
very serious reactionary consequences, especially as far as Edu-
cation is concerned. The first accepts the socialising aspect of
schooling and at best tries to make the experience a little more
pleasant and humane. The second assists in building ideological
defences of aspects of schooling which do not really exist, while
in its own way it too simply reinforces the socialisation process.
In their separate ways each positively assists the socialisation
of new generations into existing social relations or the reproduc-
tion of social relations under capitalism.
CONCLUSION
While it is quite likely that some teachers are attempting to under-

take subversive roles in schools (and there are certainly many
who declare that they would like to if such a thing were possible)
most teachers operate within the framework of the general adap-
tations which we have just outlined, and thus basically under-
take a socialising function. Problems of dissonance might lead to
differently rationalised expressions or perceptions of what is

being done or achieved, and given that teachers themselves are
successful products of schooling, it is highly likely that many
of them will see no basic faults or problems in what they are
doing. For instance, teachers commonly justify their actions in
terms of the need to prepare their charges for 'the real world
out there' rather than pursue ideals (regardless of whether these
ideals are revolutionary or not). But the question that really
confronts us at this stage is whether teachers could possibly do
anything fundamentally different from that which they are already
doing - namely assisting in the reproduction of social relations
under capitalism.
Now it might be suggested here that the adaptations we have
considered so far are hardly exhaustive, and even if the previous
sketch of capitalist social relations is accurate there is still a
third adaptation open to teachers - that of doing their level best
to Educate despite 'the system'. There is, after all, a world of
difference between teachers producing Educated people and the
ability of prevailing social relations to accommodate such people,
just as there is a similar difference between positing the require-
ments of social relations as calling for teacher-failure and positing
those same requirements as the cause of failure. On grounds such
as these the objection could be raised that identifying the need
for well-schooled but un-Educated people within capitalist social
relations does not, in itself, explain why teachers fail to Educate.
Such an objection is well-founded. Teachers are not the pathe-
tic passive victims of a 'system' which forces them openly to come
up with set proportions of socialised and Educated people, and
they could hardly be castigated if they were highly successful in
Educating. On the other hand, however, the adaptation suggested
above is not open to teachers. They can't just go ahead and Edu-
cate despite 'the system'. The basis of their failure, as we shall
show in our following chapters, lies not simply in a mechanistic
response to particular social relations but rather in the way that
the technical job of teaching has been structured within a set of
social relations, such that the very performance of the technical
job itself entails entering into, participating in, and perpetuating
situations, processes, and relations which themselves are anti-
thetical to Educating.
In order to demonstrate this adequately we must do at least
three things. First, we have to provide a detailed analysis of
capitalist social relations (in contrast to the sketch given above)
and the means by which they are reproduced. Second, we need a
detailed analysis of the function that schooling performs within
the total dynamics of the reproduction of social relations. And
third, we must focus very serious attention on the function of
teachers within the whole reproductive process. This last matter
stands in need of some explanation at this point.
Teaching is a form of work - a job. It is a job which has many
times been put under a microscope, analysed and dissected, such
that today we have a wealth of information about things like the
number and types of questions teachers ask, the forms of inter-

action they use, the types of explicit and implicit cues they put
out towards children, and which narrative techniques have been
found to be effective in particular situations. The job of teaching
has also been subjected to role-theory analysis, which has pro-
vided us with a similar wealth of information about the inter-
personal roles teachers play, or are perceived as playing, as part
of the performance of their job. But what has rarely been recog-
nised is that teachers (or anyone) are never in the position of
only doing a technical job: to perform a job is at the same time to
undertake an activity which has social significance or a social
function - not in the sense commonly ascribed to people like
teachers or social workers (as when we referred to teachers per-
forming a socialising function) - but a social function which has
specific reference to production relations. This particular aspect
of the job of teaching, which has otherwise been treated with
near-to-universal neglect in previous research concerning
teachers, shall be the focus of this present study.
The analysis which follows will have less to do with exploring
capitalist social relations than perhaps it might, for that area has
already been well charted and needs only a summary here. The
major areas of concentration will be the role of schooling in the
reproduction of social relations, and the social function of
teachers with reference to overall production relations. The re-
sult of this will be that while we shall gain no insights into how
reading can be better taught or whether open classrooms are
more effective than traditional ones, we shall end up with a
detailed understanding of where it is that teachers stand, and
what it is that they actually do, within the total dynamic of a
social system. Such an understanding will also serve to reveal
where their actual objective interests lie, and what future actions
can reasonably be expected of them.
Chapter2
Classes and class struggle
INTRODUCTION
All investigations and analyses are made from the perspective of

