Schooling reimagined

My title for this post is taken from the latest book by David Hargreaves. The full title is Schooling Reimagined: Educating for a More Ethical Society. This is an important book that needs to be read carefully and discussed with an open mind. If you are a busy teacher, school principal or someone who operates within the policy world, you may think that you are too busy to read this sort of book, but I urge you to find the time to engage with what Hargreaves is putting before us. It provides a brilliant analysis of post-war policy which has led us to a damaged education system based on the ideology of meritocracy. The term ‘meritocracy’ was used as a pejorative by the sociologist Michael Young to mean rule, not by the patrician class or the landed gentry, but by those with merit in the form of talent and achievement. Hargreaves presents a persuasive case for re-orientation, and I think his argument has important implications for teacher leadership. First however, let me say why this book is so important for the future of education and society.

A book with historical perspective

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife’ (Pride and Prejudice) was a memorable opener from Jane Austen, but Hargreaves’s first line is just as pregnant with promise. ‘On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide.’  This instantly signals the book’s historical perspective, without which we will continue to struggle to understand how we got to where we are and how we might move forward. 

As Hargreaves highlights so clearly, we are all steeped in the ideology of meritocracy and cannot imagine a world in which it is less than the dominant force it has become. I dare say that I am not alone in having had Michael Young’s ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’ on my bookshelves for most of my adult life without fully realising its significance.  As Hargreaves reminds us, Young’s book, published in 1958, is a satire - a warning of the dire consequences of policies based on the meritocratic principle which could, over the decades following the book’s publication, distort the aims of education.  

Published in 1958

Young himself reflected on this in an article in 2001 under the title of ‘Down with meritocracy’ in which he made plain his disappointment that his warning had gone unheeded.

With an amazing battery of certificates and degrees at its disposal, education has put its seal of approval on a minority, and its seal of disapproval on the many who fail to shine from the time they are relegated to the bottom streams at the age of seven or before. The new class has the means at hand, and largely under its control, by which it reproduces itself (Young, 2001).

Hargreaves addresses the nature of meritocracy, its delusions and the way schools have been ‘de-moralised’ as a result. The hyphen is meaningful here in that he was drawing attention to how the cognitive domain is in the ascendancy at the expense of the moral domain which he explains as follows.

The moral dimension consists of the cluster of learners’ capacities, dispositions and practices in forming and maintaining social relationships, particularly within the classroom and school, but also more widely (Hargreaves, 2024: 59).

Some may be tempted to downplay this aspect of education, especially if their children are likely to benefit from the game of schooling, but we should be concerned about the consequences. To be truly educated means that we have an ongoing capacity for learning throughout our lives. Not only does this help us to succeed in what may well be a series of occupations, but it also enables us to navigate the inevitable challenges involved in child rearing, family life and the management of our health and wellbeing. It is also essential for the cultivation of social cohesion.

Hargreaves’ erudition and intellectual chutzpah

Others have written about the delusional aspect of the meritocratic ideology, for example the American economist Robert H. Frank published ‘Success and Luck: Good fortune and the myth of meritocracy’ (2020). His critique echoes that of Nicolas Lemann in a much earlier book called ‘The Big Test: the secret history of the American meritocracy’.  However, what is distinctive about David Hargreaves’ book is that it has such a solid intellectual foundation, drawing on major thinkers who have stood the test of time.  He gives us, for example, substantial analyses of the philosophy of Aristotle and the sociology of Durkheim.  So many writers in the field of education seem to limit their range of sources to contemporary research-based accounts and reports from the big international organisations, but Hargreaves reminds us of a heritage of ideas that, although we may have lost sight of them, are more relevant than ever to our lives and current policy deliberation.  He has the stature of a writer with a long and distinguished career as well as the intellectual chutzpah to do this.

My introduction to David Hargreaves work came many years before I met him. I was studying on a part-time masters degree programme when I read his 1982 book The Challenge for the Comprehensive School in which he said that:

our present secondary school systems, largely through the hidden curriculum, exerts on many pupils, particularly but by no means exclusively from the working class, a destruction of their dignity which is so massive and pervasive that few subsequently recover from it (p.17).

This struck me as a very powerful observation from a writer with real fire in his belly. Unsurprisingly, I was subsequently thrilled to meet David at his TTA lecture in 1996 in which he argued somewhat controversially that teaching should be a research-based profession. I had just been appointed to my post at Cambridge where he was head of the Education Department so had the privilege of working with him. He was always brilliant and frequently provocative.

Reclaiming schooling

Schooling Reimagined offers a vision of ‘reclamation’ in which the dominance of the exams and testing culture is replaced by the re-moralisation of schooling. Hargreaves argues that, to create a more ethical society, we need schools to cultivate the ‘excellences’, in tandem with the pursuit of ‘happiness’.  He is not talking about the superficial hedonistic variety but ‘eudaimonic’ or deep happiness which results from being fully engaged the flow of worthwhile and morally rewarding activity.

Finally, there is the question of the implications of Schooling Reimagined for teacher leadership.  Based on a deep understanding of how the rampant meritocratic principle has undermined the pursuit of ‘the excellences’ and ‘happiness’, Hargreaves argues for a social movement approach to change.

If school leaders and teachers were to build on activities for a reimagined schooling to take the next step and design and operate social movements to advance their causes, in association and coalition with their allies, including students and their parents, more ‘bottom-up’ educational change will happen. If teachers want to induct students into the value and ethics of social movements, there is no better way than modelling one with and for them. Surely the battle against our exam- and test’-ridden culture ..is a strong candidate for a teacher-led movement (p. 165).

This resonates with my blog past last year ‘Hope, change and organising’ in which I referenced Barrack Obama and Marshall Gantz. I did so because I wanted to reinforce the link between non-positional teacher leadership and activism. This is therefore another reason why I welcome David Hargreaves’ profound book as a call to arms. It is time to resist!