Winston Gereluk

Alienation in Education:
A Marxian Re-Definition

The alienation of man in modern technological society emerged

as a concern central to many social issues of the 1960s. In
that decade, the term "alienation" was appropriated as a
watchword by an assortment of disaffected people who used
it as a political, sociological, or psychological concept to indicate their perceived separation from the main stream of society. Not the least of its usage has been in the field of education al rhetoric where, very simply, it has been repeatedly
held that the large Kafkaesque institutions that fulfill the
function of formaI education in our society are in one way or
another responsible for, or at least characteristic of, much of
the alienation in this society.
This study is an attempt to arrive at the meaning of
"alienation" as it is used in that context. In the process, it will
examine not just alienation, but the family of concepts and
explanations that surround the use of that term. !ts main
object will be to dispel sorne of the "woolly" notions that have
underpinned the agonizing, criticizing, and recommendations
for change that have been directed at existing practice in the
schools. In the process, it will illustrate how, for tasks such
as this one, certain modes of explanation are more suitable
than others. If this study refers to "schooling" and not "education," it is simply because no agreement at aIl exists amongst
educational theorists as to the meaning of the term "education," while there is unanimity on the question of "schooling"
- it is the pro cess that takes place in the schools.
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Winston Gereluk

The motive for producing this study (besides a strong personal revulsion for "culture people" and their jargon) is the
suspicion that the use of the term "alienation" to refer to
some of the apparently undesirable aspects of modern sehooling
has more often than not been marked by confusion and mystification. It sees in such constructions as "Schools are alienating" or "Schools promote alienation," a vague, ambiguous use
of the term as a negative "catch-aIl," or worse yet, as a part
of the repertoire of quasi-psychological jargonisms which the
"new psychology" people have built up in order to categorize
their wor Id conveniently.

the aHenation expia nation

The use of the alienation explanation to apply to schooling originated in dissatisfaction with some aspects of modern schooling as it was perceived by critics. The dissatisfaction might
have concerned, for instance, the pronounced apathy, the lassitude, or the quiet resentment exhibited by either students or
teachers, or any number of similarly unsettling types of behavior found in the school. In response to the need to explain
such behavior, to apply a term that denoted something more
definite or certain than just a vague uneasiness on the part of
the observer, the situation was characterized as "alienated,"
or "alienating;" the people were then said to be suffering from
"alienation." Furthermore, the application of the term almost
always implied a desire for change and, of course, the analysis
of the problem, or the meaning of the concept "alienation"
adopted by the critic was the basis of the change he recommended.
The classic text on alienation, the one that has provided
the precedent to many of the current uses of the concept, was
provided by the young Karl Marx in his es say, "Alienated
Labor." In this essay, Marx addressed himself to the general
problem of labor, pointing out ways in which people in
capitalist society are alienated because of the social conditions
through which they must pro duce their lives.
On the one hand, it is possible to understand people as
alienated from the PRODUCT of their labors. From this pointof-view, the laborer is separated from the product of his labor,
when instead of affirming his humanity, the object produced
stands opposed to, becomes alien to, or independent of the
producer. It is a case of the laborer turning against himself,
for the product of labor is only, after aIl, "labor which has
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Alienation in Education

been embodied in an object and turned into a physical thing ...

an objectification of labour. U1 And, it follows from the above
form of alienation that the laborer is also alienated from the
ACTIVITY of his labor itself. Marx explains:
The product is, indeed, only a resum of the activity of production.
Consequently, if the product of labour is alienation, labour itself must
he active alienation .... The alienation of the object of labour only
summarizes the alienation of the work activity itself.s

According to Marx, it is possible, also, to understand man

as a SPECIES-BEING, in which case, it can be seen how under
capitalism, man as laborer is forced into forms of life-activity
that negate his essence as species-being.
Since alienated labour (1) alienates nature from man; and (2)
alienates man from himself, from his own active function, his lifeactivity, so it alienates him from the species. It makes species lUe
into a means for individual life. In the first place, it alienates specieslife and individual life, it turns the latter, as an abstraction, into
the purpose of the former, also in its abstract and alienated form. S