some particular theory or theories: they are theory-dependent
or theory-laden, and this is so regardless of whether or not the
underlying theory is declared, admitted to, or spelt out. There
can be no such thing as a neutral examination, or an examination
which is objective either in the sense that it is a-theoretic or
else sufficiently eclectic so as to encompass all theoretical per-
spectives . 1
The theory-ladenness of investigation gives rise to a large
number of methodological issues and problems, and it is hardly
our purpose to discuss these here. On the other hand, it is our
purpose to undertake an investigation, and this we shall do by
following the broad features of a methodological device outlined
by Imre Lakatos; that is, by casting our investigation into the
context of a research programme (or problematic) wherein certain
basic or 'hard core' hypotheses and propositions are accepted as
being secure and inviolable for the purpose of operating or
working with the research programme." Under this schema, an
astronomer investigating planetary motion would adopt a research
programme, say Newtonian physics, and while working within this
programme would necessarily, deliberately and unquestioningly
accept the 'hard core' propositions of Newtonian physics (or the
Newtonian problematic) as a working basis. Similarly, a psy-
chologist studying aggression in middle-aged people from a
psychoanalytic perspective or research programme would accept
and work with aspects of the Freudian problematic such as de-
fence mechanisms, object relations, and the id-ego-superego
categorisation of the human psyche. Now this unquestioned
acceptance of 'hard core' propositions does not, of course, mean
that these propositions are necessarily correct or that they ex-
press 'necessary truths': what it provides is nothing more than
a methodological device for allowing investigations to get under
way untrammelled by many of the problems brought about by
theory-ladenness (although we might hope that investigators
would have good reasons for beginning with one set of proposi-
tions rather than another).
The investigation which follows here is carried out within the
framework of Marxism or historical materialism, and thus certain
'hard core' propositions of that theory or research programme,
propositions regarding the nature of the State, 3 the nature of
29
30 Classes and class struggle
classes, and the role of class struggle, for example, will form
the basis for our investigation: that is, they themselves will not
be argued for here (they are being accepted as viable starting
points because a wealth of previous argument, along with prac-
tical outcomes, has established their value for investigations of
social relations). But whereas (given our approach) they do not
have to be argued for here, they do at least need to be intro-
duced, explained, and where necessary contrasted with other
approaches to similar issues.
The purpose of this chapter, then, is to outline the Marxist
concept of 'class' and to distinguish it from the more common
bourgeois concept (with special consideration being given to the
social-class 'placement' of teachers); and to indicate the place of
class struggle in the process of historical transformation.
TEACHERS AND SOCIAL CLASS:

