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Fin24 Michael Rice is convinced that class classifications are meaningless, especially when concocted by economists and their political fellow travellers.
Participating in the big labour debate and in response to Terry Bell's latest Labour Wrap, he writes:
Regardless of how political scientists and other ideologically driven individuals would like to impose abstract definitions on groups of people to satisfy their need for ideological order, over 50 years of education experience has convinced me that all such classifications are meaningless, especially when concocted by economists and their political fellow travellers.
For example, teachers, if asked, would consider themselves middle class. It's a matter of perception. Classifications such as upper class, upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class, working class, lumpen proletariat have little if any objective reality beyond what social scientists (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) give them. They have nothing to do with how people perceive themselves. That is the trouble with all such definitions, they leech the humanity out of their subjects and reduce them to abstractions and therefore amenable to manipulation by social theorists.
Teachers prefer to consider themselves as professionals, not workers. Nor is it a question of how much they might earn. I cannot think of a single dedicated teacher I have known who entered the profession to become rich. It is those with an ideological agenda, the unions and their fellow travellers, who cast teachers as workers. However, a distinction must be made between teachers who have embraced unionism and those who have not.
The unions' only concerns are the material conditions of their members, not education. The evidence is there for everyone to see.
Teachers who have abandoned the discipline of belonging to a profession no longer have the welfare of the children in their trust at heart. Their concerns are truly the concerns of workers alienated from the means of production: wages, benefits and job security. They have no commitment to anything outside of their immediate material concerns. South Africa's educational catastrophe is the bitter fruit of this acquiescence. It is they who have brought our education system to its knees.
This does not mean that professionals are dedicated solely to higher ideals. Far from it, as the medical and legal professions so dismally attest. But, that is another story. Those who consider themselves professionals aspire to follow a code, the most famous of which is exemplified by the Hippocratic Oath, that puts their learning, intelligence and skills at the service of others. This inevitably means making sacrifices for the benefit of others in need.
If education is to be rescued in South Africa it is essential that teaching be returned to its professional roots. That is, perceive themselves as agents of service not workers.
Terry Bell responds:
I am really pleased to have had this response. And I hope you read the Inside Labour column that the Labour Wrap flagged. It is there that I deal within the difference between objective and subjective reality and point to one classic example of the idiotic level to which "social science" can descend. These are essential debates.
On several occasions recently, I have been castigated by readers and viewers for using the term "sellers of labour" when referring to what sociologists would generally refer to as the working class. I do this deliberately, because I try to refer to an objective reality, being fully aware that many people who sell their labour in order to survive consider themselves, subjectively, to be divorced from this reality.
However, as sellers of labour, they are subject to the vagaries of the economy and often the whims of their employers, be they governments or private enterprise.
My point is to illustrate that it is dangerous to leap to conclusions, without taking cognisance of all the circumstances, especially when classifying groups of people and then making assumptions about how they will think, act or react.
Which is why I mentioned communist icons Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin and the engineers of early 20th century Britain who considered themselves "professionals" and therefore apart from others who lacked their special skills and also sold their labour.
On the wall beside my desk I have two beautifully illustrated and framed 19th century membership certificates for the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners. These professional bodies of highly skilled workers pledged themselves to be "United and Industrious" and to serve "Justice, Truth, Industry and Art". But they remained, objectively, workers and when objective economic reality intervened, the veneer of special status in society was quickly stripped away.
As to unions: I understand your cynicism. But not all unions - or even branches of unions - have become distorted, although some have degenerated into self-serving protection rackets.
The task of all serious and committed workers, be they teachers or whatever, should be to fight to ensure that the democratic underpinnings of unions, to the benefit of society as a whole, remain in place.
* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on Fin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views of users published on Fin24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.
