Gramsci: cultuuroverdracht is essentieel in progressief onderwijs. Andere visie dan deze van P. Bourdieu en Co.

The Gramscian challenge to educational orthodoxy (Passage uit: A reconnaissance of post-war education reform, zie ook uitgebreide refentie achteraan).

Citaat: “For Gramsci genuine revolutionaries were not those who simply wanted to destroy bourgeois civilization. Rather, they were those who understood and realistically evaluated the “whole of past thought. A generation that devalues the previous generation and is incapable of recognizing its great achievements and its essential significance is bound to be mean and lacking in self-confidence.” (NvdR: Gramsci propageerde een totaal andere visie op onderwijs en cultuuroverdracht dan in publicaties van Bourdieu en Co over bourgeois-onderwijs.)

Gramsci sought to challenge reductive liberalisms that stunted human possibilities. To this end, he contrasted liberalismo (the philosophy of freedom) – and liberismo (a liberalism overdetermined by capitalist values). Gramsci saw libe-rismo as a clear challenge to freedom – and, one might say today, to human survival.
Importantly, for Gramsci, schools and tertiary educational institutions were crucial locations of wider cultural/political struggles; more specifically, all education was political and all political activity was educational. For Gramsci, liberalismo was fundamentally pedagogical. Human freedom was tied to emancipatory knowledge-production and dissemination, based upon freedom of research and inquiry, and disciplined exploration and self-discovery through the liberal arts.
His concern for the emancipatory potential of the liberal arts makes Gramsci unusual among the Marxists of his time. For him, it was a sign of weakness on the part of radicals to discount the cultural work of those who had preceded them. As he wrote: “A generation that devalues the previous generation and is incapable of recognizing its great achievements and its essential significance is bound to be mean and lacking in self-confidence, even if it displays gladiatorial postures and a craving for greatness” (Gramsci, 2007, p. 164). Gramsci perceived the new order for which he fought so strenuously to be one that widened the scope of liberal culture, making it available to all, and not just “restricted sections of the population” (p. 164). Herein lies the resonance of Gramsci for our discussion of possessive individualism in educathe smashing of its cultural legacy, but its dialectical sublation in a new political and philosophical world in which its promise was finally realized.

For Gramsci, an education in the broad sense – one that extended far beyond strictly “scholastic” relationships – entailed a new generation encountering the experiences of the old, absorbing “its experiences and its historically necessary values,” while developing a personality of its own which is historically and culturally superior (Gramsci, 2007, p. 350). Genuine revolutionaries were not those who simply wanted to destroy bourgeois civilization. Rather, they were those who understood and realistically evaluated the “whole of past thought” (p. 344). This meant liberation from the blinders of “ideological fanaticism” and “taking up a point of view that is ‘critical,’ which for the purpose of scientific research is the only fertile one” (p. 51). In short, Gramsci urged his fellow (what we would now call) activists to reclaim the liberal arts (and the radical democratic mindset it fosters) for revolutionary ends.

Gramsci’s ideal radical democratic educational program would be comprised of a “common basic education, imparting a general, humanistic, formative culture” after which (and only after which) students would enter a utilitarian phase of education. (p. 27). For Gramsci, this initial pedagogical immersion in art, culture, history, and philosophy was essential for creating a fully-rounded, critical citizenry, capable of creating, expanding, and defending radical democratic values. As he put it, through this process, all children and young people would become “capable of thinking stu- dying and ruling – or controlling those who rule” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 259).
This end was a profoundly democratic one: to awaken in students a common attachment to the shared adventure of humankind as it pushed back the frontiers of knowledge and an ever-growing capacity to engage critically and intelligently with the world, not to sacrifice certain children to utilitarian ends, nor “impose” upon them systems of thought unrelated to their lives. (p. 164) Gramsci shows us how liberal education in the public school can be a radical, democratic force – and thus a source of counter-hegemonic revolution against neo-liberal schooling and society.

Referentie
Encounters/Encuentros/Rencontres on Education Vol. 15, 2014, 23-41 Commanding heights, levers of power: A reconnaissance of post-war education reform Sommets du commandement, niveaux de pouvoir : Une connaissance de la réforme de l’éducation d’après-guerre Josh Cole ,Queen’s University, Canada & Ian McKay Queen’s University, Canada

ABSTRACT
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century – from the years of the Fordist welfare state to those of the post-Fordist neo-liberal order – educational systems in the West have fostered ambitious schemes promoting wide-ranging ‘progressive change.’ Equally ambitious Marxist critiques have targeted education’s regulatory role within the capitalist system. In the early twenty-first century, as privatization and the radical subordination of educational aims and objectives to the demands of capital (‘neo-liberalism’) become unavoidable topics of educational debate, resistance to such neoliberal projects demands a rigorous reconnaissance of the achievements and limitations of radical educational thought. After canvassing major critics of mainstream schooling inside North America and beyond, we suggest that a radical retrieval of the insights of especially Antonio Gramsci can move us far beyond both reductionist Marxism and unreflective liberalism. We take a third position – embodying an individualist and collective pedagogy – in which the much-maligned ‘liberal arts’ stand against ‘possessive individualist’ education reform.