3 Consensus, hegemony and marginalisation

Dr. Shanthi. G

1. Introduction

‘Education is the magic wand’, ‘the panacea’, ‘cure for all the ills’ ‘education is learning of human values’, ‘ it is continuation of the skills of the group’ etc. are some of the famous statements made by leaders around the globe. Each of these leaders has looked at education from different perspectives and angles; each statement has been made in the background of the social and political conditions of a given society. These statements acquire meaning in the Indian scenario with the introduction of modern education ideologies. ‘Modern Education’ in the Indian context is a product of the colonial rule in the mid nineteenth century. The education system earlier to this period which was of an “indigenous variety, was closely aligned with the local occupational structure, which in turn coincided with the caste stratification in society” (Nagraju, 1998. pp: 128). Post-industrial Indian society gives immense importance to education. The Indian Constitution gives immense importance to educating young citizens. It is through the institution of education that societies strive to reach the set goals and expected levels of development. Political backdrop for education brings forth the power hierarchies that are prevalent in any given society in general and India in particular.

This module tries to look into the complex interplay between consensus and hegemony in education provided to the masses, how and why a set of ideologies is put forward through curriculum and how the fruits of education and its impact are lost for some sections of the society resulting in marginalisation.

2. Hegemony

The term hegemony means leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others. Hegemony symbolises political or cultural dominance or authority over others. For example, the hegemony of the popular kids over other students means that they determine ‘what is and is not cool’. Hegemony comes from the Greek word hegemon which means “leader.” Hegemony is also understood in relation to economic positions. For example, wealthy lender nations hoping to determine political outcomes and trade decisions have established hegemony over the debtor nations they lend to. This has led to the dominance of one group or nation over others. Hegemony is also the term used to denote a leading group which exercises authority over others (http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/hegemony ). Hegemony also refers to the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group over others. (http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/hegemony).

It is important that as a student of sociology one understands how different institutions debate on different issues related to hegemony. It actually refers to the ways by which people in power use their power to control public perception in a way that ensures that they will stay in power. The rich and dominant groups create situations in which the poor and subordinate begin to think and behave in a way that reinforces the dominance of the wealthy, and the subordinate status and vulnerability of the poor (Nath 2010). Hegemony is a system where one ruling social group or state rearranges a system in such a way that its dominance is seen as justifiable. In other words, it gains consent for dominance.

The concept of cultural hegemony is particularly associated with Antonio Gramsci. It is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the value system and mores of a society, so that its view becomes the world view. As Eagleton (1991) notes, “Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates”. In contrast to authoritarian rule, cultural hegemony “is hegemonic only if those affected by it also consent to and struggle over its common sense”. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony )

Gramsci used the concept hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others. Power in most societies is not maintained through overt force. The powerful in most modern societies legitimise their views and make these views virtually unquestionable by constantly repeating them through myriad ‘official’ sources (schools, text books, teachers, school rules)media outlets (mainstream news organisations), and less official sources (parents, peers, religious heads, entertainment outlets) (White. 2014).

Gramsci’s idea of “hegemony” or ideological domination is one of greatest contributions in understanding the use of power in society. In a given society when one ideology, or world view point, dominates, it suppresses or eliminates, often unkindly, any other viewpoints explaining reality. Hegemony could contain varied ideological expressions. Some are artificial — theoretical explanations created by academics or political activists or philosophers. Other ideologies are “organic,” which means that they come from the common people’s lived experience. These consist of a culture’s way of seeing and believing, and the institutions that uphold these beliefs, like religion, education, family, and the media. Through these beliefs and institutions, society endorses the ethical beliefs and manners which “the powers that be” agree are true, or right, or logical, or moral. The institutions and beliefs that the dominant culture support is so powerful, and get hold of people when they are so young, that alternative ways of envisioning reality are very hard to imagine. This is how hegemony is created and maintained. According to Gramsci, hegemony locks up a society even more tightly because of the way ideas are transmitted by language. Gramsci believed that everyone, no matter what their occupation, their interests, or their education, is able to work out their own coherent ideas of how the world really works

