4 - A New Politics for Education

Russell's Reply to Totalitarian Educators

One of the best modern writers on the relationship between politics and education, I would say, is the late British liberal philosopher, peace activist, and all round wit Bertrand Russell. 

Personally, I find Russell to be a figure of enduring interest, as whilst he was no friend of the right, he was an equally staunch critic of the authoritarian tendencies of some on the left, so I guess one reason why I like Russell is that his liberal left politics chime with my own.  

Amongst many other matters, Russell wrote with great eloquence and cogency about teaching throughout the 1930s and 1940s, partly in response to the emergence of totalitarian systems of education pioneered under fascist and communist regimes, but also as a reply to the softer forms of authoritarian education that were developing in the managed societies of the Anglosphere.  

One especially important essay written by Russell was published in Harper's Magazine in 1940 and was called The Functions of a Teacher. In it Russell explored how we might get right the boundary between education and politics, whilst avoiding the mistaken conservative idea that there could or should be any absolute separation of the two. 

Within this, Russell observed that education’s aims might be divided into two types: those that immediately serve the intellectual needs of the individual, and those that might be said to more directly address the collective and typically more practical needs of society. Neither set of aims are illegitimate, Russell argued, but ultimately, he concluded, the intellectual needs of the individual ought to be given first priority within education. In doing so, he concluded, the long-term interests of freedom, democracy and civilisation are best served.  

Teaching as Propaganda  

Further, Russell argued that teachers need to take great care when addressing the legitimate needs of society and when they represent the politics of that society within their classrooms. Here he suggested that a teacher must never adopt an instrumental attitude towards their students and his comments on this matter are of particular relevance to our discussion. 

He writes: 

"No man can be a good teacher unless he has feelings of warm affection towards his pupils and a genuine desire to impart to them what he himself believes to be of value. This is not the attitude of the propagandist. To the propagandist his pupils are potential soldiers in an army. They are to serve purposes that lie outside their own lives, not in the sense in which every generous purpose transcends self, but in the sense of ministering to unjust privilege or to despotic power. The propagandist does not desire that his pupils should survey the world and freely choose a purpose which to them appears of value. He desires, like a topiarian artist, that their growth shall be trained and twisted to suit the gardener’s purpose."

There is much truth and a great deal of beauty in Russell’s short but important essay. However, at times Russell seems guilty of contradicting the main thrust of his argument, especially in those sections where he argues that education might act as a counterweight to militaristic nationalism of his times, as well as the “ignorant intolerance” that is the “antithesis of a civilised outlook”. All of this might well be understandable politically, but it feels that he might be overselling the societal impact of education, and could also be adopting an instrumental, perhaps topiarian, view of the teacher. 

Overall, however, Russell’s essay provides us with a refreshingly non-dogmatic and balanced way of framing the relationship between education, society and politics. In Russell’s analysis the primary social function of the teacher is critical and Socratic, rather than Homeric and affirmative, and as such, the modern teacher who does their job will often find themselves at odds with society and those that run the state, just like the ancient Socrates. Here Russell shows us why teachers require that protective boundary we earlier discussed. 

According to Russell: 

"The teacher should not be expected to flatter the prejudices either of the mob or of officials. His professional virtue should consist in a readiness to do justice to all sides, and in an endeavour to rise above controversy into a region of dispassionate scientific investigation. If there are people to whom the results of his investigation are inconvenient, he should be protected against their resentment, unless it can be shown that he has lent himself to dishonest propaganda by the dissemination of demonstrable untruths."