The laborer's alienation is made complete when the dominant

relations under which he lives produce his separation from
his fellow man. Under capitalism, the devastation of social
life is complete as the conditions under which people produce
demand individuality and penalize any manifestations of
sociality.
A direct consequence of the alienation of man from the product
of his labour, from his life-activity, from his species-life, is that man
is alienated from other men. When man confronts himself, he also
confronts other men. What is true of man's relation to his work,
to the product of work, and to himself, is also true of his relationship
to other men, to their labour, and to the objects of their labour.4

In many of the "alienation explanations" used in regard to

the unsettling perceptions concerning the schools, it is possible
to see elements of the above Marxian understandings. Very
briefly, that is, the students' state of consciousness is seen in
terms of the forms of activity into which they are forced by
the school. Their resentment, rebelliousness, apathy, iU kealtk,
have been popularly characterized in the following ways, aIl
of which have been at one time or another related to the
Marxian alienation theme:

estrangement - Schools separate the "real people" who

come to school from their lives as they are forced to lead
them while in schooI. That is, the student is estranged not only
from other people, but from himself. Erich Fromm explains
this state of existence. The individual student, he holds,
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Winston Gereluk

does not experience himself as the subject of his own acts, as a

thinking, feeling, loving person, but he experiences himself only in
the things he has created, as the objects of the externalized manifestations of his powers. He is in touch with 'himself only by surrendering himself to the objects of his creation.5

dehumanization - This variation reveals that one of the

bases of the alienation explanation is that it depends on a
preconception of the full-blown human being, relative to which
the people being perceived are less than human. Paul Tillich's
lament is most common:
Western technical society had produced methods of adjusting
persons to its demands in production and consumption which are less
brutal, but in the long run more effective than totalitarian repression.
They depersonalize not by commanding, but by providing - providing,
namely, what makes human creativity superfluous.8

emasculatic:m - This variant expresses the critics' concern

that the people under observation have had their humanity
"torn out" or rendered sterile by long periods of repression
by inhuman conditions. Jules Henry articulated this particular
suspicion about the effect that the schools have on children.
The function of education has never been to free the mind and
spirit of man, but to bind them; and to the end that the mind and
spirit of his children shaH never escape, Homo Sa.piens has employed
praise, ridicule, admonition, accusation, mutilation, and even torture
to chain them to the culture pattern.7

impoverishment - Another explanation holds that the adverse effect of the schools is the manner in which they starve
children, emotionally, spiritually, psychically, etc. John Holt
provides an example of the manner in which school critics
have employed this simple physical analogy to convey their
message.
Nobociy starts off stupid . What happens is that the [natural
capacity for learning and inteHectual growth] is destroyed, and more
than by any other one thing, by the proeess that we misname education ...8

outward dependency - This popular variant contains a concern central to liberal theory; that the healthy, full-functioning
human being is one who is free in the sense of being selfsufficient. Schools, according to Abraham Maslow, are responsible for a profound illness when they produce children who
are "outer directed" or "deficit-motivated" in bondage to
others. He explains:
The deficit-motivated man is far more dependent on other people
than is the man who is predominantly growth-motivated. He is more

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Alienation in Education
"interested," more needful, more attached, more desirous. 9

regimentation - A similar variation exists in the minds of

critics who fear that modern North American society is becoming more and more the Orwellian nightmare, demanding
of aU its members passive, robot-like participation. Paul
Goodman is the leading proponent of this point-of-view, and
in his accounts refers very often to the role of the schools
which "less and less represent any human values but simply
adjustment to a mechanical system."'o