At this junction it is important to note that education does not exist as a super structure, but, is a sub-structure of the super structures mainly the government but directed by politics and economy. As Nagaraju notes “ Education in a given society evolves into a role subordinate to a dominant structure in its operational surroundings. It can never be a super-ordinate structure as it has to depend upon the resources provided by other structures in society. Since educational outcomes have consequences on the stability or changes in the dominant structure, there is stiff competition for controlling education. This competition generates politics of education from outside, resulting in education policy” (Nagaraju1998. Pp: 131).

Education does not exist in a vacuum. It interacts with multiple systems in a society. This is also very much true of Indian society. Before the British introduced a universal system of education, the education system that existed in India was patronised by the upper jatis. A large majority of the population which was placed in the lower rungs of the caste hierarchy was excluded from the process of knowledge acquisition. This is clearly a power related issue. It is in this background that we need to understand the terms consensus and hegemony in relation to knowledge considered by the larger society as an instrument for evolving, adapting and surviving.

All education is political in nature. Educational policies are shaped by dominant and powerful political and economic factors. Schooling played an important part in Gramsci’s analysis of modern society. The school system was just one part of the system of ideological hegemony in which individuals were socialised into maintaining the status quo. He did not write much in his notebooks on the school system but what he did write was essentially a critique of the increased specialisation occurring within the Italian school system and a plea for a more ‘comprehensive’ form of education. The vocational school was being created in order to help ‘modernise’ Italy. This new system was “advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences but to crystallise them in Chinese complexities” .(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_ capital). Gramsci describes the social character of the traditional schools as determined by the fact that each social group throughout society had its own type of school “intended to perpetuate a specific traditional function, ruling or subordinate”(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_capital) but the answer to the question of modernising education was not to create a whole system of different types of vocational school but “to create a single type of formative school (primary-secondary) which would take the child up to the threshold of his choice of job, forming him during this time as a person capable of thinking, studying and ruling – or controlling those who rule” (Gramsci 1971 p40).

The hegemonic education mode in modern Italy, Gramsci notes was one way in which the mass of the population was kept in its place. In order to transform this situation, the education system had to be confronted and changed dramatically, he observes. He was very well aware of the up mountain climb this would be (Gramsci 1971 p43).

The dominance of the political regime as an external factor is not the only form of hegemony that operates in an educational system. “How education responds to such approaches which determines the priorities of educational loyalties, as education cannot be considered as a mere putty in the hands of dominating interests to be shaped and sized to their requirements, but an entity which requires to be transacted with. This response can be termed as the internal politics of education, which decides the policy in action” (Nagraju, 1998. pp: 131). Nagaraju also notes that “education like other elements in society harbours vested interests. Because of historical developments, the deep -rooted interests control education from within” (ibid). Any obvious opposition in the field of education at any given point of time can be attributed to certain extent to the role of different actors within the education system in distorting the policy mandates. It is at the level of implementing the policy that the education system acts as an agency of the government. Therefore we need to identify the politics of education from within also to understand the operation of hegemony in the education system.

On the other hand White (2014) discussing the freedom that the teaching fraternity have in formulation of curriculum notes that “educational hegemony that utilizes the sorting and classification mechanisms present in education to co-opt the development of educational plans”. He notes that larger society thinks that “education occurs in a political vacuum that does not interfere or does not have any hidden agendas and which is not subject to external pressures that shape educational goals for specific non-educational reasons”. White is of the opinion that “In spite of the dominant conceptualization of curriculum development as a cooperative and shared venture, the process of determining the curriculum at all levels of education is far from transparent and even further from apolitical. Rather, the procedure that leads to the acceptance and eventual publication of a clean and concise document is subject to hostile actions, ill-intentions, and power plays that ultimately result in a document with which few are happy and which promotes the agenda of restricting the curriculum rather than promoting the liberating promise invoked in educational rhetoric” (ibid). White further says:

“The discussions have centred on how the hidden curriculum asserts social control by guiding children into appropriate professional and vocational career paths based on social class and the educational hegemony’s notion of national needs (Apple & King, 1983; Giroux & Penna, 1983; & Kliebard, 1999). White notes that the educational hegemony, or meta-narrative, that guides these practices needs to be looked into” (ibid).

