One of the commonplaces of history is that the communists and in particular the Soviet Union lost the Cold War. This victory was exemplified in the pulling down of the Berlin Wall in 1990. However this is a misreading of history. There are two ways of winning a war, one the most obvious is the conquest of the enemies territory, the other less obvious is when the loser takes on the ideas and practices of the winner. A more subtle form of conquest but just as real. Recent history demonstrates in Britain at least there is an enthusiasm for the ideas and practices of the former Soviet Union.  As a teacher I always spent at least one lesson teaching communist economic practice, as I found it fascinating and I thought that the students would benefit from the knowledge of an alternative economic system. Imagine my fascination when recent events recorded in the media demonstrated that he practices of the Soviet Union had been adopted wholeheartedly by the department of education.

The leaders of the communist state realised that they had taken over a country steeped in capitalist values and their major task would be to re-educate the people in the values of communism. In the early years of the Soviet regime trains carried artists and other propagandists from town to town to teach the people communist values and practice. Without this programme of re-education the communist state would fail as the capitalist enemy from within would undermine all the efforts of the communist state at reform.  There had to be  in tandem with this programme of re-education active policing to root and destroy those enemies of communism. Just last week the latest schools minister just like any good communist politician he was claiming that saboteurs were seeking to wreck his programme of educational reforms. In this case it was a small group of rogue examiners and teachers, all of whom he was determined to root out of education system.

The Soviet State believed that schools would play a key role in re-educating the population into the correct mores of the communist state. Not only school students but those at university were expected to study the thoughts of the communist leaders. In addition they to follow courses of the approved and correct ideological content. Marxist studies were a key element of both the school and university curriculum. There was a certain paranoia in the thinking of the Soviet leaders as they saw themselves as the enlightened minority constantly threatened by the actions of the mass of unbelievers; it was the same attitude that prevailed in the Conservative government elected in the 1980s. They saw a failing nation corrupted by the anti capitalist values of social democracy and socialism. Just as their communist predecessors had, they employed the law and aggressive policing to destroy the power of the enemy within, that is the trade union movement. They also realised that the success of their conservative counter revolution depended on the re-education of the populace into the right ways of thinking. Obviously the start was be made with the easiest to re-educate the young that is those at school. This would be achieved by changing the curriculum and by re-educating the teachers.

I was one of the first teachers to be put on the programme of re-education. It was obvious to the government that we were imbued with the wrong thinking and one of the best ways of eradicating this was to introduce teachers to the right way of thinking. When a communist state wanted to re-educate the population they were sent to the camps in their thousands for re-education. When the South Vietnamese State fell to the communists all the army officers and government functionaries were sent to the camps for re-education in the values and ways of communism. In Britain the government made a half hearted attempt at re-eduction, was rendered ineffective hampered by their commitment to spending to cutting government spending so their was only a minimal amount of money to be spent on re-education. I as one of the selected few for re-education attended on training session given by a manager from the private sector in the values of business and free enterprise. Then I had to follow in my own time a modular course of re-education and produce a portfolio to demonstrate my commitment and willingness to teach the new ideas. I guess like many in the old Soviet system I was very sceptical about its value of this programme but I completed the it because it was the only way of saving my job. This made me less than an ideal ideologue for the cause.

Rather than continue with this programme of ineffective  re-education the government resorted the negative tactic of weeding out unsuitable teachers. They created a new inspectorate who role was to ensure that school worked in conformity with the new rules and values. This body weeded out many staff who were resistant to the new ideas. Many creative and talented teachers left the profession, rather than be forced to teach the new orthodoxy with it series of box ticking exercises. A flight similar too but much smaller in numbers than the flight of intellectuals from Russia in 1920s. Now as in much of the old Soviet State promotion is gained by adherence to the values and practices espoused by a series of government ministers. Promotion now is largely dependent on a display of the toadying factor.

