The general character and disposition of the Rationalist are, I think., difficult to identify. At bottom he stands (he always stands) for independence of mind on all occasions, for thought free from obligation to any authority save the authority of reason’. His circumstances in the modern world have made him contentious: he is the enemy of authority, of prejudice, of the merely traditional, customary or habitual. His mental attitude is at once sceptical and optimistic: sceptical, because there is no opinion, no habit, no belief, nothing so firmly rooted or so widely held that he hesitates to question it and to judge it by what he calls his ‘reason'; optimistic, because the Rationalist never doubts the power of his ‘reason (when properly applied) to determine the worth of a thing, the truth of an opinion or the propriety of an action. Moreover, he is fortified by a belief in a reason’ common to all mankind, a common power of rational consideration, which is the ground and inspiration of argument: set up on his door is the precept of Parmenides–judge by rational argument. But besides this, which gives the Rationalist a touch of intellectual equalitarianism, he is something also of an individualist, finding it difficult to believe that anyone who can think honestly and clearly will think differently from himself.

But it is an error to attribute to him an excessive concern with a priori argument. He does not neglect experience, but he often appears to do so because he insists always upon it being his own experience (wanting to begin everything de novo), and because of the rapidity with which he reduces the tangle and variety of experience to a set of principles which he will then attack or defend only upon rational grounds. He has no sense of the cumulation of experience, only of the readiness of experience when it has been converted into a formula: the past is significant to him only as an encumbrance He has none of that negative capability (which Keats attributed to Shakespeare), the power of accepting the mysteries and uncertainties of experience without any irritable search for order and distinctness, only the capability of subjugating experience; he has no aptitude for that close and detailed appreciation of what actually presents itself which Lichtenberg called negative enthusiasm, but only the power of recognizing the large outline which a general theory imposes upon events. His cast of mind is gnostic, and the sagacity of Ruhnken’s rule, Oportet quaedam nescire, is lost upon him. There are some minds which give us the sense that they have passed through an elaborate education which was designed to initiate them into the traditions and achievements of their civilization; the immediate impression we have of them is an impression of cultivation, of the enjoyment of an inheritance. But this is not so with the mind of the Rationalist, which impresses us as, at best, a finely tempered, neutral instrument, as a well-trained rather than as an educated mind. Intellectually, his ambition is not so much to share the experience of the race as to be demonstrably a self-made man. And this gives to his intellectual and practical activities an almost preternatural deliberateness and self-consciousness, depriving them of any element of passivity, removing from them all sense of rhythm and continuity and dissolving them into a succession of climacterics, each to be surmounted by a tour de raison. His mind has no atmosphere, no changes of season and temperature; his intellectual processes, so far as possible, are insulated from all external influence and go on in the void. And having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis, he is apt to attribute to mankind a necessary inexperience in all the critical moments of life, and if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how the race had ever succeeded in surviving. With an almost poetic fancy, he strives to live each day as if it were his first, and he believes that to form a habit is to fail. And if, with as yet no thought of analysis, we glance below the surface, we may, perhaps, see in the temperament, if not in the character, of the Rationalist, a deep distrust of time, an impatient hunger for eternity and an irritable nervousness in the face of everything topical and transitory.

From the earliest days of his emergence, the Rationalist has taken an ominous interest in education. He has a respect for ‘brains’, a great belief in training them, and is determined that cleverness shall be encouraged and shall receive its reward of power. But what is this education in which the Rationalist believes? It is certainly not an initiation into the moral and intellectual habits and achievements of his society, an entry into the partnership between present and past, a sharing of concrete knowledge; for the Rationalist, all this would be an education in nescience, both valueless and mischievous. It is a training in technique, a training, that is, in the half of knowledge which can be learnt from books when they are used as cribs. And the Rationalist’s affected interest in education escapes the suspicion of being a mere subterfuge for imposing himself more firmly on society, only because it is clear that he is as deluded as his pupils. He sincerely believes that a training in technical knowledge is the only education worth while, because he is moved by the faith that there is no knowledge, in the proper sense, except technical knowledge. He believes that a training in ‘public administration’ is the surest defence against the flattery of a demagogue and the lies of a dictator.

Now, in a society already largely rationalist in disposition, there will be a positive demand for training of this sort. Half knowledge (So long as it is the technical half) will have an economic value; there will be a market for the ‘trained’ mind which has at its disposal the latest devices. And it is only to be expected that this demand will be satisfied; books of the appropriate sort will be written and sold in large quantities, and institutions offering a training of this kind (either generally or in respect of a particular activity) will spring up.[37]