an examination of the explanations

What should be noticeable in the above sampling of currentlypopular alienation explanations is that "alienation," besides
being a very Americanized concept, at this point in history
lies quite clearly within the discipline of social psychology,
its choice of problems, its method, its terminology. The critical
examination that will be directed at the alienation explanation
will then be to sorne extent an examination of the social-psychological method of explaining social problems.
Firstly, it is rare to find an alienation explanation that is
not based on a broad philosophical position which separates
the existence with which the critic is confronted from sorne
notion of essence and, moreover, holds that the person's existence do es not fuUy express that person's essence. Very simply
put, the people being characterized as "alienated" are not what
they might or should be; it is not "human," according to the
critic, to be estranged, dehumanized, etc. In this case, "human"
can be taken to mean what people are basically or essentially,
as apart from their day-to-day existence.
The most philosophically-fundamental criticism of any such
account is to question the underlying assumption of the
Idealist, or (as l prefer to caU it) the Subjectivist position
which posits essence prior to existence, the Ideal as higher
than the Real, or Ideology before the world. The debate over
whether essence precedes existence, has raged for centuries in
the history of philosophy, and each si de has produced notable
champions. For the purpose of this study, it suffices to point
out that a subjectivist explanation for the school's problems
can be simply dismissed as a creation of the critic's perception
as ordered by a peculiar ideological framework. That is, it
can be argued that the putative objective cause of the problem
is not at aIl in the schools, but in the critic's mind and its
conception of True Humanity. Or, such a subjectivist explana38

Winston Gerel,*

tion can even be dismissed on another level by a person who

subscribes to the general subjectivist position that essence
precedes existence. Such a person might dismiss another's
explanation of the schooling problem by holding that it was
based upon an incorrect idea about man's essence, True
Humanity, and similar concepts.
Following from the above, any criticism based on subjective
dissatisfaction is too easily rendered useless as a basis upon
which to recommend change; it has only to be confronted with
another subjective account - another feeling. To say that one
does not perceive reality that way, or that there is nothing
regrettable about the phenomena being described, or finally,
that what is perceived is merely any aberration or accidentaI
quality of that particular group of students is to answer effectively the criticism and counter the argument that there
is a need for change. And, the person with the original "feeling" then has no choice but to search out somebody who shares
his feeling. Or, he could take a tranquillizer.
Another shortcoming in the alienation explanations illustrated above is the manner in which they serve to identify
the problem (the unsettling perception) as a quality of the
people being discussed. The effect of an explanation that sees
the problem as essentially one of attitude, orientation, disposition, or inabiIity to cope, rather than as a characteristic of
the situation, institution, or society, is that it tends to promote
the understanding that the people the critic cIaims to he concerned about are, in some abstract way, the problem, or even
the source of their own problems.
The alienation explanation as it applies to schools sees the
problem as a feature of the students (or teachers), allowing
for some vague understanding that it has something to do
with their surroundings. The reasons for the victims' misfortunes are within the victims themselves. This is the effect
of explaining their troublesome behavior by recourse to their
state of consciousness. Such explanations, of course, rely on a
tautology and hence do not serve to explain at aIl. Analogously,
it does not help to explain "War" by referring to the xenophobia, hatred and mistrust prevalent during wartime. To talk
in these terms may add to a description of War, but adds
nothing by way of explanation of its existence in the first
place.
The social-psychological explanation is problematic in that
it presupposes the very things the existence of which it is
supposedly explaining. The mentality or spirit of the students,
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Alienation in Education

which the critic chooses to perceive as essentially a socialpsychological phenomenon, is explained by paraphrasing it in
another bit of social-psychological jargon. We are told, in
other words, that the students suffer from lassitude, passivity,
lack of ambition because they are aIienated, Le., because they
suffer estrangement, dehumanization either as an individual
or a social-psychological state.
The value of any socio-psychological explanation can be
questioned in this manner. What does it teach us? When
alienation is perceived in terms of feelings, attitudes,
or states of consciousness what the theorist is attempting to do is explain a social situation in terms
that apply to individual members of that grouping. That
is, the explanation runs afoul of exactly the same obstacles to explaining society shared by any disciplines that
start with the individual as their primary data. Once they
have explained society in terms of its individual members, and
once they have fully described these members in their individuality, then it is impossible to describe society except by
superimposing a completely new set of categories or "truths"
on the description of the individual. Or, how does one understand a social psychological state of consciousness, mentality,
etc., except as a generalized individual state 1"1 Positing attitudes, feelings, temperaments, and other such states as
attributes of a grouping are at best highly suspicious constructions and bring us not much closer to understanding.