Writing on the American system of education White has observed that:

“The American educational hegemony brought its

considerable structural power to achieve its goal of

recreating education for national resurrection within

economic, national security, and cultural spheres. The

foundations of this educational hegemony were laid, he

notes, more than one hundred years ago with the arrival of

Horace Mann’s centralized and compulsory education.

These early reforms accelerated in the decades following

the American Civil War and turned educational practice

from the age of the classics to the time of technology and

industry. As the nation moved inexorably away from the

Jeffersonian model of small farms and gentlemanly ways

and toward a nation whose self-conceptualization is based

on econometric measurements, the country’s educational

policy was co-opted in the service of industry. Hebert

Kliebard (1999) suggested early mass education,

especially at the secondary level, was given the role of

producing competent workers capable of laboring in the

rapidly developing industrial sector”.

Nagaraju (1998) on the same line writes in his discussion on political economy of education thus:

“Historically, the education system brought in by the colonial powers in the mid-nineteenth century co-opted the upper strata to serve colonial interests. The new political arrangement visualized a democratic society. The new state policies in education required transformations in the structure and function of education that existed in the country. He notes that “the education policy in action distorted the state policy to maintain its loyalty to the power structure constructed during the colonial era”.

In reality there is no easy way in which hegemonic values would give way for egalitarian conditions to exist in the education system.

Textbooks are prescribed by the state, which also determines the nature of content to be conveyed through these text books. Further the evidence we have from Darak’ s work ‘Prescribed Marginalisation (2001) brings forth the fact that the content in text books provided by the state. He writes that:

“Text book material is regarded as the only ‘valid’ knowledge to be imparted to students. The constitution and composition of textbooks are conscious decisions of small groups of people, usually consisting of representatives of state and the ‘state approved’ experts. Although textbooks are products of social compromises and negotiations, it is observed that dominant social classes use textbooks as a tool for protecting their interests and safeguarding their power”. He further quotes Apple (1993), “The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, and some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge… The decision to define some groups’ knowledge as the most legitimate, as official knowledge, while other groups’ knowledge hardly sees the light of day, says something extremely important about who has power in society.”

Ways in which hegemony creeps into education is very much evident in the statement “in post-independence educational policy, modification of content supposedly aimed at indigenization resulted in brahmanisation as a key defining feature of the curriculum” (NCERT, 2005).

Consensus

Educating children as future citizens is the most vital component for any government. Through the institutions of school and college, the governments try to shape and build notions of expected and acceptable citizenship. Industrialised India grew into a society which placed importance on industrial production followed by service providing industries, predominantly those involving information and knowledge as the major force of the economy.

The changing needs of the societies always find expressions in what youngsters are taught through both informal and formal modes of training. This has become all the more pronounced in the ‘global society’ status that we are all being roped into. Globalisation has reaffirmed the hegemonic policies with relation to education. This gets more pronounced in developing countries/ multiple layers of developmental process (Olaniran and Agnello. 2008). The US Department of Education acknowledged the power of education that

emphasised on the acquisition of special skills when it observed:

“Knowledge, particularly technical knowledge, is the

lifeblood of this post-industrial society. It is the basis for

economic growth and development. From it come new jobs,

new products, and still more sophisticated services. The

Presidential Commission on Excellence in Education

acknowledged this when it noted: Knowledge, learning,

information, and skilled intelligence are the new raw

materials of international commerce and are today spreading

throughout the world as vigorously as miracle drugs,

synthetic fertilizer, and blue jeans did earlier…. Learning is the indispensable investment for success in the “information age” we are entering” (U.S.Department of Education, 1983.Pp.7).

