ANTONIO GRAMSCI recognised that schools serve to reinforce the dominant ideas, or hegemony, of the ruling class. Paulo Freire saw the potential for education to act as a liberating force. Today, our schools fulfil both of these contradictory roles, and it is the responsibility of the class-conscious educator to ensure that critical values are inculcated in pupils, giving them the freedom to identify and confront oppression wherever they see it in society.

At a time of increasing class tensions, and continuing pressure being put upon schools and educators in accordance with the neoliberal ideology of our government, it is more important than ever for schools to be places where hegemony is not reinforced, but challenged. Education for Tomorrow has been refounded for all those who share our values of criticality and class consciousness. We do not represent any political party, but we are firmly rooted in working-class politics, bringing attention to workers’ struggles and emancipatory pedagogy.

The first issue of the new Education for Tomorrow covers a range of radical pedagogies. There is a critique of the “knowledge curriculum,” and studies of the work of Freire, Guevara, Vygotsky and Flecha. Neurobiology and the myth of measurable intelligence are tackled, as are regional analyses of British education and a comparative piece on the Cuban education system.