the factor approach to alienation

It does not require intellectual sophistication to see that even

if we concede that it is possible to understand an undesirable

state of consciousness in the terms of a social-psychological
model, that the questions still remain, "Why that psychological
state?" and "How are we to understand it?" To revert to
another set of psychological jargonisms would certainly not
help at this point. And, if we cannot answer such a question,
we have no basis upon which to make intelligent recommendations for change.
In educational theory, one of the most common strategies
employed to explain the existence of social-psychological
phenomena such as alienation, is simply to refer to other
forces or things in the school situation. In the form of the
natural scientists and their paradigms, a causal relationship
is seen between the aspects or "factors" in the total school
40

Winston Gereluk

reality and this enables the production of statements such as

"Alienation is caused by the authority-structure of the school
(implicit in such relationships as teacher-student, principalteacher, etc.)." Or, it is argued that the authoritarian examination causes a pre-set curriculum which presupposes an authority-centered classroom, and that is what causes the
"alienated" student, the one who "sees the meaning of his
labor outside of himself." But, there can be no doubt that the
relationship is at least reciprocal, that the resentful, passive
student justifies the authoritarian teacher and the strictly
supervised school. Just ask any teacher.
Educational theorists have grown mad (or at least highlypublished) by first isolating a whole range of aspects or
"factors" of schooling, and then trying to relate them in a
"chicken-or-egg" speculative game that could, if we were to
take into account aIl aspects of the school, stun a computer.
However, as far back as 1897, George Plekhanov recognized
the basic fault in a "factor" analysis.
The "factors" are subject to reciprocal action. Each influences the
rest, and is in turn influenced by the rest. The result is such an
intricate web of reciprocal influences of direct actions and reflected
reactions that whoever sets out to elucidate the course of social
developments begins to feel his head swim and experiences an unconquerable necessity to find at least sorne sort of clue out of the
labyrinth. Since bitter experience has taught him that the view of
reciprocal action leads only to dizziness, he begins to seek for another
view; he tries to simplify his task. 12

Writers have made themselves well-published and prestigious

by successfully isolating a "clue" - a factor that is basic to
the rest and in terms of which the rest may be explained.
Grades and failing are basic to the bad effects schooling has
on children, says John Holt'; the "slave" relationship of
students to schoolmasters is what Jerry Farber has isolated'4;
McLuhan pontificates on the central effect of the imposition
of the media"; and Ivan Illich outdoes them all by outlining
carefully the manner in which schooling is the "key" to everything else in our society.'
Basic to the futility (if not the absurdity) of the above
explanations is the notion that factors or aspects can be taken
out of their context and understood as self-contained, abstract
entities. And, the analyst is sustained in this practice in the
following manner: after having isolated a number of abstractions, he puts them back together and discovers that they fit
Uke a jig-saw-the surprise and satisfaction attending this
discovery is enough to assure everyone that the theorist is
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Alienation in Education

"really on to something." Even more satisfying is the practice of abstracting only one factor or aspect of the whole and
then demonstrating how the whole which is inoperative and
incomplete without that aspect is suddenly made complete
with its re-insertion. Conclusion: The whole can be explained
in terms of that part. John Holt, Ivan Illich, Paul Goodman,
and the rest are "on to something"; a sinecure in the educational academy.
The key to the endless games that are devised according to
the above rules are all premised upon a common positivist
assumption-that reality (the world) is a monstrous composite of building blocks of reality, the primary data, that man
can come to know "as they are." It is possible to study these
bits of data individually, or it i8 possible to study their relationship to each other.l1 We come to know the "whole" only
through a painful process of building onto a "textbook," when
that is completed, then we will only have to master it in order
to "know" reality.18 It is this epistemological stance that allows
us even to consider taking a "problem child" out of the classroom and into the counsellor's office in order to study "his
problem"-as if it were a problem without the classroom. It
is also this stance that makes it possible for theorists to spend
long hours discussing "alienated students," i.e. trying to explain the alienation in terms of the "state" the student is in,
as if that state were at aIl complete in itself.