And so far as our society is concerned, it is now long since the exploitation of this demand began in earnest; it was already to be observed in the early nineteenth century. But it is not very important that people should learn the piano or how to manage a farm by a correspondence course; and in any case it is unavoidable in the circumstances. What is important, however, is that the rationalist inspiration has now invaded and has begun to corrupt the genuine educational provisions and institutions of our society: some of the ways and means by which, hitherto, a genuine (as distinct from a merely technical) knowledge has been imparted have already disappeared, others are obsolescent, and others again are in process of being corrupted from the inside. The whole pressure of the circumstances of our time is in this direction. Apprenticeship, the pupil working alongside the master who in teaching a technique also imparts the sort of knowledge that cannot be taught, has not yet disappeared; but it is obsolescent, and its place is being taken by technical schools whose training (because it can be a training only in technique) remains insoluble until it is immersed in the acid of practice. Again, professional education is coming more and more to be regarded as the acquisition of a technique,[38] something that can be done through the post, with the result that we may look forward to a time when the professions will be stocked with clever men, but men whose skill is limited and who have never had a proper opportunity of learning the nuances which compose the tradition and standard of behaviour which belong to a great profession.[39]. One of the ways in which this sort of knowledge has hitherto been preserved (because it is a great human achievement, and if it is not positively preserved it will be lost) and transmitted is a family tradition. But the Rationalist never understands that it takes about two generations of practice to learn a profession; indeed, he does everything he can to destroy the possibility of such an education, believing it to be mischievous. Like a man whose only language is Esperanto, he has no means of knowing that the world did not begin in the twentieth century. And the priceless treasure of great professional traditions is, not negligently but purposefully, destroyed in the destruction of so-called vested interests. But perhaps the most serious rationalist attack upon education is that directed against the Universities. The demand for technicians is now so great that the existing institutions for training them have become insufficient, and the Universities are in process of being procured to satisfy the demand. The ominous phrase, ‘university trained men and women’, is establishing itself, and not only in the vocabulary of the Ministry of Education.”

37. Some people regard this as the inevitable result of an industrial civilization, but I think they have hit upon the wrong culprit. What an industrial civilization needs is genuine skill: and in so far as our industrial civilization has decided to dispense with skill and to get along with merely technical knowledge It is an industrial civilization gone to the bad.

39. The army in wartime was a particularly good opportunity of observing the difference between a trained and an educated man: the intelligent civilian had little difficulty in acquiring the technique of military leadership and command, but (in spite of the cribs provided: Advice to Young Officers. etc.) he always remained at a disadvantage beside the regular officer, the man educated in the feelings and emotions as well as the practices of his profession.

Rationalism in politics
Michael Oakeshott
Cambridge Journal, Volume I, 1947.

All attempts by the State to bias the conclusions of its citizens on disputed subjects, are evil; but it may very properly offer to ascertain and certify that a person possesses the knowledge, requisite to make his conclusions, on any given subject, worth attending to. A student of philosophy would be the better for being able to stand an examination both in Locke and in Kant, whichever of the two he takes up with, or even if with neither: and there is no reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evidences of Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them. The examinations, however, in the higher branches of knowledge should, I conceive, be entirely voluntary. It would be giving too dangerous a power to governments, were they allowed to exclude any one from professions, even from the profession of teacher, for alleged deficiency of qualifications: and I think, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that degrees, or other public certificates of scientific or professional acquirements, should be given to all who present themselves for examination, and stand the test; but that such certificates should confer no advantage over competitors, other than the weight which may be attached to their testimony by public opinion.”

(On Liberty, 1859)

The genuine interests of “pure” science are served only by broadening the idea of application to include all phases of liberation and enrichment of human experience.”

John Dewey
Experience and Nature (1929, pp.164-5)

The LLS study has featured this week in national and local UK media (e.g. BBC News) and been a feature of social media. It contains 6 chapters and is over 130 pages long.

LLS investigates “the claim that London schools have improved dramatically since 2000” (p.6) and ‘generates five key findings’:

1. London schools have improved dramatically since 2000.

2. The improvement cannot be explained in terms of the advantages that London has over the rest of England.

3. The improvement was assisted by a set of factors that we describe as ‘enabling’, these include issues relating to resourcing: finance, teacher recruitment and school building quality. Improvement in these areas enabled improvements to flourish but London’s success was not fundamentally caused by these factors.

4. Four key school improvement interventions provided the impetus for improvement – London Challenge, Teach First, the academies programme and improved support from local authorities. Our research identifies common features that link together all of these interventions.

5. The improvement of London schools depended upon effective leadership at every level of the system.

In the post that follows, the key findings of LLS are disputed. However, in our critique the intention is not to suggest that other possible findings either discounted in LLS or overlooked completely are somehow more important, but rather our intention is to illustrate, with LLS as a good example, a more fundamental problem with education research itself. In this sense, LLS is a manifestation of a much wider and more concerning malaise.

At the outset, however, it is worth stating that the critique of LLS won’t centre on the question of judging school improvement in terms of exam results and OFSTED inspection grades (p.8). Whether school quality can effectively be encapsulated in a test score or inspection grade will be passed over although the ‘unintended’ consequences of high-stakes testing will be central to the critique below.

The critique of LLS and what it represents will centre on two inter-related things: the backgrounds of the organisations and authors of LLS and secondly the particular interventions singled out as being primarily responsible for London’s supposed improvement since 2000. The outcome of their critique will then form the basis for broader rumination on the current state of education research and whether such research is possible or even desirable in the form that studies like LLS represent.

To begin, take the claim (p.7) that the academies programme has been one of four key school improvement interventions providing the impetus for improvement in London since 2000. For those that don’t know, academies (and ‘free’ schools) are schools in England run free of local authority control and funded directly by central government. They are also very controversial.

LLS is published by CfBT. CfBT Schools Trust, “set up as a separate entity within CfBT Education Trust,” is currently closely involved with the academies programme. According to CfBT’s website, for example, “CfBT Schools Trust partners a wide range of schools in England from free schools to academy conversions. We work closely with schools to deliver specialist support where required to improve performance.” CfBT Schools Trust also “helps schools in England to become academies whether as a member of the CfBT Schools Trust or as a standalone academy requiring project management support for the conversion process.” CfBT Schools Trust is an established free school provider in England. We work in close partnership with parent and community groups to support free school applications, oversee the opening and management of the schools.”