THE 'ORTHODOX' PROBLEMATIC
Over the past few decades there have been a large number of
studies undertaken regarding the social-class status of school-
teachers, most of which have been situated within the context of
an 'orthodox' empiricist sociological framework concerned mainly
with socio-economic definitions of 'class'. Within such a framework
classes are defined basically, although not totally, in terms of
relative income within a social formation; and social formations
are characterised, at least in one dimension, in terms of the co-
existence of groups of different economic privilege. Commonly
we find reference to the upper class (the richest group), the
middle class, and the lower class (the poorest group): the lower
class is also often referred to as the working class, and while
this might be intended as a euphemism it tends to have a sharp
cutting truth about it. At a higher level of sophistication this
trichotomy tends to be stretched out and we find talk of and
reference to not simply one middle class but rather an upper-
middle, a (middle?) middle, and a lower-middle class: there has
also been a tendency to recognise an upper echelon of the work-
ing class - a sort of upper-lower class.
Studies undertaken within this particular type of framework
have tended to focus on two issues; the social-class origins of
schoolteachers, and the social-class status of schoolteachers
(that is, the place teachers occupy, or are perceived as occupy-
ing, within the social hierarchy). The social-class status of
schoolteachers is fairly easily settled: in western capitalist
societies they drop neatly into the middle class, and somewhere
pretty close to the middle of the middle class. Social-class origins,
however, are just a little more complex. In the ancient Grecian
setting which is so often taken as the seat of our civilisation,
teaching, or at least elementary teaching of the common children,
was considered to be below the dignity of a free person, and
teachers were drawn from the lowest of the low, the slaves. Gain-
Classes and class struggle 31
ing dignity, respect, and status has been a slow, long, and hard
struggle for teachers. Teaching, after no longer being confined
to slaves, became the province variously of the lower orders of
the church, of refined but non-endowed ladies, of ordinary wor-
kers offering instruction in their spare time, and even of child-
ren themselves serving under a grand master within a monitorial
system.
It was the growth of compulsory, elementary schooling in the
nineteenth century that brought into being the 'professional'
teacher; 'professional' in the sense of undertaking specific pre-
service training, and then engaging in a full-time career of
instructing children. The growth of secondary schooling, and then
compulsory secondary schooling in the twentieth century called
for and brought into being a far more refined product; one who
had already mastered the more advanced content of secondary
schooling and who was also considered sufficiently well trained
(and of proper moral standing) to pass it on to others. Within a
very short period of time the well-intentioned and largely self-
styled dame-school mistress had become replaced by a specifically
trained tertiary-educated product, not only in secondary schools
but in primary schools and kindergartens as well. The modern
schoolteacher, unlike the farmer, the miner, or the shoemaker, is
a new phenomenon; and thus it is only to be expected that sociol-
ogists might want to identify from which part of the older order
this phenomenon arose, and where it is settling in the present
order.
The results of such studies have been more or less predictable.
On the one hand, teaching has tended to recruit from the up-
wardly aspiring end of the lower /working class. For people in
such a position teaching has always been more accessible on
practical grounds than the traditional professions which, because
of the longer periods of study involved, have imposed longer
periods of delayed financial remuneration on their aspirants. Also,
at the time of the mushrooming of elementary schooling, teaching
had had little time to become 'respectable' enough to become an
attractive lure for upper- or middle-class children seeking appro-
priate employment. Teaching also proved to be a better candidate
than traditional professions in terms of aspirations for upward
mobility: for upward mobility is generally (and realistically) seen
as a gradual climb, whereby it is more likely the case that the
daughter of a miner might become a teacher whose child in turn
might enter the medical profession, rather than that a miner's
child might aspire to, and move straight in to an 'upper-class
profession' without first having been pedigreed in the middle
regions. Teaching also offered far less 'cultural dislocation' for
the lower /working-class child who, while almost certainly knowing
nothing of the ways of law or medicine or engineering, had
experienced schooling and thus knew, to a large extent, what
teachers did and what was required of them. Teaching, being
accessible (especially to women barred from most professions),
realistic in terms of aspirations, and familiar to the working class,
32 Classes and class struggle
while at the same time being beneath the aspirations of the middle
and upper classes, drew heavily in its initial 'professional' stage
from the working class - thus beginning the long-standing rela-
tion between teaching as a career and working-class aspiration,
and so introducing (or reintroducing, if we recall that slaves in
ancient Greece could attain freedom in return for successful teach-
ing activities) the familiar figure of the teacher emerging and
emancipated from the lower class.
Two factors, however, were about to change the overwhelming
direction of this social drift. First, as teaching itself became more
respected and gained in occupational status - with longer, more
specialised pre-service training; with higher qualification require-
ments; through offering higher salaries; and through elevation in
status in periods of economic expansion - it tended to become
more attractive to the middle class. Added in with this was the
fact that teachers had clearly become bona fide middle-class prac-
titioners themselves, no longer to be looked down on, or at least
far less to be looked down on. Teaching, comprised of new middle-
class performers, was no longer 'below' the aspirations of the
middle class. The second factor was the vast proliferation of
secondary schooling needing to be staffed by highly schooled
people capable of transmitting cultural elements at a fairly high
degree of sophistication. Teaching, or secondary-school teaching,
rather suddenly became a very respectable thing for an aspiring
middle-class university graduate to go into, especially a graduate
in the humanities: it tended, in time, to become the thing to go
in to. As the days of taking an Arts degree purely for self-
betterment quickly vanished, yet students continued to take Arts
degrees, teaching emerged as a very viable goal; and the phrase
'What else can you do with an Arts degree?' became a common
utterance, not always issuing out of despair. Overall, a new
pattern emerged: middle-class children ( and even a few from the
upper class) aspired to succeed in school and university, under-
take post-graduate training, and then become teachers.
For a time a sharp division existed between elementary-school
teaching (infants and primary) and secondary-school teaching.
Elementary teaching was regarded as requiring less schooling and
less pre-service training from its practitioners than secondary
teaching, and it also tended to pay considerably less. Thus the
two streams entering teaching tended to follow fairly distinct
courses. Elementary teaching, being more quickly accessible, drew
from the lower class; and, paying less, kept its practitioners