In times when markets virtually hold a type of hegemonic control over education competing for gaining over the market becomes the chief goal of education. As Clabaugh & Rozycki (2011) have observed:

“The prosperity of a post-industrial society depends upon the effectiveness of its educational processes, particularly schooling. Successful competition for worldwide markets may depend on the quality of education even more than on natural resources”.

For societies seeking to bring about directed change, “it becomes desirable to have broad support for change ” (Fiske, 1996. pp: 31). This leads to consensus. Consensus means a general agreement about something; an idea or opinion that is shared by all the people in a group. Using Fiske’s example we can understand the role of consensus in education. Fiske, while discussing the decentralisation of education demonstrates the effect of presence and absence of consensus in bringing about change. The examples drawn here as given below are from Chile and Spain. As he says: “Initial school decentralization efforts in Chile were carried out by the military regime in traditional 1top-down fashion with no attempt to solicit the support of parents, educators, or ordinary citizens. Leaders also made no effort to provide incentives to the government employees whose job it would be to carry out the reforms. It was only when a democratic government changed course, restored civil service status to teachers, and struck a deal that the second round of pedagogic reforms was enacted”

“The history of school decentralization also contains many examples of countries where leaders sought to build consensus for reform. Not surprisingly, these happen to be the countries where decentralization was most successful” “As a result of the dramatic political changes, education in Spain was no longer an enterprise that reflected only the views of socioeconomic elite, the Roman Catholic Church, the military and educational bureaucrats. When the Ministry of Education set out in the 1980s to make reforms affecting the regional educational systems, it organized what Hanson (1989, p135) terms a “national debate” that included well publicized open meetings where parents, teachers, students, and interested citizens could make their views known. The result was that, when it came to educational policy, the forces of national unity tended to triumph over the centrifugal forces of regionalism”(Fiske, 1996. pp32-34).

Gramsci added another dimension to the definition of hegemony, i.e. ‘domination by consent’. It seems impossible that anyone would consent to be oppressed, or that we ourselves might be consenting to oppress others. But no matter how outraged we are at the poverty that exists in the richest country in the world, what all most of all of us do to fight it is just to tinker with the system. We know that the rich are getting richer while the poor and the middle class are feeling less and less secure. We know, but we accept. “What can one person do?” we say. “The poor have always been with us.” Its a fatalistic feeling we have, but Gramsci doesn’t blame us for it. “Indeed,” he says, “fatalism is nothing other than the clothing worn by real and active will when in a weak position” (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfox/gramsci.html).

As a society’s heterogeneity increases so does the problem in generating consensus. Hegemony to a great extent depends on consensus. Hegemony is perpetuated because it is everywhere, but unspoken and implicit. People are very rarely aware that they are being manipulated. As Apple (1996) reminds us, hegemonies are co- constructed entities whose ability to guide and control society is not based on coercion, but rather on consent from the oppressed. By creating “an ideological umbrella under which different groups who usually might not totally agree with each other can stand” (Apple, 1996, p. 15), hegemonies are reinforced. White is of the opinion that “hegemonies succeed in forging consensus where more overtly coercive forms of repression fail. In the case of the educational hegemony, the system is constructed of neo-conservatives, neo- liberals, cultural elite, and a public fearful of loss of place in an ever changing world order that are bound in an uneasy, yet powerful alliance. To these groups, whether left or right of canter, the primary culprit of the decline of American values, American business, and the American way of life is an educational system that fails miserably to protect the American dream by promoting a vision of education that is besot by moral relativism and cultural ambiguity” (White. 2014. p92).

Marginalisation

Educational systems echo the values and practices of the larger society. If the larger society is sexist, racist and based on economic, cultural and historical inequalities, it is unrealistic to expect educational systems to be devoid of these inequalities. Educational systems, after all, are the formal institutionalised, systematised vehicles through which the larger society socialises youth to the values held by the dominant or ruling group (Lewis. 1997).