Given how committed CfBT is to the academies and free schools programme, what might we conclude about its hopes for LLS? We might, for instance, think CfBT would want LLS to speak as highly as possible about the types of things, such as its work in academies and free schools, CfBT is undertaking and think it similarly odd especially given CfBT’s support for LLS if LLS’s findings did not align with CfBT’s work. Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas, as they say.

Of those responsible for LLS, it is not only CfBT who we might think have a vested interest in academies being regarded as a key school improvement intervention. Take Centre for London, another organisation responsible for LLS.

Of Centre for London’s trustees, for example, one, Lucy Heller, “is the managing director of ARK Schools, a children’s charity which runs a network of inner-city, high achieving academies. She oversees the running of 27 academies in disadvantaged communities throughout the UK. She is responsible for a model of education which is driving current government education policy.”

Organisations that have profited from the academies programmes also support the Centre for London. Take PWC and SERCO, for instance, or take University College London (UCL), who run their own academy school.

If we look to the authors of LLS we find similar professional investment in the academies programme. For example, a quick internet search tells us that Laura McInerney, who also writes for the Guardian and other publications, is a known advocate of academies and free schools. In these publications and on her blog she has frequently written in their support, has authored a book on free schools and has recently returned from the University of Missouri where she was studying free schools, academies and charter schools.

A second key school improvement intervention providing the impetus for improvement in London schools since 2000 was said in LLS to be Teach First. Teach First is an alternative teacher accreditation programme modelled on Teach for America and part of the Teach for All network. Teach First recruits are placed in schools in disadvantaged areas on two-year contracts and given responsibility for a class of their own without the level of training typically expected of trainee teachers.

Take Ms. McInerney again. The internet tells us that she became a teacher through Teach First and taught in London for six years. Strangely, LLS doesn’t tell us this, however, and stranger still given the openness about other details of the LLS authors’ backstories (p.4).

Interestingly, other co-authors of LLS also have strong connections to Teach First but again strangely this information isn’t found in LLS either. For example, Eleanor Bernardes was Coordinator for Literacy and Approaches to Learning at Teach First between September 2009 and May 2013. Loic Menzies is a graduate of the Teach First programme where he taught Citizenship between 2003 and 2005 and since 2013 he has been an Impact Committee Member for Teach First.

The Teach First connection to LLS is identifiable elsewhere. For instance, given its history, it is not unreasonable to think Teach First is a McKinsey & Co offshoot, and the management consultancy McKinsey is a supporter of the Centre for London. Sam Freedman, Director of Research, Evaluation and Impact at Teach First is one person explicitly thanked in the LLS report’s acknowledgements (p.5) and so too is Rebecca Allen, a quantitative researcher with a favourable opinion of Teach First.

Given the close links between LLS and Teach First it is then perhaps no surprise that on 27th June 2014 a TES article on the release of LLS begins not as you might expect with a headline about the report per se but begins with a headline (‘Charity wants to repeat the ‘London effect’ around Britain’) about what LLS means for Teach First and where we are told at the start of the article that,

“Hundreds more schools will be able to obtain staff from Teach First as the recruiter of high-flying graduates aims to repeat its success in London in more parts of Britain…News of Teach First’s expansion comes as a report credits the charity with being one of four “key” reasons for the incredible transformation of the capital’s state schools since the turn of the millennium. The scheme has already grown outside London, but now it wants to work with bigger groups of schools in their local areas. Sam Freedman, research director at Teach First, said: “While we have seen significant improvements across many schools in England and Wales, and especially in London and other big cities, a number of challenges remain, particularly in coastal and rural areas.””

We should recall too that academies are thought more likely to employ Teach First recruits. This is partly because sponsor academies will typically be found in areas of disadvantage where Teach First recruits are sent but also we might think because Teach First shares much of the corporate ethos and philosophy behind the academies programme and other social enterprises behind academisation such as CfBT. In advocating academies, in other words, Teach First benefits.

These are not the only connections to highlight between LLS and Teach First, incidentally. For example, one of the studies (Hutchings et al., 2006) cited by LLS in its attempt to substantiate the claim of Teach First’s effectiveness in London since 2000 was conducted at an institution (i.e. Canterbury Christ Church University) where an author of LLS (i.e. Loic Menzies) is currently employed and where in 2002 a Teach First alternative accreditation programme was set up at the same time as Teach First was itself being established. The connection between this University and Teach First is then a very long one.

One further thing to highlight is that the evidence drawn upon in LLS to support the claim that Teach First is one key driver of improvement in London’s school performance since 2000 is Teach First’s own data (e.g. see p.80, 82 Teach First, 2013; See also Allen and Allnutt, 2013, p.3: “Thanks are due to Teach First and the Department of Education for providing the data that is used in this study”) or is data drawn from studies which Teach First’s major donors have funded (Muijs et al., 2010: “This study was commissioned as part of the Maximum Impact Programme (MIP), funded for Teach First by the Goldman Sachs Foundation” (p.3)). The LLS report is therefore data-dependent on the very organisation it is trying to evaluate.

So why draw attention to the obvious links between academies and Teach First and the organisations and authors behind LLS? To explain why this matters I shall quote Ben Goldacre, UK medical science author, media commentator, and champion of the use of randomised-controlled trials (RCTs) and systematic reviews in education. Goldacre (Ch.1 ‘Missing Data’ Bad Pharma, 2012, p.1) writes, “Before we get going, we need to establish one thing beyond any doubt: industry-funded trials are more likely to produce a positive, flattering result than independently-funded trials…this is one of the most well-documented phenomena in the growing field of ‘research about research’.”