closer to their socio-economic origins. Secondary teaching, re-
quiring longer periods of delayed remuneration, being more con-
cerned in content with the corpus of middle-class ideals (the
study of fine literature, languages, etc., as well as aiming pupils
towards university entrance), drew from the middle class; and by
offering greater financial rewards again kept its practitioners
near to their socio-economic origins.
The division has been gradually broken down, yet has by no
means disappeared. The period of training for elementary teaching
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
the mantel shelf ticked with a sort of rasping groan, as though every
stroke put its rheumatic old wheels and springs in agony.
Before the stove, in a sadly abused, wooden bottomed armchair, and
with his back humped up a good deal like the chicken under the lilac
bush outside, sat an old man with weazened, wrinkled face, eyes like
a hawk’s, a beak-like nose, and a sparse settlement of gray hairs on
his crown and chin.
He leaned forward in his seat, and both claw-like hands clutching the
arms of the chair, seemed to be all that kept him from falling upon
the stove.
At the window, just where the light fell best upon the book in his
hand, sat a youth of sixteen years—a well made, robust boy, whose
brown hair curled about his broad forehead, and whose face was not
without marks of real beauty.
Just now his brows were knit in a slight frown, and there was a flash
of anger in his clear eyes.
“I dunno what’s comin’ of ev’rything,” the old man was saying, in a
querulous tone. “Here ’tis the first o’ April, an’ ’tain’t been weather fit
ter plow a furrer, or plant a seed, yit.”
“Well, I don’t see as it’s my fault, Uncle Arad,” responded the boy by
the window. “I don’t make the weather.”
“I dunno whether ye do or not,” the old man declared, after staring
across at him for an instant. “I begin ter believe yer a regular Jonah
—jest as yer Uncle Anson was, an’ yer pa, too.”
The boy turned away and looked out of the window at this mention of
his parent, and a close observer might have seen his broad young
shoulders tremble with sudden emotion as he strove to check the
sobs which all but choked him.
Whether the old man was a close enough observer to see this or not,
he nevertheless kept on in the same strain.
“One thing there is erbout it,” he remarked; “Anson knew he was
born ter ill luck, an’ he cleared out an’ never dragged nobody else
down ter poverty with him. But your pa had ter marry—an’ see what
come of it!”
“I don’t know as it affected you any,” rejoined the boy, bitterly.
“Yes, ’t’as, too! Ain’t I got you on my hands, a-eatin’ of your head off,
when there ain’t a sign of a chance o’ gittin’ any work aout o’ ye?”
“I reckon I’ve paid for my keep for more’n one year,” the other
declared vehemently; “and up to the last time father went away he
always paid you for my board—he told me so himself.”
“He did, did he?” exclaimed Uncle Arad, in anger. “Well, he——”
“Don’t you say my father lied!” cried the boy, his eyes flashing and
his fists clenched threateningly. “If you do, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”
“Well—I ain’t said so, hev I?” whined Uncle Arad, fairly routed by this
vehemence. “Ain’t you a pretty boy to threaten an old man like me,
Brandon Tarr?”
Brandon relapsed into sullen silence, and the old man went on:
“Mebbe Horace thought he paid your board, but the little money he
ever give me never more’n ha’f covered the expense ye’ve been ter
me, Don.”
His hearer sniffed contemptuously at this. He knew well enough that
he had done a man’s work about the Tarr place in summer, and all
the chores during winter before and after school hours, for the better
part of three years, and had amply repaid any outlay the old man
had made.
Old Arad Tarr was reckoned as a miser by his townsmen, and they
were very nearly correct. By inheritance the farm never belonged to
him, for he was the youngest son of old Abram Tarr, and had been
started in business by his father when he was a young man, while
his brother Ezra had the old homestead, as the eldest son should.
But reverses came to Ezra, of which the younger brother, being
successful in money matters, took advantage, and when Ezra died at
last (worked to death, the neighbors said) the property came into
Arad’s hands. There was little enough left for the widow, who soon
followed her husband to the grave, and for the two boys, Anson and
Horace.
Anson was of a roving, restless disposition, and he soon became
disgusted with the grinding methods of old Arad, who sought to get
double work out of his two nephews. So he left the farm, and, allured
by visions of sudden wealth which led him all over the world, he
followed from one scheme to another, never returning to the old
place again, though his brother, Horace, heard from him
occasionally.
The younger lad was not long in following his brother’s footsteps (in
leaving home, at least), and went to sea, where he rose rapidly from
the ranks of the common sailor to the post of commander.
He married a girl whom he had known in his boyhood, and Brandon,
the boy who was now left to the tender mercies of the great uncle,
was their only child.
By patient frugality Captain Tarr had amassed sufficient money to
purchase a brig called the Silver Swan, and made several
exceptionally fortunate voyages to South and West African ports,
and to Oceanica.
But after his wife’s death (she was always a delicate woman) his
only wish seemed to be to gain a fortune that he might retire from the
sea and live with his son, in whom his whole heart was now bound.
There was a trace of the same visionary spirit in Horace Tarr’s nature
that had been the motif of his brother Anson’s life, and hoping to gain
great wealth by a sudden turning of the wheel of fortune, he
speculated with his savings.
Like many other men, he trusted too much in appearances and was
wofully deceived, and every penny of his earnings for a number of
voyages in the brig was swept away.
His last voyage had been to Cape Town, and on the return passage
the good Silver Swan had struck on a rock somewhere off Cuba, and
was a total loss, for neither the vessel itself, nor the valuable cargo,
was insured for a penny’s worth.
This had occurred nearly two months before, and the first news
Brandon and Uncle Arad had received of the disaster was through
the newspaper reports. Two surviving members of the crew were
picked up by a New York bound steamship, from a raft which had
been afloat nearly two weeks, and but one of the men was in a
condition to give an intelligible account of the wreck.
From his story there could be but little doubt of the total destruction
of the Silver Swan and the loss of every creature on board,
excepting himself and the mate, Caleb Wetherbee, who was so
exhausted that he had been taken at once to the marine hospital.
Captain Tarr had died on the raft, from hunger and a wound in the
head received during the wrecking of his vessel.
It was little wonder, then, with these painful facts so fresh in his mind,
that young Brandon Tarr found it so hard to stifle his emotion while
his great uncle had been speaking. In fact, when presently the
crabbed old man opened his lips to speak again, he arose hastily,
threw down his book, and seized his hat and coat.
“I’m going out to see if I can pick off that flock of crows I saw around
this morning,” he said hastily. “If you do get a chance to plant
anything this spring, they’ll pull it up as fast as you cover the seed.”
“We kin put up scarecrows,” said Arad, with a scowl, his dissertation
on the “shiftlessness” of Don’s father thus rudely broken off. “I can’t
afford you powder an’ shot ter throw away at them birds.”
“Nobody asked you to pay for it,” returned the boy gruffly, and
buttoning the old coat about him, and seizing his rifle from the hooks
above the door, he went out into the damp outside world, which,