explanation and the materialist dialectic

Some people come to dialectical materialism as a part of an
adventurist happening; others come to embrace it because it
provides the only satisfying philosophical structure within
which the world can be explained. Volumes have been written
in an attempt to explore this school of thought, but for the
purposes of this essay, two of its central laws will have to
suffice as a beginning.
(1) The meaning of a social phenomenon is in its objective
social and historical context, and
(2) Its meaning can only be grasped as a unity of opposites.
Cause and effect are abandoned in favor of an explanation
that presents relationships as the social meaning of a phenomenon, as weIl as an account of its past as its historical meaning. The phenomenon is not, then, in the sense of the naive
realist, a building block of reality apart from human perception, but is rather seen as a part of that complex whole which
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Winston Gereluk

is the sum-total of human experience at one point in history.

So, within the context of these two laws, it is possible to reinterpret the "aIienation explanation," to see what sense can
be made of the state of consciousness-the lassitude, passivity,
resentment, apathy, and rebelliousness-the perception of
which causes us concern.
Firstly, one must understand the disaffected student in
terms of the relations into which he enters. Relationships, in
their simplest form, can be seen as implying a unity of opposites. First of aIl, the student's consciousness, his conception
of his being, is mediated by the world "external" to his consciousness. At the simplest level of self-definition, the student
sees himself as not-wall, not-teacher, not-book; he do es not
define himself in a vacuum. His surroundings or, more exactly,
the manner in which he experiences (acts) in those surroundings define him, and at the same time form his conception
of who he is.
Secondly, it is crucial in our understanding of social problems to recognize the dialectic unity of opposites that is set
up when a person relates to another person. In the course of
relating, this person defines himself according to the other,
but the other is at the same time defining himself according
to the first. It turns out that each can only understand himself in terms of the other's understanding of him; but the
other's understanding is a function of the first's understanding. Barring a past, a life-and-death struggle occurs in every
relationship, as for each, his self-definition is at stake. In
terms of this, R. D. Laing's agonizing becomes intelligible:
Interpersonal life is conducted in a nexus of persons, in which
each person is guessing, assuming, inferring, believing, trusting or
suspecting, generally being happy or tormented by his fantasy of
other's experience, motives and intentions. And, one has fantasies
not only about what the other, himself experiences and intends, but
also about his fantasies about one's own experiences and intentions,
and about his fantasies about one's fantasies about his fantasies
about one's experiences, etc.18

Characteristic of R. D. Laing, the above emphasizes consciousness; the process of self-definition in terms of the relationships that one lives through is total, the person (and his
problems) is defined. Aiso Laing looks at the problem from
the point of view of a dyadic experience. How many times is
the mind-boggling multiplied in the case of the triad, or in
the classroom of twenty-six students? Or, in the school of
two thousand? Only academics have the time and ambition to
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Alienation in Education

attempt to conceptualize that. The important point to be made

here is that a state of consciousness can not be properly understood in the terms of an explanation that sees it as a
property of the students themselves (whatever that can mean).
It can only be understood in terms of the relations into which
the student is placed (enters).
However, our understanding that these relations are the life
and mentality of the school student is incomplete if we view
these relations as virginal. In other words, the students (and
the problem) are to be understood as an ensemble of relations
with a history. The student who is defined during his school
days cornes to that point in his life with a past that began at
birth (notwithstanding certain theological wrangles). And,
the same understanding applies to the school; it is what it is
as a result of being not only a determinate part of society, but
also as a result of its own pro cess of development. Any problem, within it, then, must be understood not only in space, but
in time.
It is at this point that another fundamental of the Marxian
method is required-the necessity of seeing society in terms
of infra structural and superstructural relationships, for purposes of rendering the social object of enquiry manageable.
This method starts from the simplest fundamental relations we
can find historically; in actual fact, that is economic relations. so

It is to this "key" that a lot of criticism has been attached.

