EC Papers September 2018

Political Education.

The GFTU Is pleased to be sponsoring the Shout Out Project which is taking an exciting and accessible political literacy programme into schools. Their presentation to our Union Building Conference in 2018 prompted us to reflect on political education generally. We needed to support this project because political education, once the core feature of the Youth Service and central and explicit in youth and community workers’ job descriptions, has been destroyed and this project shows a way forward. There are plenty of brilliant youth workers out there, but the architecture and funding of the public service we once had has gone. Political education has largely disappeared from state school curricula and from what remains of youth work. It is no accident that libraries, play work, youth work, sure start, community work and adult education, services which our people built and needed in order to create greater enjoyment of life and awareness of the world, have been the hardest hit public education services. Consequently the GFTU fully supports the aspiration of the Labour Party to create a new National Education Service which will include a statutory youth service with a renewed commitment to using the well-established techniques of popular education to create a sense of empowerment and awareness and ability to effect progressive change through collective action. Central to this is learning the habit of critical thinking and scientific examination of evidence. The ways that these essential components of political education are developed by skilled popular educators is truly inspiring and creates enlightened individuals. The foundation of learning and knowledge in early years and play work will also need to be rebuilt to provide a firm footing for the whole new structure. It is in the perception and early social experiences of children that the recognition of our political interdependence lies. We depend on each other, we should respect each other; that is the root of all progressive politics. The new National Education Service should also rebuild adult education and enhance the role of the 5 Special Designated Institutions such as Northern and Ruskin Colleges which play an indispensable role in creating access to further and higher education and quality adult residential learning opportunities. This is why the GFTU’s education programme (see www.gftu.org.uk , Education for Action), is seeking to re-politicise all elements of trade union learning. Our book Trade Union Education Transforming the world ( www.workablebooks.org ) looks at how many trade unionists have also sought to develop a more politically aware set of learning experiences for members and the ideas and methods they have used. It is also why we have successfully introduced a new programme to train trade union trainers to develop effective methods of training in a revitalised politically aware and engaging way. There should be a fundamental right to education, free from cradle to grave. Within this there should be a right and requirement to learn about political ideas, philosophical and economic concepts and how power, elected and unelected, is exercised. It is also important to create awareness at all levels of education about how the principles of democracy and social change and justice are put into effect, and how the different institutions, media outlets and social organisations work. Sadly political education has disappeared from many of the trade unions’ own education programmes.

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