despite its unpleasantness, was more bearable than the atmosphere
of the farm house kitchen.
The farm which had come into Arad Tarr’s possession in what he
termed a “business way,” contained quite one hundred acres of
cultivated fields, rocky pastures, and forest land.
It was a productive farm and turned its owner a pretty penny every
year, but judging from the appearance of the interior of the house
and the dilapidated condition of the barn and other outbuildings, one
would not have believed it.
There was sufficient work on the farm every year to keep six hired
hands beside Brandon and the old man, himself, “on the jump” every
minute during the spring, summer, and fall.
In the winter they two alone managed to do the chores, and old Arad
even discharged the woman who cooked for the men during the
working season.
As soon as the season opened, however, and the old man was
obliged to hire help, the woman (who was a widow and lived during
the winter with a married sister in the neighborhood) was established
again in the Tarr house, and until the next winter they lived in a
manner that Brandon termed “like Christians,” for she was a good
cook and a neat housekeeper; but left to their own devices during
the cold weather, he and his great uncle made sorry work of it.
“The frost is pretty much out of the ground now,” Brandon muttered
as he crossed the littered barnyard, “and this drizzle will mellow up
the earth in great shape. As soon as it stops, Uncle Arad will dig right
in and work to make up for lost time, I s’pose.”
He climbed the rail fence and jumped down into the sodden field
beyond, the tattered old army coat (left by some hired hand and
used by him in wet weather) flapping dismally about his boots.
“I wonder what’ll become of me now,” he continued, still addressing
himself, as he plodded across the field, sinking ankle deep in the wet
soil. “Now that father’s gone there’s nothing left for me to do but to
shift for myself and earn my own living. Poor father wanted me to get
an education first before I went into anything, but there’ll be no more
chance for that here. I can see plainly that Uncle Arad means to shut
down on school altogether now.
“I’ll never get ahead any as long as I stay here and slave for him,” he
pursued. “He’ll be more exacting than ever, now that father is gone—
he didn’t dare treat me too meanly before. He’ll make it up now, I
reckon, if I stay, and I just won’t!”
He had been steadily approaching the woods and at this juncture
there was a rush of wings and a sudden “caw! caw!”
Crows are generally considered to be endowed with a faculty for
knowing when a gun is brought within range, but this particular band
must have been asleep, for Brandon was quite within shooting
distance as the great birds labored heavily across the lots.
The rifle, the lock of which he had kept dry beneath his armpit, was
at his shoulder in a twinkling, there was a sharp report, and one of
the birds fell heavily to the ground, while its frightened companions
wheeled with loud outcry and were quickly out of view behind the
woods.
Brandon walked on and picked up the fallen bird.
“Shot his head pretty nearly off,” he muttered. “I believe I’ll go West.
Knowing how to shoot might come in handy there,” and he laughed
grimly.
Then, with the bird in his hand, he continued his previous course,
and penetrated beneath the dripping branches of the trees.
Pushing his way through the brush for a rod or two he reached a
plainly defined path which, cutting obliquely across the wood lot,
connected the road on which the Tarr house stood with the “pike”
which led to the city, fourteen miles away.
Entering this path, he strolled leisurely on, his mind intent upon the
situation in which his father’s death had placed him.
“I haven’t a dollar, or not much more than that sum,” he thought, “nor
a friend, either. I can’t expect anything but the toughest sort of a pull,
wherever I go or whatever I take up; but it can’t be worse than
’twould be here, working for Uncle Arad.”
After traversing the path for some distance, Don reached a spot
where a rock cropped up beside the way, and he rested himself on
this, still studying on the problem which had been so fully occupying
his mind for several weeks past.
As he sat there, idly pulling handfuls of glossy black feathers from
the dead crow, the noise of a footstep on the path in his rear caused
him to spring up and look in that direction.
A man was coming down the path—a sinister faced, heavily bearded
man, who slouched along so awkwardly that Brandon at first thought
him lame. But the boy had seen a few sailors, besides his father, in
his life, and quickly perceived that the stranger’s gait was caused
simply by a long experience of treading the deck of a vessel at sea.
He was a solidly built man, not below the medium height, yet his
head was set so low between his shoulders, and thrust forward in
such a way that it gave him a dwarfed appearance. His hands were
rammed deeply into his pockets, an old felt hat was drawn down
over his eyes, and his aspect was generally seedy and not
altogether trustworthy.
He started suddenly upon seeing the boy, and gazed at him intently
as he approached.
“Well, shipmate, out gunning?” he demanded, in a tone which was
intended to be pleasant.
“A little,” responded Brandon, kicking the body of the dead crow into
the bushes. “We’re always gunning for those fellows up this way.”
“Crows, eh?” said the man, stopping beside the boy, who had rested
himself on the rock again. “They’re great chaps for pullin’ corn—
faster’n you farmers can plant it, eh?”
Brandon nodded curtly, and wondered why the tramp (as he
supposed him) did not go along.
“Look here, mate,” went on the man, after a moment, “I’m lookin’ for
somebody as lives about here, by the name of Tarr——”
“Why, you’re on the Tarr place now,” replied Brandon, with sudden
interest. “That’s my name, too.”
“No, it isn’t now!” exclaimed the stranger, in surprise.
A quick flash of eagerness came over his face as he spoke.
“You’re not Brandon Tarr?” he added.
“Yes, sir,” replied Don, in surprise.
“Not Captain Horace Tarr’s son! God bless ye, my boy. Give us your
hand!”
The man seized the hand held out to him half doubtfully, and shook it
warmly, at the same time seating himself beside the boy.
“You knew my father?” asked Brandon, not very favorably impressed
by the man’s appearance, yet knowing no real reason why he should
not be friendly.
“Knew him! Why, my boy, I was his best friend!” declared the sailor.
“Didn’t you ever hear him speak of Cale Wetherbee?”
“Caleb Wetherbee!” cried Don, with some pleasure.
He had never seen his father’s mate, but he had heard the captain
speak of him many times. This man did not quite come up to his
expectation of what the mate of the Silver Swan should have been,
but he knew that his father had trusted Caleb Wetherbee, and that
appearances are sometimes deceitful.
“Indeed I have heard him speak of you many times,” and the boy’s
voice trembled slightly as he offered his hand a second time far more
warmly.
“Yes, sir,” repeated the sailor, blowing his nose with ostentation, “I’m
an old friend o’ your father’s. He—he died in my arms.”
Brandon wiped his own eyes hastily. He had loved his father with all
the strength of his nature, and his heart was too sore yet to be rudely
touched.
“Why, jest before he—he died, he give me them papers to send to
ye, ye know.”
As he said this the man flashed a quick, keen look at Brandon, but it
was lost upon him.
“What papers?” he asked with some interest.
“What papers?” repeated the sailor, springing up. “D’ye mean ter say
ye never got a package o’ papers from me a—a month ergo, I
reckon ’twas?”
“I haven’t received anything through the mail since the news came of
the loss of the brig,” declared Don, rising also.
“Then that mis’rable swab of an ’orspital fellow never sent ’em!”
declared the man, with apparent anger. “Ye see, lad, I was laid up