Marxism, it is held, is "economic determinism"; it sees economics as causally prior to the rest of society. Or, it is also held,
that dialectical materialism sees economic relations as the
only ones that are important. Neither is the case; dialectical
materialism recognizes the reality of relations in aU areas of
human experience. In a society characterized by scarcity,
however, economic relations are the simplest ones, and because
there is only one society, these relations are implied in aIl
other "areas." Henri Lefebvre explains:
The simple relations, moments, categories are involved historically
and methodologcally in the richer and more complex determinations,
but they do not exhaust them. The given content is always a concrete
totality .... Dialectical materialism is not economism. It analyzes relations and then re-integrates them into the total movement. S1

Our venture into the aery realm of superstructural relationships, and especially the complexity of relationships involved
44

Winston Gere!uk

in consciousness attitudes, mentalities, and states of mind is

much more likely to be properly directed if we have gained an
understanding of the simpler relations involved. The most
simple, fundamental relations to be found in the school are
thus a way of coming to know that complex state of consciousness which we have been calling alienation. Alienation can
then be expressed in the foIlowing terms:
(1) The relations that the student mediates (Le., the social
relations of the school) which ultimately take the form of relations in the rest of society;
(2) The "valuation" of the relations that the child mediates,
this valuation being implied by these relations themselves, as
weIl, of course, as by the relations of the person doing the enquiry;
(3) The history of the social structure, of the dominant relations determining the form of the school.
It seems that the above is advocating not much more than
R. D. Laing in his presentation of the dialectical method of
enquiry-which is the pushing back of the boundaries of the
object of enquiry through time and space in order to render
it intelligible in terms of its context.
As we begin from micro-situations and work our way up to macrosituations, we find the apparent irrationality of behavior on a small
scale obtains a certain form of intelligibility when one sees it in
context.

The difference is that the reality that we begin with never

was the abstract problematic, the object of enquiry removed
from its context. That is, the alienated students were never
"alienated," nor "students" in their own right. They were
only "alienated" and "students" insofar as they stood in certain relationships to other people and objective circumstances
in a certain social institution at a certain point in its history.

alienation in second-order mediations

Istvan Meszaros provides a simple method for understanding
the way in which man mediates his social reality, and ultimately how he is alienated, by creating a distinction between
first and second order mediations. 23 The first order mediations
can be seen in the way that man actively relates to his social
world (or nature) as part of it. (The discussion of the preceding section.) These first order mediations are ontologically
prior to those of the second order which can he seen as the
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Alienation in Education

wealth of man's objective creations that mediate his activity

in his world (mediate his mediations). Into this category
would fan creations such as technology, bureaucracy, capital
profit, money, institutionalizations, as weIl as countless other
social shibboleths.
On one level of analysis, it is possible to see alienation in
terms of second order mediations when they are isolated as
hindrances to man's social activity. In this positivist and undialectical sense, it is possible to isolate very quickly the meaning of the student's alienation-his passivity, resentment, etc.
-by pointing to the institutional pro cesses, rules, and configurations of the school that bind the student's activity.
According to the materialist dialectic, however, alienation
would be seen more properly in the contradictions that occur
at aIl levels of the schooling process between first and second
order mediations. In fact, the two cannot be separated, except
as the hopeless factors that Plekhanov discussed. The following
example should serve to illustrate the nature of the contradiction:
In the Marxian analysis of. capitaIism, the classic contradiction is the simple economic relationship that exists, and becornes clarified in the course of history, between use-value
and exchange-value. The first order mediation can be seen
as occurring when man engages in production in order to
gain the satisfaction of his needs--defined, of course, at the
historically-appropriate levaI. The meaning of his activity is
ostensibly in the use-values that he is creating. The secondorder Mediations, in fact, define the form that his production
takes under capitalist arrangements. It is, from this point-ofview, the production of exchange-value, in which configuration the labor-power (or, the laborer himself) is seen as
exchange-value also.
When the person's activity (work) does not result in the
satisfaction for which he is working, because of the dominant
relations of work (economic relations), then his alienation
from his product, activity, etc., emerges in reality. It appears
superficially to be due to the second-order Mediations (the
economic reifications) under which he labors, but in fact, the
second order Mediations are the form of his activity, and cannot be separated. In a certain historical socio-economic form,
satisfaction of needs takes the form of the satisfaction of the
demands of the market. When it no longer does, when coincidence becomes contradiction, then alienation becomes evident,
and revolution immanent. The historical development of pro46

