The names totalitarians use for things are not usually taken as reliable. Sorry, but if your ideology makes you redefine things to the point where Nazis are socialists then you should reconsider your ideology, not expect others to also redefine words. I realise this is drifting off topic, but I think there is an issue here in as much there is very little point going into some depth about what is happening in education, only to label everything you don’t like “socialist”. Not least because it leads people to suggest solutions to the problems that won’t solve the actual problems, but will fit a narrow ideological criteria of “not being socialist”. As it is I find myself dealing with people who say “yes, it is exactly how you say, but it will all be solved when the Labour Party loses power”.

Anyway, when I get round to my blog entry about identifying the ideology in education, I’ll make sure I draw it to your attention.

As I said I will write about this properly some time.
I look forward to reading it. I have put the Hannah Arendt essay you mention on my “To Read” list.

“The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.” — Albert Jay Nock

“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all.” — Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, addressing the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, 2-25-56

“The unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual; and that the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.” — Adolph Hitler

…statism has the broadest definition with socialism and fascism being variants of statism. A major point of both socialism and fascism has to do with the ownership and control of property. In socialism, property is publicly owned and controlled. In fascism, property is privately owned but controlled by the government. Property owners do not control their own property but have the responsibility for that property. The government has the use of the property without any responsibility.
- from “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus”, chap 20 in “Capitalism: the unknown ideal”, Ayn Rand

“I don’t equate socialism only with the left wing, or the Labour party (Hitler’s party was the National Socialists).”

looks like an effort to pretend the Nazis were socialist to me.

I did no such thing. Please read more carefully.

More generally, I do need to write a proper blog entry about ideology, but I have a low tolerance for people who try to equate the progressive ideology in education with socialism or even with the left.

Roughly speaking it is anti-authoritarian mainly Anglo-American in its origins. The more authoritarian elements of the left, be that soviet communism or just working class British socialism had no time for it. It is an oppositionalist mentality. Therefore, it is believed by Trotskyites, the Labour left, but also by Liberal Democrats. There are even a sprinkling of the extreme free market right who see authority exercised by teachers as authority exercised by the state. Any form of liberalism can accomodate progressive education. In practice it cuts across a lot of ideological lines with only the authoritarian right consistently against it.

Further difficulty is created by the fact that it comes in both modernist and post-modernist flavours – those who see it as scientific and rational and those who see it as pluralistic and tolerant.

The best philosophical essay on it is probably “The Crisis In Education” by Hannah Arendt.

It is a mistake to read to much egalitarianism into it. Progressives may support mixed ability classes and oppose ranking, but that is more because they oppose whole class teaching and desert rather than because they support equality of outcome. They tend to oppose egalitarian measures that direct resources to specifially teaching the least able or to improve education in deprived areas. They hate the Academy program and high-performing schools in deprived areas. They hate efforts to identify the least able or the most unfortunate in order to help them.

As I said I will write about this properly some time.