While Goldacre’s book is about the pharmaceutical industry, as a scientific practice we can quite reasonably think that in this regard education research is no different. We could therefore just as easily write: “Before we get going, we need to establish one thing beyond any doubt: industry-funded trials IN EDUCATION RESEARCH are more likely to produce a positive, flattering result than independently-funded trials…”

Above all, in other words, to be legitimate any kind of research needs to be independent. Yet as we have seen LLS is clearly not independent of those (i.e. advocates of academies and Teach First) who we might reasonably think have a vested interest in seeing in LLS certain interventions promoted rather than others. Even if this has not been the intention, if studies such as LLS are not fully independent there will always be the suspicion of the education industry promoting its own ends through so-called research such as this. It is naïve to think anything else.

This undeniable lack of independence is however not the only reason for taking what LLS and other similar studies find with a large pinch of salt. There is the second inter-related issue that was introduced above: the highlighting of the four key improvement interventions in particular.

In this regard, one initial point to make concerns the nature of the world that must pre-exist for a study of this kind to make any sense. For a study like LLS to identify any key improvement interventions the world, and our relationship to it and our relationship to others, must be characterised by causality.

Causal thinking is the kind of everyday thinking whereby it is thought if we do A, then B, but if we don’t do A, then not B. If I pull this lever, something happens at the end of it, but if I don’t pull that lever, then nothing happens, in other words.

Causally is how we normally see the world and is also how the world must work for LLS and other studies to make any sense. It is then not surprising to find causal thinking found throughout LLS. For instance, we are told that LLS “analyses the nature and causes of the changes in London schools and demonstrates that it is possible to tackle the link between poverty and underachievement” (p.2); “There is a need, therefore, for an investigation of the nature and possible causes of the changes in London’s schools” (p.6); “As ‘policy in action’, none of the major London reforms were planned with a concurrent rigorous evaluative element or any randomised controlled trial (RCT) element. While this limits the ability of any subsequent review to make firm claims for cause and effect, our approach allows us to present the most detailed analysis to date of the London story” (p.7); “THE EXCEPTIONAL IMPROVEMENT WAS ASSISTED BY, BUT NOT FUNDAMENTALLY CAUSED BY, RESOURCING ISSUES RELATING TO FINANCE, TEACHER RECRUITMENT AND SCHOOL BUILDING STOCK” (p.10) etc. etc.

What isn’t considered by LLS nor typically by any study of a similarly causal nature, however, is that any social change such as an increase in test scores or inspection grades may not have a cause, lever or reason at all. It isn’t ever considered that what for example has happened since 2000 has simply been a random event.

That it might be a one-off random event isn’t considered because the everyday world of the education researcher is typically one of causes and effects and it is their job to identify them, and identify them they must. They have to identify them even when it might just be that causality is not responsible in any way for the improvement say in London’s test scores and grades. Such change might simply have happened to be this way for London schools since 2000. There might simply be no reason whatsoever.

If for argument’s sake we agree that causality is at play in the world that education research investigates and one or more interventions are responsible for test score and inspection grade improvement in London from 2000, we can still object to the LLS research outcomes. We might argue, for instance, that even with their interventions and the polite coverage they give to those interventions popular elsewhere but that they reject (e.g. Gentrification, Ethnicity, Opportunity, p.9), LLS could still be overlooking something. Indeed, we might say that they are overlooking something seemingly minor, and not typically a variable that the consensus acknowledges, but still a variable of great importance.

Consider for example what the French mathematician Blaise Pascal famously wrote centuries ago about Cleopatra’s nose: “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed” (1669). What Pascal writes here is extremely telling for his comments could be construed as meaning that while we might think we have identified the typical causes of something such as school improvement we cannot discount completely the fact that in comparison to the causes social scientists usually work with (e.g. gender, class, race, income etc.) something’s cause may be something altogether different and minor (e.g. such as the shape of a woman’s nose). And if we can’t discount this possibility, if there may always be another explanation however trivial, any conclusions that studies such as LLS reach can never be fully convincing. Period.

There’s more, however. Those behind LLS, and other similar studies, do not consider something else that is similarly undermining of their research enterprise. In the case of LLS, they do not consider whether the four interventions they identify might be holding school improvement back. It might be of course that without the academies and Teach First programmes, for example, schools in London would have done even better since 2000.

Of course, it might not be possible to establish this in the UK but we might take note of international developments and where similar school choice and alternative accreditation reforms have taken place for here the evidence is decidedly unconvincing. In the US, for example, charter schools have been a feature of schools there since the 1990s but there the results are mixed. In Sweden, OECD PISA scores have fallen since free schools were introduced. In Chile, school choice is being rolled back. In the UK, free schools have been opened but then closed, some academies have been successful but others have not. The 12th grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report in the US suggests overall scores for high school seniors are flat and reading scores in 2013 were lower than in 1992, the year after the first charter school opened in America. It is worth remembering too that no leading OECD PISA participant has a Teach For All organisation such as Teach First.