quite a spell in the ’orspital—our sufferings on that raft was jest orful
—an’ I couldn’t help myself. But w’en your father died he left some
papers with me ter be sent ter you, an’ I got the ’orspital nurse to
send ’em. An’ you must hev got ’em—eh?”
“Not a thing,” replied Brandon convincingly. “Were they of any
value?”
“Valible? I should say they was!” cried the sailor. “Werry valible,
indeed. Why, boy, they’d er made our—I sh’d say your—fortune, an’
no mistake!”
Without doubt his father’s old friend was strangely moved by the
intelligence he had received, and Don could not but be interested in
the matter.
CHAPTER III
AN ACCOUNT OF THE WRECK OF THE SILVER
SWAN
“To what did these papers bear reference?” Brandon asked. “Father
met with heavy misfortunes in his investments last year, and every
penny, excepting the Swan itself, was lost. How could these papers
have benefited me?”
“Well, that I don’t rightly know,” replied the sailor slowly.
He looked at the boy for several seconds with knitted brows,
evidently deep in thought. Brandon could not help thinking what a
rough looking specimen he was, but remembering his father’s good
opinion of Caleb Wetherbee, he banished the impression as
ungenerous.
“I b’lieve I’ll tell ye it jest as it happened,” said the man at length. “Sit
down here again, boy, an’ I’ll spin my yarn.”
He drew forth a short, black pipe, and was soon puffing away upon
it, while comfortably seated beside Don upon the rock.
“’Twere the werry night we sailed from the Cape,” he began, “that I
was—er—in the cabin of the Silver Swan, lookin’ at a new chart the
cap’n had got, when down comes a decently dressed chap—a
landlubber, ev’ry inch o’ him—an’ asks if this were Cap’n Horace
Tarr.
“‘It is,’ says the cap’n.
“‘Cap’n Horace Tarr, of Rhode Island, U. S. A.?’ says he.
“‘That’s me,’ says the cap’n ag’in.
“‘Well, Cap’n Tarr,’ says the stranger chap, a-lookin’ kinder squint
eyed at me, ‘did you ever have a brother Anson?’
“Th’ cap’n noticed his lookin’ at me an’ says, afore he answered the
question:
“‘Ye kin speak freely,’ says he, ‘this is my mate, Cale Wetherbee, an’
there ain’t a squarer man, nor an honester, as walks the deck
terday,’ says he. ‘Yes, I had a brother Anson; but I persume he’s
dead.’
“‘Yes, he is dead,’ said the stranger. ‘He died up country, at a place
they calls Kimberley, ’bout two months ago.’
“That was surprisin’ ter the cap’n, I reckon, an’ he tol’ the feller that
he’d supposed Anson Tarr dead years before, as he hadn’t heard
from him.
“‘No, he died two months ago,’ says the man, ‘an’ I was with him. He
died o’ pneumony—was took werry sudden.’
“Nat’rally this news took the old man—I sh’d say yer father—all
aback, as it were, an’ he inquired inter his brother’s death fully. Fin’ly
the man drew out a big package—papers he said they was—wot
Anson Tarr had given him ter be sure ter give ter the cap’n when he
sh’d see him. Then the feller went.
“O’ course, the cap’n didn’t tell me wot the docyments was, but I
reckoned by his actions, an’ some o’ the hints he let drop, that they
was valible, an’ I—I got it inter my head that ’twas erbout money—er
suthin’ o’ the kind—that your Uncle Anson knowed of.
“Wal, the Silver Swan, she left the Cape, ’n’ all went well till arter we
touched at Rio an’ was homeward boun’. Then a gale struck us that
stripped the brig o’ ev’ry stick o’ timber an’ every rag o’ sail, an’ druv
her outer thet ’ere rock. There warn’t no hope for the ol’ brig an’ she
began to go ter pieces to once, so we tried ter take to the boats.
“But the boats was smashed an’ the only ones left o’ the hull ship’s
company was men Paulo Montez, and yer father, an’—an’ another
feller. We built the raft and left the ol’ brig, just as she—er—slid off er
th’ rock an’ sunk inter the sea. It—it mos’ broke yer father’s heart ter
see the ol’ brig go down an’ I felt m’self, jest as though I’d lost er—er
friend, er suthin!”
The sailor paused in his narrative and drew hard upon his pipe for a
moment.
“Wal, you know by the papers how we floated around on that ’ere raf’
an’ how yer poor father was took. He give me these papers just afore
he died, an’ made me promise ter git ’em ter you, ef I was saved. He
said you’d understand ’em ter oncet, an’,” looking at Brandon keenly
out of the corners of his eyes, “I didn’t know but ye knew something
about it already.”
Brandon slowly shook his head.
“No,” he said; “I can’t for the life of me think what they could refer to.”
“No—no buried treasure, nor nothing of the kind?” suggested the
man hesitatingly.
“I guess not!” exclaimed Don. “If I knew about such a thing, you can
bet I’d be after it right quickly, for I don’t know any one who needs
money just at the present moment more than I.”
“Well, I believe I’ll go,” cried the sailor, rising hastily. “That ’orspital
feller must hev forgotten ter mail them papers, an’ I’ll git back ter
New York ter oncet, an’ see ’bout it. I b’lieve they’ll be of vally to ye,
an’ if ye want my help in any way, jest let me know. I—I’ll give ye a
place ter ’dress letters to, an’ I’ll call there an’ git ’em.”
He produced an old stump of a pencil from his pocket and a ragged
leather note case. From this he drew forth a dog eared business
card of some ship chandler’s firm, on the blank side of which he
wrote in a remarkably bad hand:
CALEB WETHERBEE,
New England Hotel,
Water Street,
New York.
Then he shook Don warmly by the hand, and promising to get the
papers from the “’orspital feller” at once, struck away toward the city
again, leaving the boy in a statement of great bewilderment.
He didn’t know what the papers could refer to, yet like all boys who
possess a good digestion and average health, he had imagined
enough to fancy a hundred things that they might contain. Perhaps
there was some great fortune which his Uncle Anson had known
about, and had died before he could reap the benefit of his
knowledge.
Yet, he felt an instinctive distrustfulness of this Caleb Wetherbee. He
was not at all the kind of man he had expected him to be, for
although Captain Tarr had never said much about the personal
appearance of the mate of the Silver Swan, still Don had pictured
Caleb to his mind’s eye as a far different looking being.
As he stood there in the path, deep in thought, and with his eyes
fixed upon the spot where he had seen the sailor disappear, the
fluttering of a bit of paper attracted his attention. He stooped and
secured it, finding it to be a greasy bit of newspaper that had
doubtless reposed for some days in the note case of the sailor, and
had fallen unnoticed to the ground while he was penciling his
address on the card now in Don’s possession.
One side of the scrap of paper was a portion of an advertisement,
but on the other side was a short item of news which Don perused
with growing interest.
Savannah, March 3. The Brazilian steamship
Montevideo, which arrived here in the morning, reports
having sighted, about forty miles west of the island of
Cuba, a derelict brig, without masts or rigging of any kind,
but with hull in good condition. It was daylight, and by
running close the Montevideo’s captain made the wreck
out to be the Silver Swan, of Boston, which was reported
as having been driven on to Reef Number 8, east of Cuba,
more than a month ago. The two surviving members of the
crew of the Silver Swan were picked up from a raft, after
twelve days of terrible suffering, by the steamship
Alexandria, of the New York and Rio Line. The
Montevideo’s officers report the brig as being a most
dangerous derelict, as in its present condition it may keep
afloat for months, having evidently withstood the shock of
grounding on the reef, and later being driven off by the
westerly gale of February 13th.
Her position, when sighted by the Montevideo, has been
reported to the Hydrographic Office, and will appear on the
next monthly chart.
CHAPTER IV
BRANDON COMES TO A DECISION
The first thought which flashed across Brandon Tarr’s mind as he

