By Stephen Beresford
In early July, alongside fellow UWE Bristol PhD student, Anna Burchfiel, our supervisor and ECRG Lead, Professor Alpesh Maisuria, I had the privilege of attending and presenting at the 13th International Conference of Critical Education (ICCE) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.
The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Critical Education in Times of War’ and the global political context was one that weighed heavy on proceedings; every contribution recognised that we live in barbaric times, in a time where the contradictions of capitalism have ushered in the global intensification of oppression and repression and an age of imperialist violence, war and genocide. As one presentation reminded us, we are living – in the words of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci – in a ‘time of monsters’.
To this end, it was important to be at a conference where those at the forefront of struggle across the globe could share their experiences. Contributions were both outstanding and wide-ranging: we heard about the effect that the genocide in Gaza has had on adult education, and about the efforts being made – in the most unimaginable circumstances – to keep the flame of education alive; we heard about the repression being meted out against educators in Brazil and Turkey; about the perniciousness of discourses of SEND ‘inclusion’ in the UK; about the relation between capitalism, economic growth, ecological crisis, and dominant education forms, and from Anna, we heard about the reality of the financial ‘crisis’ in UK universities.
Important too was the fact that the conference agreed to a statement in solidarity with the people of Palestine, standing against the genocide and with the Palestinian struggle for freedom from occupation and apartheid. As one participant from Lebanon pointed out, when compared to her experiences at other more ‘mainstream’ conferences and academic organisations, it was notable the ease with which such a statement could be agreed. To be involved with ICCE is, in this sense, something that fills me with pride. It too should give food for thought for those organisations who fail to stand up at such a horrific juncture.
This touches on another theme that emerged in many of the contributions: the question of resistance and hope. Not only was it consistently noted that to feel despair, or to acquiesce in such times is a moral and theoretical error, it was also noted that across the world, forces of resistance are building that are waiting to be untapped. As Alpesh’s presentation implored, this means we must be more committed than ever to forging accurate, rigorous, scientific explanations of social reality; without doing so, practices aimed at social transformation will be blind, and the forces of liberation and emancipation will fail to seize on the moment of crisis.
This idea of the emancipatory nature of rigorous social explanation was also one that my presentation touched upon too. I argued that theorisations of the school that attempt to view it in terms of the reproduction of ‘unequal’ classes must not merely think of this in terms of class discrimination and the inheritance of advantage. Such an approach misses that the more fundamental purpose of the schooling system is to contribute to the reproduction of capitalist social relations; it is an ideological state apparatus, structured to ‘interpellate’ individuals in subtly different ways to generalise ideologies amenable to capitalism. The inherited nature of educational achievement must always be thought within, and as occurring because of, this more fundamental role of the school. Any theory that does not do this fails to explain the fundamental imperatives that shape schooling forms, and in the process, risks reinforcing conceptions of class amenable to the ideologies that reproduce capitalism, and its exploitation and oppression.
The contributions of Alpesh, Anna and I, like so many others at the conference were guided by the cause of the exploited and oppressed global working-class majority. What the conference reinforced in me was a belief that this cause is inseparable from – and in fact depends upon – accurate and scientific explanations ofthe social world. Research that does not proceed from an unrelenting commitment to explanatory rigour can only serve the forces who benefit from ongoing exploitation and oppression; as the Marxist theorist and education thinker Louis Althusser put it, ‘true ideas serve the people, false ones the enemies of the people’.
And this is precisely what ICCE is about: it is a site where in a spirit of comradely rigour and debate we hone our theoretical armoury; where we hear about the struggles in the realm of education from across the globe, and where we think together about how to understand such struggles. Such debates are conducted in order to guide our theoretical and political practice, sharpening our understanding of how practices of education might fit into – or thwart – the global struggle for liberation.
However, not only did the conference sharpen theoretical skills, it also sharpened motivations and resolve too. To hear from, and connect with, people from across the globe at the forefront of struggle is a tonic for anyone committed to a transformed world. The creation of these bonds of solidarity are a reminder that across the globe there are people committed to the idea that the social ills that provoke us all cannot be merely ameliorated through piecemeal change, but that they can only be vanquished by theoretically informed revolutionary practice.
ICCE gives an insight into how this revolutionary pulse of liberation, of justice and peace plays out in the realm of education. In this ‘time of monsters’, a space to reflect on these insights and theorise together is needed more than ever; to contribute at ICCE therefore is an honour, and indeed a responsibility, for anyone committed to thinking about education in terms of the global struggle for liberation and justice.
Stephen Beresford is a PhD student at UWE Bristol and can be contacted via email: stephen2.beresford@live.uwe.ac.uk