Winston Gereluk

duction (man's first order mediation) demands the dissolution

of relations that have turned from the form of development of
production into its fetters. Si
Applying this model to our problem, alienation in schools
becomes a reality when, due to the social relations, the form
imposed upon their activity by such things as the structures
of the school and the structures of the economy, the purposes
for which the children engage in schooling are not fulfilled
but are negated. If one is so inclined, he can study this
phenomenon from the point-of-view of what happens to the
individual student who finds that the activity in which he
indulges does not satisfy his purposes at the same timeas it
"satisfies" the institutional requirements. Or, he could study
it from the point-of-view of the society of which the school
is a determinate part, and in terms of whose dominant relations it is fully understood. In this case, the social production summed up as "schooling" can he seen as fettered by the
social relations most closely implicated in its functioning.
From the first perspective, the historically-appropriate
needs that bring people to school are denied satisfaction by
the demands of the school relations which are a part of the
demands of the totality of social relations, which have turned
from the form of the satisfaction of these needs into their
negation. It is here that we can examine the manner in which
the "learning" and "teaching" that students and teachers do
is negated by such relations as give meaning and force to the
schedule, curriculum, school quota, finance, examinations, etc.
At this level, the wealth of liberal criticism, itself a mystification, takes hold and remains.
We are less accustomed to enquire from the perspective
of social needs (not separate from the above) and to see
how alienation occurs when the social needs that motivated
the institution of schooling are no longer being satisfied. A
major "social need" is to "pass on the culture," the knowledge
and skills vital to the perpetuation and development of the
socio-economic form. The task of schooling, as it relates to
this social need, would he of the order of the initiation of
novices into dominant social forma, the rationalizing and enhancement of these forms through research, etc.
It can be seen how these would come into contradiction
with the dominant social relations of the school when it is
fulfilling other expectations of the market. For, the task
then becomes the passing on of knowledge and skills needed
47

Alienation in Education

to ensure production at its economically-appropriate level.

Within these relations, the school survives and pros pers only
insofar as it takes the form of dominant relations in advanced
capitalist society - finance, centralization, accountability,
etc. are aIl corporate concerns that are appropriate to any
large institution in society, and so they corne to be the
school's.
On the one han d, the second-order mediations are satisfied
as the school corporation rationalizes its own operations to
render them more compatible with dominant market relations. On the other, it is the development of this sector of
the "public domain" to render it more justifiable in terms
of (private) capitalist enterprise, e.g., by providing the
arena for the profitable investment of capital.
Finally, the relations of schooling are inseparable from
the relations of the contradiction-bound Canadian political
economy itself. One of the emerging crises concerns the
ability of the relations demanded by Canada's hinterland
economy to contain the developing production which was the
very promise or meaning of its becoming such an economy in
the first place. That the production fostered under these
forms is now in contradiction can be seen in the university
for instance, as the demand for non-existent jobs on the part
of graduates, or on the level of the public school, as the
futility of continuing in an "education" that was, after aIl,
geared towards job expectations that were partially the effect of the promise of inflowing foreign equity capital.In our liberal-democratic (capitalist) society, the power to
make the important decisions is based on wealth, i.e., property, the control of the means of production. Public good is
seen in terms of social production and the direction is ultimately interpreted by those who control production in terms
of their interests, of course. "Public" then, takes on the
character of the class interests of those who control production, and that in turn cornes to be synonyrnous with the interests of the most powerful of them. "Private," then, pertains to the demands of the single interests, insofar as they
deviate from the interpretation of "public." In the Canadian
political economy, an interesting contradiction is developing
in the national bourgeoisie between those whose interests demand a strong position for national capital (represented by
the Committee for an Independent Canada), and those whose
interests are "continentalist," implying the continuing takeover by foreign capital. This contradiction has increasing
48

