Alternative Education is a False Alternative

This article presents a political critique of Alternative Education. The main thesis is that, despite its emancipatory semblance, Alternative Education reproduces that which it rallies against since it is based on erroneous principles. First, Alternative Education is grounded in a belief in a good human essence or nature that is prior to social relations. Second, this leads its proponents to substitute the idea of education as a dialogical process, which necessarily implies the exertion of influence, with a non-directive accompanying that ostensibly refuses influence as such but, in fact, hides the way in which it actually exerts influence. The third mistake derives from the second one: the belief that the retreat of the adults/teachers immediately leads to the flourishing of more free and harmonious relations between students. On the contrary, this is a form of abandonment the asserted 'anti-authoritarianism' of which conceals the fact that students are left unarmed in the face of the objective pressures exerted by the environment. Fourth, the article analyzes the romantic outlook that impregnates alternative pedagogies, crystallized in their cult of the I, their insistence on the need to 'return to nature', and their anti-intellectualism. Fifth, the article disproves a further principle of alternative education: their positing of education as the engine of social transformation. Sixth, it is argued that the utopianism which characterizes the most radical representatives of alternative education leads them to abandon the struggle against capitalist social forms. This struggle is substituted by a politically impotentattempt to build ideal projects beyond capitalism. Seventh, the article highlights the idealism that underlies the project of isolating children from social conflicts in order to enhance their happiness. Finally, the article concludes by mounting a defense of critique and explaining the mistakes of those who accept the social-democratic support of State education as the only alternative to false alternatives.