Teachers are still regarded as potentially the enemy within and are subject to a series of punishing controls, usually in the form of inordinate amounts of paper work. Just as a worker under the Soviet system was expected to attend regular party meetings to demonstrate their commitment to the system, so a teacher is expected to produce mountains of paper work to demonstrate their commitment to best new system.

What as an economist struck me was the similarity of the economic models they employed. In the old Soviet Union Gosplan Moscow decided on the targets for all Soviet Enterprises and there were a series of Gosplans at different levels of government that added more and more detail to the plan to ensure that the central directives were met. Not only that but there were Gosfinance and Gosresources, that decided the money and resources to be allocated to the education sector. Since there were at least three separate bodies in Moscow deciding upon targets, finance and resources it was inevitably that these directives issued by these three bodies were often in conflict. Also it must be added that these detailed central plans always specified quantitive targets to be met to demonstrate that the planned targets were being met. Managers of local public enterprises struggled to meet these targets set by these different bodies so they often resorted to all kinds of practices in an effort to appear to be meeting these targets. Since it was easier for a shoe factory to meet the target to make by making only shoes of one type, a factory would often turn out only right or left handed shoes.

The similarities with the education system in Britain today are striking. The department of education set targets for schools to achieve. These targets are always expressed in quantitive terms, as they are easier to measure and check. Quantitive targets such as a setting numbers to pass tests in English and Maths. However the Education Minister and his planner set the targets  independent of the Treasury which controls funding and resource allocation. The consequence is targets being set that are impossible to achieve with the funding and resources available. This has led to the development of a new profession the private consultants who teach how to achieve the impossible targets.

Just as in the old Soviet Union the performance of individual schools is measured against a set of targets set by the central government. This means the emphasis in schools must now be on achieving government targets and so teaching practice is changed to enable the school to score as high as possible in tests, as high scores earn score additional scarce funding and resources.  In the Soviet Union factories made only left handed shoes, so schools similarly  turn out students with only the left handed education. Right handed education that is creative thinking cannot be measured so it is increasingly left out of the curriculum. Creative subjects such as art and music are downgraded within the system so the most able are encouraged to do the book ticking knowledge based subjects. In the Soviet Union what mattered was the quantity not the quality, the same is true of British education. What matters is the attainment of government targets not the quality of the educational students receive. Many of the targets are of have little real educational value but what matters is appearance, these statistics that can produced to show how successful is the minister of education and his latest reform programme.

What demonstrates most clearly the success of the Communist model is that Britain is eager to emulate the methods of teaching used in the schools of Communist China. Britain invariably lags behind China in the PISA tests. These are supposed to be impartial means of assessment by which the performance of a nation’s school students are  judged. Everybody outside the Government and the Department of Education knows that Chinese score highly in such tests because only students at the best selective schools in Shanghai are entered for the Pisa them. What matters to the Chinese is prestige and they would never think of entering students from those schools whose relatively poor performance  who would drag down the nations scores. Given that in a Soviet type education system all that matters is the appearance of doing well, rather than the more difficult task of actually doing well, in Britain the government is now importing Chinese teachers to help remodel our schools to be more like those of the Chinese.

Note. Despite their claimed difference between the Communism of the former Soviet Union and the Neo-Liberalism of the West are vastly overstated. They both claim to be ideologies of freedom but are in fact authoritarian ideologies that intend impose their limited understanding of freedom on their host societies. Under Neo-Liberalism we should all have the freedom to buy and sell without hinderance. One hinderance is what are regarded as the bedrock of democratic society, the freedom of association.  Political movements that intend to enact a reform of society, will according to the Neo-Liberals hinder the workings of the free market. They wish to impose restrictions and costs on business that will increase costs and reduce the supply of goods available to consumers. Therefore such movements should be discouraged or prohibited as they interfere with the workings of the free market to the detriment of all. It is the increasingly authoritarian nature of the British Neo-Liberal model of society that means that British society increasingly resembles that of the Soviet Union.