Winston Gereluk

relevance for the whole Canadian society, and certainly for

the type of indoctrination meted out in the schools.
The basic dichotomies operating in the Canadian political
economy emerge, in time, as the principal dichotomies in the
school. For instance, there are those who have as their interests the expansion of the schooling process, and then, there
is the "public interest" which is at this point in history in
the direction of fewer graduates and lower education costs.
The "public" is, from this point-of-view, in favor of retaining
the myth that sees schooling as coincidental with market
expectations, e.g., having jobs available for aIl graduates
and they must continually fight against the "private" interests which would continue developing the institution in
such a way as to turn the coincidence into contradiction.
The problem of alienation was never, then, properly defined only in terInS of the perceived apathy, resentment, or
emotional state of the students at school. If it were, the
proper stimulants la Brave New World would be equal to
the task of providing a solution; the type of psychological
upIifting to be obtained by the use of drugs, new media, and
the like, not at aIl alien to present practice in the schools,
would suffice. But if the problem, of which the psychological
state is a part, is raised to the level of contradictions basic
to the political economy of Canada, then we should not be
surprised if it is not answered by the liberalization of "drug
rules," exciting media, or "groovy" group therapy sessions ....
If the alienation of students can only be completely understood in terms of the conjuncture of historical circumstances
at which they must try to produce a satisfactory life, then
a much more decisive sort of therapy is required.

footnotes
1. T. B. Bottomore (ed.), Karl Marx: Early Writings, London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1965, p. 122.
2. Ibid" p. 124.
3. Ibid., p. 127.
4. Ibid., p. 129.

5. Eric Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion, New York: Trident

Press, 1962, p. 44.
6. Paul Tillich, "The Person in a Technical Society" in Christian Faith
and Social Action, J. A. Hutchinson (ed.), New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1953, p. 150.
7. Jules Henry, Culture Against Man, New York: Random House, 1963,
p. 283.
8. John Holt, How Children Fa, New York: Dell Publishing Company,
Delta Books, 1964, p. 167.
49

Alienation in Education
9. Abraham Maslow, Towards a Psychology of Being, Princeton, N.J.:
Van N ostrand, 1962, p. 33.
10. Paul Goodman, Compulsory MiB-education, New York: Random
House, Vintage Books, 1956, p. 21.
11. Recognizing that the state of dissatisfaction of the observer is inextricably wound up in the nature of his object, one in a sense is
always left with this question. Perhaps, the matter of finding an
"objective base" is, in the final analysis, a political ploy.
12. G. Plekhanov, The MaterialiBt CO'Meption of HiBtory, New York:
International Publishers, 1940, p. 16.
13. How Children FMl, op. cit.
14. Jerry Farber, "Student As Nigger."
15. Marshall McLuhan, "Classroom Without WaHs" in Selected Educational Heresies, William O'Neill (ed.), Glenview, Ill.: Scott,
Foresman, 1969, pp. 294-6.
16. Ivan Illich, "Why We Must Abolish Schooling" in The New York
Review of Books, Vol. XV, No. 10, pp. 28~3.
17. See Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the E:~ternal World, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926.
18. See, Kuhn, Structure of Scientific RevolutiOfLB, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1962.
19. R. D. Laing, Self and Others, 'London: Tavistock Publications, 1961,
p.l54.

20. H. Lefebvre, Dialectical MaterialiBm, Trans. by J. Sturrock London:

Jonathan Cape, 1968, p. 85.
21. Ibid.
22. R. D. Laing, "The Obvious" in Dialectics of Liberation, D. Cooper
(ed.) Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1968, p. 15.
23. 1. Meszaros, Marx's Theory of Alienation, London: Merlin Press,
1970.
24. Louis Feuer (ed.), Marx & Engels: Basic Writings, New York:
Doubleday & Company, 1959, p. 44.
25. Foreign equity capital is not only accepted, but actively courted with
the understanding (unquestioned until recently) that it does create
jobs. T>here have been reams of studies to disprove this amongst
which the following would make basic reading: P. Sweezy "The
Future of Capitalism" in Dialectics of Liberation, op. cit.; P. Baran
and P. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, New York: .Monthly Review Press,
1966; 1. Lumsden (ed.), Close the 49th Parallel, etc., Toronto: The
University of Toronto Press, 1970; H. Magdoff, The Age of lmperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy, New York:
Modern Reader Paperbacks, 1969; J. Laxer, The Eneruy Poker
Ganne, Toronto: New Press, 1970; and K. Leavitt, The Sent Surrender, Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1970.

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