There is then good reason to think that since 2000 interventions such as academies and Teach First in London might just as likely have been making things worse not better and good reason for thinking that if there hadn’t been these interventions things in London might have been a whole lot better. Even if we discount all of the above, and we follow LLS in thinking that the interventions they identify (e.g. academies, Teach First) are the only ones that have counted, follow LLS in thinking that these interventions have had a positive causal impact and follow LLS in thinking that London schools have been better with them than without, we might still be concerned with what LLS have found. We might think for example that the knock-on effects of these interventions on education have been too damaging for such interventions to warrant continuation even if they had been successful in terms of test scores.

We might think that placing such an onus on test scores and inspection grades as a means of assessing the success of interventions such as academies and Teach First recruits, for example, incentivises teaching to the test and gaming the system and disincentivises offering a broader range of subjects and curricular opportunities to pupils. We might then think that even if changes to school management and teaching personnel have raised London school performance scores this is still a price not worth paying because London kids are missing out on a full and sufficiently broad education.

Incidentally, other problems associated with interventions such as academies and Teach First have also been identified. These include their greater cost to the taxpayer, their frosty attitudes towards union representation, the lack of democratic and local oversight, lack of accountability for their use of public funds, their exacerbating of teacher turnover, possible negative impact on wages, potential threat to pensions and terms and conditions, and contribution to the neoliberal corporatisation of education.

Faced with the possibility of such damaging consequences, we might try another way of assessing the quality of these interventions, where unlike with sole reliance on test scores, the potentially harmful effects of interventions can be fully taken into account. Or, alternatively, because of the harm these interventions might be having on curricular, teacher autonomy and local communities we might instead consider scrapping these key interventions altogether.

Ultimately, though, the major problem with any causal study of LLS’s kind is that there are countless other potential independent variables that could be said to account for why school performance scores have improved. It might just well be Cleopatra’s nose after all.

What this means of course is that the right answer to the question of what is driving school performance in London is not self-evident in the data. The data needs interpretation, in other words, but as is also well-recognised interpretation opens the door to interest and bias. This means the data is fitted to the interpretations that we prefer rather than data telling us what is the true.

There is certainly disagreement about where our interests and biases are said to emanate from i.e. whether they are innate or socio-cultural, for example. But there is pretty much wholesale agreement that bias and self-interest is a fact of life not only for researchers but for us all.

So not only might there be many numerous possible reasons for school performance improving in London in 2000, the interventions that are chosen by researchers such as the authors of LLS are not self-evident findings but findings unavoidably reflective of personal interests and bias. It is important to say, incidentally, that the unavoidability of these prejudices applies as much to those who say that variables such as poverty, years of experience and class size are crucial to schools performance as it does to those who say teacher quality, school type and leadership are. All of these key findings reflect researcher interest and bias.

It is then not that academy organisations, their supporters, Teach First and so on are especially or anymore biased and self-serving than anyone else (We might think that the current relationship between Teach First and some younger members of the education research community exposed above is slightly suspicious, perhaps). Rather it is that by focusing on the interventions favoured by those with a close connection to LLS, LLS draws attention to something much more fundamental i.e. bias and self-interest and something that unavoidably afflicts all sides of education research.

The inevitability of self-interest and bias pervading research studies such as LLS is why because they are thought much less susceptible to bias, RCTs are currently the gold standard for research (as LLS admits (p.7)). Another favourite of education researchers, Karl Popper, also recognised long ago that we make our observations agree with our theories (what he called ‘Bacon’s problem’) and it was Bacon’s problem that led Popper to propose his popular criterion of falsifiability/refutability/testability (Myth of the Framework, 1994, p.88).

What ought then to be our response to the education research predicament that LLS could be said to exemplify? We might as many urge seek solace in RCTs. However, doing this limits us to only those areas of study where RCTs are available and while they are growing in number, they are still too few in number to offer much insight, nor should we think this a panacea anyway given the unexpected and ever-changing particularities inherent in any educational context that RCTs choose to scrutinise.

Instead, we might in Popperian fashion seek to continually test our research claims. Yet while this might work for the hypotheses of teachers in situ in the classroom, it is obviously more difficult in terms of time, manpower and resources to constantly test and retest policy interventions of the kind highlighted in LLS.

Faced with the dilemma of inevitable bias and self-interest pervading our findings, but faced also with insurmountable problems with RCTs and falsifiability, we might throw up our hands and concede we are not in any position to say what, for example, has been driving school performance in London since 2000. While understandable, this is allowing the pendulum to swing too far the other way, however. Because we don’t know something fully doesn’t necessarily discount completely what we know.

We need a position then where the possibility of knowing something is acknowledged but where it is also acknowledged that what we know is more than likely subject to personal interest and bias and so our faith in what we know acknowledged as limited and not by any means the final word. Not being a final word on a subject such as school performance is to understand our research claims not as the ultimate truth therefore but as contributions to something else.

What this fallibilist position could be understood as is as an ongoing conversation. This pragmatic type of conversation is not characterised by a one-way expert-led declaration of truths as found in education research such as LLS but characterised by an open dialogue where all stakeholders in education, for example, are respected as equally knowledgeable but thought too equally circumscribed in what they know. This is a conversation that ought to encourage collaboration and working problems through together and be a conversation characterised not by narrowing things down to one or other set of interventions and favoured by this or that interested party but characterised by an opening up to the potentially invaluable insights of others so that all others may contribute.

Of course, an alternative response to the problems inherent in education research is to sweep issues of self-interest and bias under the carpet, issue disclaimers, add caveats, hedge bets and so persist with the myth, dogma and bad faith of the status quo. But is this really what we want? An ongoing, fallibilist, all-inclusive conversation of equals is surely better than that.

