Gramsci the Libertarian?

I don't think I would take this little article as the best or last word about Antonio Gramsci's thoughts on education, though they are rather provocative. Gramsci was a noted Italian Communist in the 1910s and 20s, jailed and eventually executed by Mussolini's Fascists. His prison notebooks gained international acclaim in the 1970s, and they continue to inspire social theorists up to the present day. It is interesting to note Gramsci's seeming appreciation that schools in nationalist Italy (one would guess Fascist Italy only more so) were too centralized, and too much under the control of the state. How neat, also, to see his ideas line up with the notably Libertarian rhetoric in Richard Neal's book, Escape to Learning.

It is obviously a step too far to see Gramsci and Neal on the same political page, or promoting anything like the same pedagogy. Notwithstanding the obvious anachronism of the comparison, it is nonetheless striking to see their broad agreement on local schools and raising individual consciences. Likewise with their shared, strident-yet-thoughtful opposition to their respective (and remarkably similar) "Educational Establishment" regimes. They even appear to agree that the primary-secondary school system imprisons students' minds in an ideology that supports a stable status quo, rather than being truly generative of new ideas and societal progress--what Gramsci would identify as the seeds of revolution.

Gramsci and Neal broadly agree on the need for students, parents, and the larger society to be aware of shortcomings in government, the state, and the education system. Both call for activism of some sort: Neal for market-based rejection of the state monopoly, Gramsci (and his Communist-leaning contemporaries even more so) for violent revolution against the ruling classes. As with Kant in my previous post (albeit, again, anachronistically), I am left with the impression that Gramsci and Neal would like to see education most in the hands of teachers, students and their parents, with support from the state, perhaps, but as free as possible from its control.