Revolutionary change in education.

This blog comes at the end of a reading of the works of the anthropologist Victor Turner who engaged with the ideas first of rites of passage (life crises and transitions) and then ritual. He came to see performance today as an evolutionary development from ritual to appease supernatural forces. Now, those forces are seen as psychological forces, no less problematic and no less dangerous.

For Turner, revolutionary change came from ritual, which tackled a breach and found a solution, a Hegelian synthesis. As a Marxist, evolutionary change never brings political progress; it takes direct revolutionary action to overturn the old system and to get rid of old attitudes. There will be a struggle in which blood is metaphorically shed. In his view, ritual is an important mechanism for social change, in that it mobilises whole populations. Calling it ‘social drama’ he broadened the notion of ritual to ceremony and carnival. This interest in ritual caused him to join the Roman Catholic church.

Unfortunately, ritual and carnival can oppose change. The Sussex Bonfire ceremonies such as “Rye Fawkes” perpetuate anti-Catholic rejoicing at a time of cultural tolerance. Ritual can be used to solve social problems; but not all ritual does so and most western ritual does not. In the west, ritual is the problem, not the solution. Reconciliation is not possible so long as the Orange March winds through Belfast or paramilitaries of both sides fire fusillades at the funerals of murderers. It was the grass-roots discussions which dissolved hostilities, Turner’s concept of communitas, that is community positive participation, which made a peace process possible. It is this that provides the revolution, not ritual. When the revolution has taken place, then ritual (performance, participation and publicity) might seal it.

We have long used the language of change in education, whether it be action research, reform, or accountability. The desire for evolutionary change has to face up to the reality of school conservatism, which will return to the old ways as soon as pressure is released. The current period of top-down teacher competency and accountability (as opposed to bottom-up teacher creativity and inspiration) has lasted 20 years since 1988, mostly because that is how new teachers have been trained, and OFSTED has directly or indirectly persuaded those not of this view to leave the profession. These two decades of ‘reform’ have not produced dramatic change, so there are annual post-mortems about standards. Education is heavily structured, with schooling financed by governments, an authority structure, and a rigorous assessment and monitoring system. ‘Progress’ or otherwise, strictly defined, registers on league tables. However there are pressures against these structures both from pupils and teachers, pupils resisting over-authoritarianism, and teachers resisting top-down demands. Schools are judged on achievements at 16, and to a lesser extent on earlier SATs, but the quality of a school requires more than high results. They need to motivate children, add value, and rescue children from deep senses of failure.

Turner's 'liminality', that is the state of being on a threshold, is a bottom-up reassessment of our values and strategies, democratically reached; and communitas is the social partnership process which brings people into positive relationships which encourage change. This encourages debate at its most open-minded, after putting aside status and personal benefit, for the common good. This means putting all perspectives into the melting pot, deciding the mission and vision (no doubt about rescuing desperate children), and then deciding how best to achieve the resulting ambitions, without the distractions of historic agendas and empires. We all see ourselves as at the doorway, the threshold, of a new journey, a crossroads between a fruitful path and a barren policy. The experience of being on that threshold is what we mean by liminality. That gives us a vision of possible futures if we dare to cross over and embrace them. This is exhilarating, but is a counterculture and has its dangers. It exists because it is telling the power in the land that the vision behind the money - that is, education funding - and inspection (that is, policing) is wrong. And, whether Labour or Tory, it has been wrong for some time.