Training imparted within the education system, very often very subtly prepares the recipient for unconditional acceptance of values of dominant groups as legitimate knowledge. This is disadvantageous to the traditionally marginalised or oppressed sections of society comprising of women, SCs and OBCs, adivasis or the tribal communities, religious minorities. It is in this background that Darak (2012) looks into the textbooks from Maharashtra and documents series of dominant cultural values having political sanctions. Taking different examples from different text books, Darak shows how hegemony marginalises. He talks of marginalisation of women by citing examples of their depiction in stereotypical roles which systematically reinforces in the minds of the young the secondary citizen position to women. He writes that women are generally portrayed as carriers and reproducers of tradition. The emphasis is almost always on their child rearing responsibilities. “Many of the textbooks equate woman to a mother, placing them as workers only in kitchen irrespective of the time period contextualized and discussed. In an increasingly capitalist economy like India, ‘market’ forces always tend to subjugate woman’s identity and agency through engineered entertainment and advertisements. Balbharati textbooks, instead of countering these forces, tend to cement the socially prevailing biases regarding division of labour, socially polarized roles of men and women”(www.india-seminar.com/2012/638.html).

Darak notes that girls are socialised to accept gender stereotypes both in the family and school. Text books most often uphold these gender stereotypes because they project behaviour patterns that do not challenge established notions and practices of gendered behaviour. He very rightly observes that “for boys, textbooks of this type miss out on an opportunity of creating gender sensitivity in an otherwise hostile atmosphere. As boys grow up, textual knowledge provides them a valid and strong support to their socially inherited and internalized patriarchal behaviour” (for a detailed demonstration of how text books perpetuate inequality in the form of language used and reinforcement of the values of the dominant society refer to Darak’s article).

A cook serves the free mid-day meal in a government-run primary school in a village in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. © 2013 Adnan Abidi/REUTERS . Paper plates are being used to serve to children from lower castes.

Source: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/22/india-marginalized-children-denied-education

A critical analysis of textbooks through multiple lenses with reference to gender, caste religion, rural and poor “ illustrates how and why textbooks are argued to be vehicles propagating the ideology of the dominant groups and ruling classes” (Darak 2001).

There has been a recent shift in the attitude of at least a few textbooks because we see a representation being given to subaltern writers. But interestingly the textbook analysis put forward by Darak shows that there is a difference in the language used by dalit writers and those of the higher castes and differential treatment of these writers. This also is the idea that Ilaiah holds. He is of the view that Indian academia has always turned a blind eye to the question of caste (Ilaiah, 2010). He notes that the exercises at the end of the lesson ask the students to identify the words in local dialect and give the words in “standard Marathi”. He also draws our attention to the fact that the exercises at the end of the lessons written by dominant jatis have asked the students to appreciate the beauty of the language used. Darak writes thus:

“It is observed that language acts as the prime tool for marginalizing dalits, nomads, adivasis and other socially marginalized groups. The notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’ of language have a direct role in validating the language of the upper caste and in denying any status to languages of the lower castes. An interesting example of this tendency is found in the Marathi first language textbook for class eight. A story in the book titled Kasarat by Darasaheb Morey, a dalit author, portrays hardships in the lives of dombaris (a denotified nomadic tribe). An exercise given at the end of the lesson asks students to find words and sentences in the dialect (boli bhasha) used by the writer and rewrite them in “standard Marathi” (pramaan bhasha) language. Kasarat is followed by a couple of other stories written by Vidyadhar Gokhale and Godavari Parulekar, both upper caste writers. These lessons are followed by an exercise asking students to appreciate the linguistic beauty of sentences selected from the lessons. As Darak opines “it appears that for the textbook, the language of the upper Jatis implies a sort of aesthetic and linguistic pleasure, while the language of dalits, bereft as it is of any possibility of rendering any aesthetic pleasure, requires instead a sort of purification at the linguistic level. It is also interesting to note that for textbooks of Balbharati, using Sanskrit or sanskritised words ‘purifies’ Marathi language, while using words from languages of marginalized people ‘pollutes’ them” (Darak,2012)

If there is a will to reform the education system to build the capabilities of our young to identify and discuss the different faces of social marginalisation, it would create an environment for challenging hegemonies as well as ending marginalisation. What the young require to be exposed to are alternate role models.