read the newspaper item quoted in the previous chapter was that the
story of the wreck of the Silver Swan, as told by the old sailor, had
been totally misleading.
“Why, he lied—point blank—to me!” he exclaimed, “and with this very
clipping in his pocket, too.”
He half started along the path as though to pursue the sailor, and
then thought better of it.
“He declared that he saw the Swan go down with his own eyes; and
here she was afloat on the 13th of March—a month after the wreck.
He must have wanted to keep the knowledge of that fact from me.
But what for? Ah! those papers!”
With this Brandon dropped back on the rock again and read the
newspaper clipping through once more. Then he went over the
whole matter in his mind.
What possible object could Caleb Wetherbee have in coming to him
and telling him the yarn he had, if there was no foundation for it?
There must be some reason for the story, Brandon was sure.
Evidently there had been papers either given into the hands of the
mate of the Silver Swan, or obtained by him by dishonest means.
These papers must relate to some property of value which had
belonged to Anson Tarr, Don’s uncle, and, his cupidity being
aroused, the sailor was trying to convert the knowledge contained in
them to his own benefit.
There was probably some “hitch” in the documents—something the
rascally mate could not understand, but which he thought Brandon
could explain. Therefore, his trip to Chopmist from New York to
“pump” the captain’s son.
“Without doubt,” said the boy, communing with himself, “the papers
were brought aboard the brig just as this rascally Wetherbee said,
and they were from Uncle Anson. Let’s see, he said he died at
Kimberley—why, that’s right at the diamond mines!” For like most
boys with adventurous spirits and well developed imagination,
Brandon had devoured much that had been written about the
wonderful diamond diggings of South Africa.
“Perhaps—who knows?” his thoughts ran on, “Uncle Anson ‘struck it
rich’ at the diamond mines before he died. There’s nothing
impossible in that—excepting the long run of ill luck which had
cursed this family.”
He shook his head thoughtfully.
“If Uncle Anson had owned a share in a paying diamond mine, this
rascally sailor would have known at once that the papers relating to it
could not benefit him, for the ownership would be on record there in
Kimberley. It must, therefore, be that the property—whatever it may
be—is in such shape that it can be removed from place to place—
perhaps was brought aboard the brig by the friend of Uncle Anson
who told father of his death.”
For the moment the idea did not assist in the explanation of the
course of Caleb Wetherbee in retaining the papers. But Brandon had
set himself to the task of reasoning out the mystery, and when one
thread failed him he took up another.
“One would think,” he muttered, “that if there had been any money
brought aboard the brig, father would have taken it on the raft with
him when they left; but still, would he?
“According to the report the brig grounded on Reef Number 8, and
perhaps was not hurt below the water line. The next gale from the
west’ard blew her off again. She is now a derelict, and if the money
was hidden on board it would be there now!”
At this sudden thought Brandon sprang up in excitement and paced
up and down the path.
He had often heard of the wrecks of vessels abandoned in mid
ocean floating thousands of miles without a hand to guide their
helms, a menace and danger to all other craft. The Silver Swan
might float for months—aye, for years; such a thing was possible.
“And if the money—if it is money—is hidden aboard the brig, the one
who finds the derelict first will have it,” was the thought which came
to him.
“But why should the mate come to me about it?” Brandon asked
himself. “Why need he let me know anything about the papers, or the
treasure, if he wished to recover it himself? Didn’t he know where on
the brig the money was hidden? Or didn’t the papers tell that?”
He cudgled his brains for several minutes to think where his father
would have been likely to hide anything of value on the brig. Was
there any place which only he and his father had known about?
This idea suggested a train of reminiscences. He had been aboard
the Silver Swan several times while she lay in Boston, and had been
all over her.
Once, possibly four years before (it seemed a long time to him now),
he had been alone with his father in the cabin, and Captain Tarr had
shown him an ingeniously hidden sliding panel in the bulkhead,
behind which was a little steel lined cavity, in which the captain kept
his private papers.
Perhaps Caleb Wetherbee did not know about this cupboard, and it
was this information that he wished to get from him. The idea
seemed probable enough, for if he did not know where the treasure
was hidden on the brig, what good would the papers relating to it be
to him?
“There may be a fortune there, just within my grasp, and yet I not be
able to get at it,” muttered Don, pacing the rough path nervously.
“Despite his former confidence in this Wetherbee, father must have
doubted him at the last and not dared to take the treasure (if treasure
it really is) when he left the brig.
“Instead, he gave him these papers, hoping the fellow would be
honest enough to place them in my hands; but, still fearing to fully
trust the mate, he wrote his directions to me so blindly, that
Wetherbee is all at sea about what to do.
“Wetherbee knows that the brig is afloat—this clipping proves that—
and he hoped to get the information he wanted from me and then go
in search of the Silver Swan. Why can I not go in search of it
myself?”
The thought almost staggered him for an instant, yet to his boyish
mind the plan seemed feasible enough. He knew that derelicts are
often carried by the ocean currents for thousands of miles before
they sink, yet their movements are gradual, and by a close study of
the hydrographic charts he believed it would be possible to locate
the wrecked brig.
“I’ve got no money, I know,” he thought, “at least, not much; but I’ve
health and strength and an ordinary amount of pluck, and it will be
strange if I can’t accomplish my purpose if the old brig only holds
together long enough.”
He looked at the soiled card the sailor had given him.
“‘New England Hotel, Water Street,’” he repeated. “Some sailors’
boarding house, likely. I believe—yes, I will—go to New York myself
and see this scoundrelly Wetherbee again. He can’t do much without
me, I fancy, and perhaps, after all, I can use him to my own benefit. I
ought to be as smart as an ignorant old sailor like him.”
He stood still a moment, gazing steadily at the ground.
“I’ll do it, I vow I will!” he exclaimed at last, raising his head defiantly.
“Uncle Arad’s got no hold upon me and I’ll go. I’ll start tomorrow
morning,” with which determination he picked up his rifle and left the
woods.
CHAPTER V
UNCLE ARAD HAS RECOURSE TO LEGAL
FORCE
In the several oceans of our great globe there are many floating
wrecks, abandoned for various causes by their crews, which may
float on and on, without rudder or sail, for months, and even years.
Especially is this true of the North Atlantic Ocean, where, during the
past five years, nearly a thousand “derelicts,” as these floating
wrecks are called, were reported.
The Hydrographic Office at Washington prints a monthly chart on
which all the derelicts reported by incoming vessels are plainly
marked, even their position in the water being designated by a little
picture of the wreck.
By this method of “keeping run” of the wrecks, it has been found that
some float thousands of miles before they finally reach their ultimate
port—Davy Jones’ locker.
The average life of these water logged hulks is, however, but thirty
days; otherwise the danger from collision with them would be
enormous and the loss of life great. Many of those vessels which
have left port within the past few years and never again been heard
from, were doubtless victims of collisions with some of these
derelicts.
Several more or less severe accidents have been caused by them,
and so numerous have they become that, within the past few
months, several vessels belonging to our navy have gone “derelict
cruising”—blowing up and sinking the most dangerous wrecks afloat
in the North Atlantic.
At the time of the Silver Swan’s reported loss, however, it was
everybody’s business to destroy the vessels, and therefore
nobody’s. At any time, however, the hull of the brig, reported by the
steamship Montevideo as floating off Cuba, might be run into and
sunk by some other vessel, such collisions being not at all
uncommon.
Brandon Tarr realized that there was but a small chance of the Silver
Swan being recovered, owing to these circumstances; yet he would
not have been a Tarr had he not been willing to take the chance and
do all he could to secure what he was quite convinced was a
valuable treasure.
Derelicts had been recovered and towed into port for their salvage
alone, and the Silver Swan was, he knew, richly laden. It might also
be possible to repair the hull of the brig, for she was a well built craft,
and if she had withstood the shock of being ground on the reef so
well, she might even yet be made to serve for several years.
These thoughts flitted through the mind of the boy as he slowly
crossed the wet fields toward the farm house.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning—Uncle Arad or no Uncle Arad,” he
decided. “It won’t do to leave the old fellow alone, so I’ll step down
after dinner and speak to Mrs. Hemingway about coming up here.
He will have to have her any way within a few days, so it won’t much
matter.”
He didn’t really know how to broach the subject to the old man, for
he felt assured that his great uncle would raise manifold objections
to his departure. He had lived at the farm four years now and Uncle
Arad had come to depend on him in many ways.
They had eaten dinner—a most miserable meal—and Don was
washing the dishes before he spoke.
“Uncle Arad,” he said, trying to talk in a most matter of fact way, “now
that father is—is gone and I have nothing to look forward to, I believe
I’ll strike out for myself. I’m past sixteen and big enough and old
enough to look out for myself. I think I shall get along faster by being
out in the world and brushing against folks, and I reckon I’ll go to
New York.”

