The final post in this series responds to the ‘lefty trad’ case for high expectations. The line of reasoning is straightforward: As socialists believe ordinary people are capable of great achievements, then we should expect working-class children to comply with strict discipline techniques, such as SLANT.
The simplicity of the argument fails to hide the sleight of hand. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. It is true that socialists have the highest expectations of the working class. Indeed, as the revolutionary class, it will be responsible for nothing less than the end of capitalism. However, that does not mean socialists expect children to comply with ‘no-excuses’ school cultures.
The ‘lefty trad’ post quotes Lenin on the tasks of the proletariat after the Russian revolution. Once again, the writer presents the quote without context. Incongruously, a quote from George W. Bush accompanies that of Lenin’s. Bush’s political views are ignored in the rush to parrot what has become the traditionalists’ mantra. Schools, they claim, should guard against the “soft bigotry of low expectations”.
As in parts one and two, we analyse the background to the quotes before considering whether they have relevance for contemporary classrooms. The post ends with a rebuttal of the accusation that progressive educators are guilty of soft bigotry. In fact, the traditionalists turn out to be the bigots for their insistence that students from disadvantaged backgrounds can only learn through complying with repressive practices.
Quote 3: High expectations
The quote comes from Lenin’s Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? published in October 1917. Lenin replies to critics of the Bolshevik Party who argue that the working-class does not have the experience or knowledge to run the state:
We demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering the state… We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, i.e., that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.
The viability of the new government depended on preparing workers to move beyond local control of factories to nationwide planning. Lenin referred to establishing workers’ management based on communal ownership of the means of production as the “immense historic question in practice”.
However, the Bolsheviks were under no illusion that training capable administrators would be a huge challenge, not least because of a national illiteracy rate of over 60 per cent. As Lenin declared in a 1921 report:
“An illiterate person stands outside politics, he must first learn his ABC. Without that there can be no politics; without that there are rumours, gossip, fairy-tales and prejudices, but not politics.”
Even the class-conscious workers who were to run the training had their limitations. In another report from 1922, Lenin conceded that the cultural level of the communists in the new state was lower than that of the “miserable” and “insignificant” pre-revolutionary Russian bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, in the early years of the revolution, the Bolsheviks frequently reiterated their high expectations of all sectors of society. Lenin envisaged a slow but thorough process of transforming a spontaneity characterised by “absorbed and uncritical immersion in immediate circumstances” into the consciousness of a politically literate population (Pethybridge, p. 146).
The ‘lefty trad’ post compares Lenin’s quote with presidential candidate George W. Bush’s comments on education in 1999:
Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less—the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Both Lenin and Bush, we are told, promote high expectations of ordinary people. In making the comparison, the ‘lefty trad’ ignores the key question for socialists: To what end do we have high expectations? Lenin aimed for nothing less than a worker-built communist society. Of course, such an end would have been anathema to Bush. Indeed, even making the comparison is an insult to Lenin and Bush who represent diametrically-opposed class positions.
A materialist analysis of Bush’s comments reveals his pro-capitalist aim. The clearest expression of his rationale comes from another speech to the NAACP the following year. In the address, Bush uses the same phrase about “the soft bigotry of low expectations” when discussing the schooling of African American children. The big gap in achievement “between rich and poor, white and minority”, he says, leads to a divided America “segregated by class, by race, or by aspiration”. Instead, education should provide students intent on advancing themselves with the opportunity for upward mobility into the middle class.
Bush links low expectations, on the one hand, to frustration, membership of gangs, addiction and despair; and high expectations, on the other hand, to private home ownership, an expanding professional and entrepreneurial class, and economic prosperity. In hoping the “American dream touches every willing heart”, the message is consistent with the longstanding bourgeois aim of assimilating members of the working class into the capitalist system. Once co-opted into managerial and entrepreneurial roles, they adopt a bourgeois outlook and discipline the workers in their charge.
While Bush was running for president at the time of the speeches, there were also deeper concerns about the state of the US economy and the class struggle that might have motivated his desire to hold the disadvantaged to “rigorous standards”. Rates of profit for US companies had been in decline from the mid-1990s and the number of days lost to strikes in 2000 was the highest for twenty years. During the decade simmering discontent over discrimination and living standards occasionally burst out into social unrest. In 1992, the police beating of Rodney King sparked the Los Angeles riots; in 1999, protests against the effects of globalisation led to the ‘Battle of Seattle’. It is in this context that Bush’s message seeks to sow illusions in an ailing capitalist system.
Since Bush used “the soft bigotry of low expectations”, the phrase has entered common discourse. Individuals and groups across the political spectrum use it to divert attention away from structural injustices and onto individual deficiencies. Rubel and McCloskey identify a trend of “placing the ‘blame’ for and the ‘solution’ to inequities within individual people’s sphere of influence without sufficient acknowledgement of systematic, historic, and institutional patterns of oppression” (p. 121). ‘Blame shifting’ is a tactic the right uses to bait progressives who challenge discrimination. When socialists point to systematic bias against people from ethnic minority backgrounds, racists accuse them of having low expectations and declare individuals should be judged solely on merit. In a reversal of the true situation, the socialist is now labelled as the racist and condemned for soft bigotry. Even mainstream organisations use ‘blame shifting’ to suggest that success at school is down to a teacher’s expectations or a student’s effort rather than the levels of deprivation in the surrounding area.
