Dave Hill (Professor)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dave Hill (born 10 October 1945) is Professor of Educational Policy at the University of Northampton and a socialist activist and writer in the United Kingdom. His working-class background and consciousness fed in to his left-wing politics.

Contents 1 Family and early life 2 Politics and photo-journalism 3 Teaching 4 Educational activism 5 Marxist educational theory 6 Publications 7 External links 8 References

[edit] Family and early life

He was brought up in a working class family from the East End of London. His mother, a dressmaker, was from Spitalfields and his father, a cabinet maker and carpenter, from Hackney. His twin brother, John, also became a carpenter, (the fourth generation of carpenters in the family). His older brother, Roger, was also a carpenter for some years then latterly, a postman. He is also a talented artist.

At the age of 11 the twin brothers took the selective Eleven Plus exam. Dave became the first in his family to pass the exam, and went to a grammar school, unlike his brothers, who went to secondary modern schools ^[1]. This left him with a passionate hatred of selective schooling and of inequalities in education and society, as did his experiences as one of a minority of working class students at grammar school and at University in the 1960s. By then his parents had divorced, and the family lived in some poverty, with his mother leaving home at seven in the morning to work in a clothing factory, returning home at six in the evening. Both Dave Hill’s brothers left to work in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs at the age of 15. Dave Hill stayed on at school and received welfare benefits such as clothing coupons, free school meals, and the newly instituted grants for children from poor families to stay on at school after the age of 16. His brothers gave him pocket money.

He joined the Labour Party on his sixteenth birthday in 1961, and at that age became Chair of Brighton Young Socialists. The Labour Party then was a more socialist party than it has become under New Labour since Tony Blair replaced John Smith as Leader in 1994. In 1961, while a student at Westlain Grammar School, Brighton, he organised and led the first of many demonstrations and protests- a protest against the United States naval blockade of Cuba - `The Cuba Missile Crisis’.

Dave Hill studied Politics and Modern History at Manchester University and subsequently gained Masters’ degrees in Politics, and in Education, at Sussex University, and a PhD (a Marxist Analsysis of Education Policy in Britain 1979–2002) at the London University Institute of Education, where his supervisor was Geoff Whitty.

[edit] Politics and photo-journalism

He contested general elections as Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Brighton Pavilion Constituency in British parliamentary elections in 1979 and 1987, being defeated both times by Julian Amery, the Conservative Member of Parliament. His results were particularly good and he was termed `charismatic’ by the local Sussex newspaper, The Evening Argus which also noted "as a vote winner, Dave Hill was almost unrivalled, and during the 1979 local elections he scored the highest vote ever recorded for a Labour candidate in Brighton" ^[2].

While a Labour Party member, he was a Labour East Sussex County Councillor (1879–1989), and, in the mid- 1980s, Labour Group Leader on East Sussex County Council, where the Labour Group was one of the last in England to support a `deficit budget’ strategy, supported by `Militant’ led council in Liverpool. As Labour Group Leader he organized and led the largest peacetime political demonstration in the history of Lewes, the East Sussex county town- a march and rally of 3,000 protesters as part of the `Campaign Against the Cuts’. This was at the time of the Thatcher Conservative government’s cuts in public spending and restrictions on local government.

He was also a Brighton Borough Councillor (1975–76, 1979–83). During the 1970s and 1980s he led a number of campaigns, including for funding for the Battered Wives' Refuge, for the local Anti-Nazi League, for expansion of free state Nursery Education. He was southern regional (higher education) Chair for NATFHE, the University Lecturers Union for a time, and a long-time local official of his union branch, leading, in 1990, an unofficial walk-out by academic and secretarial support staff in support of ambulance workers who were on strike.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s he was a part-time photo-journalist for some of the Left Press in Britain, covering elections in Portugal, Spain and France for New Socialist, Labour Weekly and Tribune.

Having started in the Labour Party as a working class left social democrat, he became, in the 1970s a local leader in Brighton of the faction that opposed Militant, then the dominant force in Brighton Labour Party politics. As such, he was, in the 1970s and 1980s, paraded by the right-wing media as a `Labour moderate’. However, the Thatcher years radicalized him, as did the increasingly rightward drift in the local and national Labour Party, which included expulsions of Militant supporters and other leftists. He opposed these expulsions. On announcing he was leaving Labour electoral politics in 1988, the local newspaper had the headline, "Hero of the Left to Quit Politics" ^[3].

