FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@Anonymousspeech.com

What will communist education be like?
We know on general principles that it will be education for communist society, a society based on mutual aid rather than competition, one in which everyone works for the good of all. We also know that it will combine study and productive labor at every stage (this is even mentioned in the communist manifesto).
This is hardly a plan though. What else, if anything, can we predict/plan?
We may not be able to produce an exact blueprint, but we can show the equivalent of an architect’s sketch.
One skeptical comrade questioned a recent letter in Red Flag, which claimed, among other things, that under communism ‘classes’ will integrate students of different ages. “How do we know this?” he asked.
To begin with, there is the experience of communist education in Russia.
When the Bolsheviks took power, they had no firm plans for education. The tsarist schools were useless. They educated only a small fraction of the population, were gender-segregated, religious and militaristic.
So the Bolsheviks had to improvise. They started by selectively adapting some of the better ideas of bourgeois “progressive” educators. Communist schools emphasized group activities over traditional lecturing. These groups, which were age integrated, allowed students to contribute according to their abilities and learn according to their capacities and interests.
The Road to Life: An Epic of Education is a good source. The Gorky colony leader Anton Makarenko chronicles how all-age collectives of street kids ran everything including study and learning.
Unfortunately, the experiment in communist education was shut down the early 30’s. The government imposed the age-segregated Prussian system as part of the plan to adopt capitalist-style education.
The fight around communist education began anew during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. You can make a case that this struggle sparked the revolt of millions against revisionism in general.
These revolutions provide invaluable historical experience, but the case for age integration does not end here.
There is the opinion and experience of well-intentioned educational critics and reformers even in capitalist societies. Many point out that the Prussian system holds advanced learners back and brands those who need more time as “failures.” Why would we want to do that?
Even today some alternative schools group students of all age levels into small “families.” Everyone must look out for others in their “family:” including tutoring, play social skills, the safety of someone being harassed, etc. Under capitalism this will always remain an insignificant alternate. Only communism can allow collective ideas to flourish.
Furthermore, communists should be skeptical about any kind of social segregation or compartmentalization. Of course, some types of segregation aren’t always a bad idea. Even in communism we will have strict rules about who can be present in an operating room or around dangerous machinery.
But suppose a class is having a session on calculus. If a young student, say an eleven-year old, wants to attend, where’s the harm? Calculus isn’t dangerous. And remember, she’s not being dropped into a bourgeois university calculus course, which treats the subject abstractly and formalistically. It is possible to make calculus accessible to ‘unprepared’ students by using ideas such as area, volume, speed and acceleration – concepts they are familiar with.
Coming up with other suggestions and trying to justify them would be a good task for an ICWP collective, especially one involved in education. We need your help!
Why is it important to predict and plan for communist education? For a start, because we don’t want to be caught unprepared like the Bolsheviks and Chinese. We don’t want to rely on “progressive” capitalist experts, even if we pick and choose from their ideas.
More importantly, we want people to know what they’re fighting for. Workers are (and should be) skeptical of movements that are vague about their final goals.
But it’s not just a matter of overcoming skepticism. We want workers to realize just how good communist education will be. How collective work and study will allow every student to realize their full potential without ever feeling like a “failure.”
Students and teachers will be motivated by the desire to create a better life for our class. This will help bring out enthusiasm for communism, enthusiasm which will lead to the smashing of capitalist education and the building of communist education for all.

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