CHAPTER II
MURDERING THE INNOCENTS

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir!

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’

‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.

‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’

‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’

‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’

‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)

‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’

The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’

‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennæ of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.

‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. ‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of horses?’

After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’ Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’—as the custom is, in these examinations.

‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’

A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.

‘You must paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.

‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not. Don’t tell us you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’

‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?’

‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.

‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.

‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?’

There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of No was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

‘So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’

‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.

‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?’

‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy—’

‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’

‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do anything of that kind.’

‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated Thomas Gradgrind.

‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’

The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she p. 8looked as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.

‘Now, if Mr. M’Choakumchild,’ said the gentleman, ‘will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your request, to observe his mode of procedure.’

Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. ‘Mr. M’Choakumchild, we only wait for you.’

So, Mr. M’Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah, rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!

He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!

CHAPTER I
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL

‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.

‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Mr. Hunt has recently made a number of public remarks about how the Tories have been wrong to allow schools to employ unqualified teachers (E.g. here, here, and here).

Hunt has also been repeating Labour’s wish to introduce relicensing of teachers qualifications every few years. In doing this, and in his criticism of Tory unqualified teacher recruitment policy, Hunt would seem to be linking the notion of an unqualified teacher with not possessing some kind of licence or certificate.

Hunt also wants to associate with the ‘success’ of Teach First, the alternative teacher recruitment and training social enterprise. Yet as ought to be common knoweldge by now, Teach First recruits are unqualified in their first year.

We might think therefore that there is a degree of confusion in historian-cum-politician Hunt’s logic. How can he think it wrong for schools to employ unqualified teachers but think Teach First is a good idea when the latter’s recruits are also unqualified?

Is it perhaps that the staff Hunt attacks are unqualified from the outset that bothers him, or is it simply that Hunt thinks it wrong if such staff are not working towards a certification of some sort irrespective of being unqualified at the beginning of their school careers?

If it is the former case, then it might strike some as illogical to support an enterprise such as Teach First that places unqualified recruits in schools. Better therefore to have qualified, trained staff from the beginning.

If it is the latter, then Teach First recruits would not by this logic be a problem, but then the issue is why if teaching certificates are so important is it at all okay for unqualified staff to be placed in schools even if doing their best to teach? We might think that qualifications are either important or they are not, and if they are, then they are essential from the very beginning not just after a year.

Confusingly, at times Hunt would appear to be defending this latter sense of unqualified (e.g. “David Cameron and Michael Gove have watered down standards, allowing unqualified teachers into schools on a permanent basis.”) yet at other times he would appear to be arguing something very different (e.g. “Underperforming schools desperately need great teachers and teaching but this out of touch Prime Minister is allowing them to recruit unqualified teachers.”).

Of course, it may be that Hunt means unqualified in neither sense. What he may mean instead by unqualified is simply having not gone to a good university and/or underperformed in university exams (and one possible result of which being passed over for recruitment by Teach First).

Alternatively, he may simply mean unqualified in its broadest sense. However, if this is how he understands unqualified then why seemingly object to the employment of staff in schools who many might think given their professional and life experience would possess more qualifications, in this broadest sense, than the fresh-out-of-uni Teach First recruits he so eagerly wishes to promote even if these other teachers did not achieve the grades or attend the universities Teach First respects? Wouldn’t it be better to have those more than qualified in the world of work teaching future generations than those who have little or no work experience at all?

So, Mr.Hunt, what do you actually mean by unqualified?

– A person who admires and seeks to imitate, or associate with, those of higher social status or greater wealth; one who wishes to be regarded as a person of social importance.
– A person who despises those whom he or she considers to be inferior in rank, attainment, or taste.

First some quick background context. “The Blob” is England’s Education Secretary Michael Gove’s unpleasant name for the so-called educational establishment.

Of course, being labelled so doesn’t endear Gove to the teachers, heads, academics, union activists, charity workers, parents, young people and others who might be regarded as part of “The Blob” and who quite reasonably believe they know more about what England’s education system does or does not need than the ex-News International journalist that is the current Secretary of State for Education.

Why then does Gove insult “The Blob”? Apparently, “The Blob” is inspired by a 1950s film about an amoeba-like alien mass which nothing has been able to stop. Gove sees himself as a revolutionary fighting the Blob’s “progressive” grip over teacher training, classroom standards and qualifications.

But is “The Blob” insult not also tinged with a degree of snobbery? Isn’t it that Gove and his chums are what “The Blob” in retaliation might label “The Snob”?

Take Gove’s trips to the US to hobnob with the great and the good (e.g. ExcelinEd, Oct 23, 2013), his platform-sharing with seemingly like-minded but equally divisive figures (e.g. Michelle Rhee) or the constant name-dropping (e.g. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Daniel Willingham, Andreas Schleicher, Michael Barber) in his speeches.

Might all of this not be because Gove is a person who admires and seeks to imitate, or associate with, those of higher social status or greater wealth; one who wishes to be regarded as a person of social importance?

Or consider his refusal to meet with teaching union representatives unless they meet his conditions, his avoidance of teaching conferences, his appointment of special advisors with little or no teaching experience, or of course his insulting of “The Blob”, “The Trots” and “the enemies of promise”.

Might this not be because Gove is a person who despises those whom he or she considers to be inferior in rank, attainment, or taste?