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TEACHERS AND CLASSES

ISBN: 978-0-415-78834-2 (Set)

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

(Routledge education books)

1 TEACHERS AND EDUCATION 5

2 CLASSES AND CLASS STRUGGLE 29

3 THE ECONOMIC IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 55

4 THE POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 75

5 THE IDEOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION OF TEACHERS 100

6 THE CLASS LOCATION AND CLASS POSITION

7 REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY FOR TEACHERS 142

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 162

In the course of undergoing teacher training, teaching for

I was a child of the working class - the working class in its

earned me a Leaving Certificate and satisfied matriculation

peculiar to the particular conditions of that school at that time

of the intellectual powers. ' 5 And a century after Mill, R. S. Peters,

this 'something extra' which is used to differentiate teachers

Teachers are charged (theoretically) with the task and respons-

SCHOOLING, EDUCATION AND EDUCATION

Teachers, or at least the teachers this book is concerned with,

grams, and tend to appear regularly on desk calendars, as

of schooling - but which relate in quite different ways. Schooling

It is, of course, one thing to make such assertions and quite

A second means of supporting our assertions could be to

enough people or not Educating people well enough, or both. The

and also that our following discussion will be concerned primarily

TEACHERS O EDUCATION AND EDUCATION

We asked earlier whether teachers could possibly go beyond

upper-secondary forms of elementary schools, and in lower socio-

THE RESORT TO PRACTICAL, IMMEDIATE FACTORS

If your car were to break down in the middle of a trip it is un-

ment of Education or the Local Authority which are held to blame,

classroom procedures and interaction, teaching styles, testing

and operate the check-outs at supermarkets let alone clean floors

One final point. A commonly proposed factor for the failure to

THE PROBLEM OF 'INDIVIDUALISTIC LOGIC'

It was noted in the previous section that the immediate factors

allocations in other areas even to the point of possible elimination

(a) The 'anyone can. therefore eve1°yone can' fallacy

body can become a lawyer' is also either tautologous or false out-

(b) The 'interference-elimination' principle

bers built up the regulations were changed, and eventually will-

one could do the same, is to commit both a logical and a practical

which is really before us is not whether it is possible to Educate

CAPITALISM, EDUCATION AND THE 'INTERFERENCE-

A capitalist society can be characterised, very roughly, as being

the expense of the non-Education of many. On the other hand,