Conclusion

In all the periods of human history we get to see a pattern of hierarchy. In each of these patterns there is the dominance of the ideologies of some over the large masses, a process guided and controlled through education.

The modern education system has, fortunately, emerged as a more rational and just system when compared to its earlier version. Nonetheless, use of power and opportunity to influence the masses to accept a predetermined agenda is an activity that continues to happen. Cultural hegemony continues to hold the education system in its sway and tries to influence the thoughts and actions of the stakeholders through textbooks and teaching strategies. Government policies often mirror the ideologies of the ‘dominant groups ’ who are situated in positions of power. The voices of the marginalised are barely reflected in many educational messages and practices. Unless we make a conscious effort to question and protest hegemony in our education system and encourage ‘dissent’, education simply becomes a tool in the hands of the ‘powerful’ to force consensus and reinforce ‘marginalisation’.

you can view video on Consensus, hegemony and marginalisation

References

Apple, M. “Cultural Politics and Education.” New York: Teachers College Press 1996. http://www.teacherplus.org/comment/hegemony-in-the-education-system
Bell, Daniel. The Coming of Post-industrial Society. New York: Basic Books, 1973, as quoted in Gary K. Clabaugh & Edward G. Rozycki. “Politics, Consensus & Educational Reform”, 2011, http://www.newfoundations.com/index.html
Burke, B. ‘Antonio Gramsci, Schooling and Education’, the Encyclopaedia of Informal Education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm. © Barry Burke 1999, 2005.
Darak, Kishore . “ Prescribed Marginalisation”. 2012. http://www.india-seminar.com/2012/638.htm
Eagleton, Terry. Ideology: An Introduction, London: Verso. 1991. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfox/gramsci.html
Gramsci. Antonio. Selections from The Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. NY: International Publishers. 1995. p. 337
Hanson, Mark E. “Education, Administrative Development and Democracy in Spain.” International Journal of Educational Development 9, no.2. 1989:127-38.
Human Rights Watch. India: Marginalized Children Denied Education. April 22, 2014. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/04/22/india-marginalized-children-denied-education
Ilaiah, Kancha. The Weapon of the Other. New Delhi. Pearson Education. 2010.
Lewis, Shelby F. “Africana Feminism an Alternative Paradigm for Black Women in the Academy.” in, Black Women in Academy: Promises and Perils, edited by Lois Benjamin. Florida University Press. 1997 p:41- 52.
Nagaraju. C.S. “Political Economy of Education Development: Karnataka in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” Journal of Social and Economic Development 1. no.1. Jan-June 1998.p 128-152.
Nathan. “Teaching Hegemony” September 27, 2010. http://thesocietypages.org/sociologysource/2010/09/27/teaching-hegemony/
NCERT. National Focus Group Position Paper on “Problems of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Children”. New Delhi. NCERT. 2005.
Pathak, Avijit. Social Implications of Schooling: Knowledge, Pedagogy and Consciousness. New Delhi. Rainbow. 2001.
U.S. Department of Education, National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform Washington, DC: 1983p. 7.
White. William L. “Curriculum, Marginalisation, and the Professoriate.” Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education 5, no.3 2014:91-101.
White John Wesley, Associate Professor at University of North Florida. Published on Nov 10, 2014. in SlideShare [accessed on 1.10.2015] http://www.slideshare.net/ncsailor1967/hegemony-41355604?related=1
www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/621-2011/lecture%2025%20–%20hegemony%20and%20legitimation%20- %202011.pdf
www.butterflyfields.com
https://youtu.be/EOf6zc3Mcus Consensus, Hegemony & Marginalisation Key Words: Hegemony, Consensus, Marginalisation, Globalisation, Economy, Curriculum Building, Deprivation, Gramsci.