He was influenced by the ideas of Marxist Trotskyite ideas of the Militant Tendency (later, The Socialist Party) (see his obituary of Ted Grant, leader of Militant, online at www.ieps.org.uk). Although opposed to some of their methods (such as `resolutionitis’, and sectarianism) he became a Marxist in the early 1980s. His then wife, Marilyn Hill, was, in the mid-1970s, secretary of Brighton Labour Party, a party of 2,000 members at that time, and also a Brighton Labour Councillor, had been close to Militant through the internecine Labour struggles of the 1970s and 1980s. She, and many other socialists, left the Labour Party in various tranches as the leadership of Tony Blair was adopting more and more neoliberalism and pro-USA international policies.

Finally after forty four years of active membership (see `Leaving Labour after 44 years ^[4] in 2005, Dave Hill left the Labour Party and joined joined the International Socialist Group and RESPECT- The Unity Coalition.

[edit] Teaching

Dave Hill is a Marxist educator. He taught initially at Stockwell Manor Comprehensive School in the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) between 1967 and 1969, where he was `a flying picket’ in the Inner London Teachers’ Association (National Union of Teachers) strikes of the late 1960s, then at Forest Girls’ (Secondary) School in Horsham, as Acting Head of Remedial (sic) Department. From 1972 he taught in higher education, though for much of the 1970s and through the 1980s this was part-time, as he worked/ had paid leave as trade union representative and an elected councillor. He taught at Bognor College of Education which became Chichester Institute of Higher Education. For a time, arguably barred from teaching student teachers because of his left-wing politics, he taught prisoners, adult education tutors, youth workers, and in Thorney Island Refugee Camp for Vietnamese Boat people. After subsequently developing and leading for five years the Crawley Bachelor of Education Degree for Mature and non-standard entry students, described as a Marxist course, he was dismissed through redundancy (see `Brief Autobiography of a Bolshie Dismissed’ ^[5]. He then taught in London’s East End, at Tower Hamlet’s College, before moving to the University of Northampton, where he is currently Professor of Education Policy.

[edit] Educational activism

In 1989 he set up the independent left research unit, the Institute for Education Policy Studies, where, with Mike Cole, he set up the Hillcole Group of Radical Left Educators, also in 1989. At a time of right-wing success during the Thatcher years, this group of writers, teachers and academics helped sustain Marxist and socialist educational analysis and policy formulation in Britain, through its publications of two books and thirteen booklets, published by Tufnell Press between 1990 and 2002. Members of the Hillcole Group of Radical Left Educators included Stephen J. Ball, Gaby Weiner and Meg Maguire, until the mid-1990s, and (apart from Dave Hill and Mike Cole), Glenn Rikowski, Pat Ainley, Rosalyn George, John Clay, Janet Holland, Caroline Benn, Imelda Gardiner, Shane Blackman. In the late nineties, the Group also included Martin Allen and Richard Hatcher, two leading activists in the Socialist Teachers' Alliance (see `The Hillcole Group’ ^[6] and ^[7]).

Meetings were held at he London University Institute of Education, South Bank University, and, when Caroline Benn's health was declining, at the Caroline and Tony Benn house in Holland Park, London, where Tony Benn would bring in the tea.

He is the founder of the Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies a free online refereed international journal, that he co-edits with Peter McLaren. Since its foundation in March 2003 it has become, arguably, the widest circulation English language online refereed education policy journal. He is also series editor for Routledge for two series of academic books: Neoliberalism and Education, and Education and Marxism. He has co-written or co-edited a number of books and articles with Mike Cole, Glenn Rikowski and Peter McLaren, and, more recently, with Deb Kelsh and Sheila Macrine, and currently Chairs the Marxist Analysis of Schools and Society (MASSES) Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

Dave Hill lectures worldwide to academic, trade union and activist groups and conferences on the politics of education, and locations of his speaking engagements have included Taiwan, Australia ^[8] and ^[9], Finland, England, Portugal, Israel, Canada, India, Éire, Greece, South Africa, Germany, France and the USA.

[edit] Marxist educational theory

In his writing Dave Hill writes from a classical Marxist perspective, focusing on issues of social class ^[10], neoliberalism ^[11], socialist education ^[12], and Marxist critiques of New Labour policy on schooling and teacher education ^[13].

He is a member of attends annually the Rouge Forum conference of Marxist teachers in the USA, and works closely with the revolutionary critical pedagogy movement associated with Peter McLaren. Together with Mike Cole and Glenn Rikowski, Hill has been described as part of the renaissance of British Marxist educational theory.

[edit] Publications

• Hill, D., McLaren, P., Cole, M. and Rikowski, G. (Eds.) (2002) Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory. Lanham, MD, USA:Lexington Books. (American Education Studies Association (AESA) Critics Choice Award-Winner.
• Hill, D. and Cole, M. (Eds.) (2001) Schooling and Equality: Fact, Concept and Policy. London: Kogan Page.
• Cole, M., Hill, D., McLaren, P. and Rikowski, G. (2001) Red Chalk: On Schooling, Capitalism and Politics) Brighton:Institute for Education Policy Studies.
• Hill, D. (1999) New Labour and Education: Policy, Ideology and the Third Way. London: Tufnell Press.
• Hill, D. and Cole, M. (1997) Promoting Equality in Secondary Schools. London: Cassell.
• Hillcole Group(1997) Rethinking Education and Democracy:a Socialist Alternative for the Twenty-First Century, London: Tufnell Press
• Cole, M., Hill, D. and Shan, S. (1997) Promoting Equality in Primary Schools. London: Cassell

Forthcoming

• Hill, D. and Kumar, R. (Eds.) (2008) Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences. New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D. (ed.) (2008) Contesting Neoliberal Education: Public Resistance and Collective Advance. London: New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D. and Rosskam, E. (Eds.) (2008) The Developing World and State Education: Neoliberal Depredation and Egalitarian Alternatives. New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D. (ed.) (2008) The Rich World and the Impoverishment of Education: Diminishing Democracy, Equity and Workers’ Rights. New York: Routledge.
• Hill, D., Macrine, S., and McLaren, P. (Eds.) (2008) Organizing Pedagogy: Educating for Social Justice Within and Beyond Global Neo-liberalism. London: Palgrave Macmillan
• Hill, D., Kelsh, D., and Macrine, S. (Eds.) (2008) Teaching Class: Knowledge, Pedagogy, Subjectivity. London: Routledge
• Hill, D., Macrine, S., and McLaren, P. (Eds.) (2008) Critical Pedagogy: Theory and Praxis. London: Routledge
• Hill, D., Gabbard, D. and Macrine, S. (Eds.) (2008) Neo-liberalism, Education and the Politics of Inequality. London: Routledge.
• Robertson, L. & Hill, D. (Eds). (2008) Promoting Equality in Elementary/Primary Schools. London: Continuum.

[edit] External links

• Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies [1]
• The Institute for Education Policy Studies [2]
• The Rouge Forum [3]
• Leaving Labour after 44 years [4]
• Brief Autobiography of a Bolshie Dismissed’ [5]
• International Socialist group [6]
• The Great Education Debate: How 11-plus divided twin brothers with same IQ’ [7]
• The Hillcole Group [8]
• Socialist Educatorsand Socialist Education, Socialist Outlook [9]

Some recent online articles and reports by Dave Hill

• Hill, D. (2003) Global Neo-Liberalism, the Deformation of Education and Resistance, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 1 (1) [10]
• Hill, D. (2004) Books, Banks and Bullets: Controlling our minds - the global project of Imperialistic and militaristic neo-liberalism and its effect on education policy. Policy Futures in Education, 2, 3–4 (Theme: Marxist Futures in Education). [11]
• Hill, D. (2004) O Neoliberalismo Global, a Resistência e a Deformação da Educação, Curriculo sem Frontieras 3, 3 (Brazil) 2004) [12]
• Hill, D. (2004) Educational perversion and global neo-liberalism: a Marxist critique Cultural Logic: an electronic journal of Marxist Theory and Practice. [13]
• Hill, D. (2006) Education Services Liberalization. In E. Rosskam (ed.) Winners or Losers? Liberalizing public services. Geneva: ILO Available free from the ILO at http://secsoc@ilo.org [14]
• Hill, D. (2006) Class, Capital and Education in this Neoliberal/ Neoconservative Period. Information for Social Change, No. 23. Online at http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/B1%20Dave%20Hill.pdf
• Kelsh, D. and Hill, D. (2006) The Culturalization of Class and the Occluding of Class Consciousness: The Knowledge Industry in/of Education. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 4 (1). http://www.jceps.com/index.php?pageID=article&articleID=59
• Greaves, N., Hill, D. and Maisuria, A. (2007) Embourgeoisment, Immiseration, Commodification - Marxism Revisited: a Critique of Education in Capitalist Systems. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 5(1). [15]
• Hill, D. (2007) Critical Teacher Education, New Labour in Britain, and the Global Project of Neoliberal Capital. Policy Futures, 5 (2). [16]
• Socialist Educators and Socialist Education, Socialist Outlook [17]

[edit] References