The language of high expectations serves different purposes depending on the context. Lenin directed conscious workers to train the unskilled and illiterate so that one day they could run the economy. His expectations centred on the collaborative development of the proletariat’s educational and cultural levels, which would rise far higher than is possible in an exploitative society. In contrast, Bush’s expectations turn out to be harmful to the working-class. The vast majority of workers will never benefit from the American Dream, regardless of whether they meet his standards or not. However, Bush’s rhetoric sows the illusion of a meritocratic capitalism and encourages individual workers to seek improved conditions within existing social relations. The focus of his expectations on a person’s attitude and effort disarms and weakens the proletariat. After all, the strength of the class lies in collective action against capital’s oppressive structures.
Implications for classrooms today
Traditionalists use high expectations to justify a range of damaging mantras in schools. That students get ‘only one chance’ is used to demand teachers work harder and longer. Inevitably, the extended hours and greater demands lead to teacher burnout. Staff are required to ‘sweat the small stuff’ in the misapprehension that by doing so the school will avoid a major breakdown in discipline1. Instead, petty rules become an end in themselves and students face isolation from the classroom for the smallest infraction. Academy leaders present strict discipline as the only way to ‘improve the life chances’ of disadvantaged students. If schools tolerate excuses, they contend, we are ‘letting them down’. Little do they see that implementing an education based on regimented practices is itself failing students.
Traditionalists point to the exam results of a handful of academies and free schools to justify their policies. Yet they ignore practices that privilege the schools to the detriment of their neighbours: the permanent exclusion or ‘off-rolling’ of students who have difficulty fitting into such austere regimes; and a narrow curriculum that means students study fewer subjects for longer, even though the regulatory authorities recommend a ‘broad and balanced’ education.
For disadvantaged students to achieve high exams results, traditionalists insist they listen in silence and ‘track’ the teacher so they can acquire the core knowledge that is supposedly missing in their impoverished backgrounds. With breath-taking arrogance, the traditionalist claims that the ‘cultural capital’ they are providing is “the best which has been thought and said”. Unsurprisingly, culture turns out to be nothing more than the bourgeois canon. It omits knowledge developed in anti-capitalist struggle and the intellectual advances made in the cultures of migrant communities. ‘High expectations’ means committing only the prescribed information to long-term memory and being able to ‘retrieve’ it on demand.
No excuses establishments also justify draconian discipline policies through the percentage of disadvantaged adolescents they get into high-prestige universities. Here again there is evidence that schools operate more to boost their own reputation than to meet the needs of the student. In a study of a US charter school, Noll reports that an ‘incongruence’ occurs between the school’s aim and an individual’s wishes. The expectation that the whole cohort goes to university can cause stress and frustration if a student has a different plan more suited to their own situation. Even if students in the study wanted to apply, they felt forced to accept the school’s preferred option. For example, Noll reports that school counsellors advised African American students not to apply to historically Black colleges and universities even though many expected to experience racism at a predominately White institution. The application process leaves students feeling ‘commodified’ and, as they cannot all get into an ‘elite’ institution, sets up some for disappointment
As a result of the pressure, many students find themselves at the wrong institute or unable to adapt away from heavily-structured school life. Thirteen of the 35 students Noll followed during her study had left post-secondary education by the second year and nine more had changed course or institution. As Noll concludes, “For many middle- and upper-class students, high test scores and college going are expected side effects of a well-rounded education rather than its purpose” (p. 140). However, charter schools focus their resources on college admissions “rather than facilitate students’ development of the types of interactional skills, attitudes, and dispositions that transfer to other contexts” (p. 136).
For the ‘lefty trad’, high expectations refer to a narrow set of outcomes – tightly-controlled behaviours, approved knowledge, rote learning for examination performance, and authorised universities. Schools train the working class to be submissive, while a handful of the disadvantaged are offered a place in the higher echelons of the capitalist system. Far from providing an ambitious education, the expectations are notable for their paucity of vision. While Bush and his class offer enthusiastic support, socialists should have nothing to do with them.
Paradoxically, the traditionalists turn out to be the ‘soft bigots’ who underestimate the capacity of working-class children. In the progressive classroom, expectations are much higher. Not only do students acquire curricular knowledge, they also consider metacognitive questions about how and what to learn. They use their voices to engage with opinions and ideas. Managing behaviour increasingly becomes a communal endeavour in which all participants take responsibility. These are the expectations that set children on course for successful undergraduate study and continued learning in adulthood. Moreover, workers empowered to express anti-capitalist sentiment and with the confidence to take collective action will become, in Marx’s words, the ‘grave-diggers’ of the bourgeoisie.
Footnote
- Even though traditionalists reject the analogy between their schools and heavy-handed policing of inner-city areas, their use of ‘sweat the small stuff’ comes directly from the ‘broken windows’ approach to law enforcement in rundown areas. ↩︎
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