Today (3rd Feb 2014) Gove was effectively saying state schools weren’t as good as private, fee-paying ones, and that the former ought to be more like the latter. Given that among other things comparing state schools and fee-paying schools isn’t a fair comparison and given that Gove went to a very exclusive fee-paying school, isn’t this also further demonstration of “The Snob”? Do we think Gove would be so fulsome in praise for private schools if he, and his chums, hadn’t been to private school themselves?

It is not only in the words and actions of Gove, however, where we might see “The Snob”. Other public figures in education in England have apparently sided with “The Snob”. In recent years, we have had fee-paying school heads referring to state schools as exam factories, for example, and a Tory government minister claiming other schools than his very exclusive one lack a commitment to public service. Several other public figures have for some time now also backed an alternative teacher training route, which Gove publicly supports, driven by the mantra that current teachers aren’t up to scratch, and what young people really need are high-fliers, many private school educated, because they will set the ‘proper’ example.

Aren’t these attitudes, too, characteristic of “The Snob”?

There’s nothing wrong with private schools per se. We would want parents to invest their time and support in improving the local state school, rather than going down the fee-paying route, but it is their choice ultimately.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting the best for other people’s children. This is also what we want.

There’s nothing wrong with broadening the teacher pool to include those who wouldn’t traditionally consider the teaching profession (even if it’s only a short-term commitment). This too is something to largely welcome.

There’s nothing wrong either with higher expectations, higher standards, music, drama, art, or even the odd test or two.

But there is something very wrong, and plainly counter-productive, in promoting these things, as it seems, by undermining the hard work of “The Blob”, and made all the worse by the suspicion that this is all being underpinned and orchestrated by what we might regard as “The Snob”.

Within months, virtually all of us were studying for one degree or another. At night, our cell block seemed more like a study hall than a prison. But the privilege of studying came with a host of conditions. Certain subjects, such as politics and military history, were prohibited. For years, we were not permitted to receive funds except from our families, so that poor prisoners rarely had money for books or tuition. This made the opportunity to study a function of how much money one had. Nor were we permitted to lend books to other prisoners, which would have enabled our poorer colleagues to study.

There was always controversy about whether or not we should accept study privileges. Some members of the Unity Movement at first felt that we were accepting a handout from the government, which compromised our integrity. They argued that studying should not be a conditional privilege but an unfettered right. While I agreed, I could not accept that we should therefore disavow studying. As freedom fighters and political prisoners, we had an obligation to improve and strengthen ourselves, and study was one of the few opportunities to do so.

Prisoners were permitted to enroll at either the University of South Africa (UNISA) or Rapid Results College, which was for those studying for their high school qualification. In my own case, studying under the auspices of the University of London was a mixed blessing. On the one hand I was assigned the sorts of stimulating books that would not have been on a South African reading list; on the other, the authorities inevitably regarded many of them as unsuitable and thus banned them.

Receiving books at all was often a challenge. You might make an application to a South African library for a book on contract law. They would process your request and then send you the book by post. But because of the vagaries of the mail system, the remoteness of the island, and the often deliberate slowness of the censors, the book would reach you after the date that it needed to be returned. If the date had passed, the warders would typically send the book back without even showing it to you. Given the nature of the system, you might receive a late fine without ever having received the book.

In addition to books, we were permitted to order publications necessary to our studies. The authorities were extremely strict about this, and the only kind of publication that would pass muster might be a quarterly on actuarial science for a prisoner studying accounting. But one day, Mac Maharaj told a comrade who was studying economics to request The Economist. We laughed and said we might as well ask for Time magazine, because The Economist was also a newsweekly. But Mac simply smiled and said the authorities wouldn’t know that; they judged a book by its title. Within a month, we were receiving The Economist and reading the news we hungered for. But the authorities soon discovered their mistake and ended the subscription.

Once most of the men began to study, we complained that we did not even have the minimum facilities necessary for studying, such as desks and chairs. I made this complaint to the International Red Cross. Finally, the complaint to the International Red Cross. Finally, the authorities built in each cell a kind of stand-up desk, a simple wooden board that jutted out from the wall at about chest-level.

This was not precisely what we had envisaged. After a tedious day at the quarry, one did not much feel like working at a stand-up desk. A number of us complained about the desks, and Kathy was the most vociferous. He informed the commanding officer that not only was it an imposition to have stand-up desks, but that they sloped so steeply that the books fell off. The commanding officer made a surprise visit to Kathy’s cell, asked for a book, and plunked it on his desk. It did not move. He asked Kathy for another and placed it on top of the first one; again, nothing happened. Finally, after placing four books on the desk, he turned to a sheepish Kathy and said, “Ag, there’s nothing wrong with these desks,” and walked out. But about six months later, the authorities relented and we were given three-legged wooden stools and the stand-up desks were lowered.”

(Taken from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom)

Even this amount of education proved distasteful to the Nationalists. The Afrikaner has always been unenthusiastic about education for Africans. To him it was simply a waste, for the African was inherently ignorant and lazy and no amount of education could remedy that. The Afrikaner was traditionally hostile to Africans learning English, for English was a foreign tongue to the Afrikaner and the language of emancipation to us.

In 1953, the Nationalist-dominated Parliament passed the Bantu Education Act, which sought to put apartheid’s stamp on African education. The act transferred control of African education from the Department of Education to the much loathed Native Affairs Department. Under the act, African primary and secondary schools operated by the church and mission bodies were given the choice of turning over their schools to the government or receiving gradually diminished subsidies; either the government took over education for Africans or there would be no education for Africans. African teachers were not permitted to criticize the government or any school authority. It was intellectual “baasskap,” a way of institutionalizing inferiority.

Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, the minister of Bantu education, explained that education “must train and teach people in accordance with their opportunities in life.” His meaning was that Africans did not and would not have any opportunities, therefore, why educate them? “There is no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of certain forms of labor,” he said. In short, Africans should be trained to be menial workers, to be in a position of perpetual subordination to the white man.

To the ANC, the act was a deeply sinister measure designed to retard the progress of African culture as a whole and, if enacted, permanently set back the freedom struggle of the African people. The mental outlook of all future generations of Africans was at stake. As Professor Matthews wrote at the time, “Education for ignorance and for inferiority in Verwoerd’s schools is worse than no education at all.”

The act and Verwoerd’s crude exposition of it aroused widespread indignation from both black and white. With the exception of the Dutch Reform Church, which supported apartheid, and the Lutheran mission, all Christian churches opposed the new measure. But the unity of the opposition extended only to condemning the policy, not resisting it. The Anglicans, the most fearless and consistent critics of the new policy, had a divided policy. Bishop Ambrose Reeves of Johannesburg took the extreme step of closing his schools, which had a total enrollment of ten thousand children. But the archbishop of the church in South Africa, anxious to keep children out of the streets, handed over their two hundred thousand African students to the government. If all the other churches had followed the example of those who resisted, the government would have been confronted with a stalemate that might have forced a compromise. Instead, the state marched over us.

The transfer of control to the Native Affairs Department was set to take place on April 1, 1955, and the ANC began to discuss plans for a school boycott that would begin on that date. Our secret discussions among the executive turned on whether we should call on the people to stage a protest for a limited period or whether we should proclaim a permanent school boycott to destroy the Bantu Education Act before it could take root. The discussions were fierce and both sides had forceful advocates. The argument for an indefinite boycott was that Bantu Education was a poison one could not drink even at the point of death from thirst. To accept it in any form would cause irreparable damage.

They argued that the country was in an explosive mood and the people were hungry for something more spectacular than a mere protest. Although I had the reputation of being a firebrand, I always felt that the organization should never promise to do more than it was able, for the people would then lose confidence in it. I took the stance that our actions should be based not on idealistic considerations but on practical ones. An indefinite boycott would require massive machinery and vast resources that we did not possess, and our past campaigns showed no indication that we were up to such an undertaking. It was simply impossible for us to create our own schools fast enough to accommodate hundreds of thousands of pupils, and if we did not offer our people an alternative, we were offering next to nothing.

Along with others, I urged a week’s boycott. The National Executive Committee resolved that a weeklong school boycott should begin on April 1. This was recommended at the annual conference in Durban in December of 1954, but the delegates rejected the recommendation and voted for an indefinite boycott. The conference was the supreme authority, even greater than the executive, and we found ourselves saddled with a boycott that would be almost impossible to effect. Dr. Verwoerd announced that the government would permanently close all schools that were boycotted and that children who stayed away would not be readmitted For this boycott to work, the parents and the community would have to step in and take the place of the schools. I spoke to parents and ANC members and told them that every home, every shack, every community structure, must become a center of learning for our children.

The boycott began on April 1 and had mixed results. It was often sporadic, disorganized, and ineffectual. On the east Rand it affected some seven thousand schoolchildren. Predawn marches called on parents to keep their children at home. Women picketed the schools and plucked out children who had wandered into them. In Germiston, a township southeast of the city, Joshua Makue, chairman of our local branch, ran a school for eight hundred boycotting children that lasted for three years. In Port Elizabeth, Barrett Tyesi gave up a government teaching post and ran a school for boycotting children. In 1956, he presented seventy of these children for the Standard VI exams; all but three passed. In many places, improvised schools (described as “cultural clubs” in order not to attract the attention of the authorities) taught boycotting students. The government subsequently passed a law that made it an offense punishable by fine or imprisonment to offer unauthorized education. Police harassed these clubs, but many continued to exist underground. In the end, the community schools withered away and parents, faced with a choice between inferior education and no education at all, chose the former. My own children were at the Seventh-Day Adventist school, which was private and did not depend on government subsidies.

The campaign should be judged on two levels: whether the immediate objective was achieved, and whether it politicized more people and drew them into the struggle. On the first level, the campaign clearly failed. We did not close down African schools throughout the country nor did we rid ourselves of the Bantu Education Act. But the government was sufficiently rattled by our protest to modify the act, and at one point Verwoerd was compelled to declare that education should be the same for all. The government’s November 1954 draft syllabus was a retreat from the original notion of modeling the school system on tribal foundations. In the end, we had no option but to choose between the lesser of two evils, and opt for a diminished education. But the consequences of Bantu Education came back to haunt the government in unforeseen ways.
For it was Bantu Education that produced in the 1970s the angriest, most rebellious generation of black youth the country had ever seen. When these children of Bantu Education entered their late teens and early twenties, they rose up with a vehemence.

On June 16, 1976, fifteen thousand schoolchildren gathered in Soweto to protest the government’s ruling that half of all classes in secondary schools must be taught in Afrikaans. Students did not want to learn and teachers did not want to teach in the language of the oppressor. Pleadings and petitions by parents and teachers had fallen on deaf ears. A detachment of police confronted this army of earnest schoolchildren and without warning opened fire, killing thirteen-year-old Hector Pieterson and many others. The children fought with sticks and stones, and mass chaos ensued, with hundreds of children wounded, and two whitemen stoned to death.”

(Taken from Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom)