{"id":2584,"date":"2013-03-25T10:36:35","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T09:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2584"},"modified":"2013-03-25T10:36:57","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T09:36:57","slug":"2584","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2584","title":{"rendered":"Marxist bias?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>History, Marx argued repeats itself, \u2018first as tragedy, then as farce\u2019. At the OU there has been a rerun of the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=20\" > Marxist bias<\/a> stories. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=46\" >In the 1980s <\/a>it was Conservative Ministers who claimed to have found Marxists at the OU. Today it is Education Secretary Michael Gove. One hundred academics, including one associated with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/voices\/letters\/letters-full-signature-list-8541217.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.independent.co.uk');\">OU<\/a>,\u00a0 signed an open <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/voices\/letters\/letters-gove-will-bury-pupils-in-facts-and-rules-8540741.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.independent.co.uk');\">letter <\/a>to Gove.\u00a0 The authors suggested that Mr Gove&#8217;s ideas could \u2018severely erode educational standards\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0The Minister responded by categorising them as Marxists. He also suggested that those who stress the importance of communities of practice, a concept which is popular within the OU, were <a href=\" http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/debate\/article-2298146\/I-refuse-surrender-Marxist-teachers-hell-bent-destroying-schools-Education-Secretary-berates-new-enemies-promise-opposing-plans.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.dailymail.co.uk');\">Marxist<\/a>. He suggested a new way of categorising academics, explaining, \u2018There is good academia and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/education\/educationnews\/9947106\/Michael-Gove-attacks-prejudice-of-university-education-professors.html\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/www.telegraph.co.uk');\">bad academia\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Mr Gove went on to propose that there is a wider left-wing conspiracy. Although the OU has not been mentioned specifically it seems that there is a group of people who &#8216;in and around our universities who praised each other\u2019s research, sat on committees that drafted politically correct curricula, drew gifted young teachers away from their vocation and instead directed them towards ideologically driven theory &#8230; [The Group]\u00a0operate by stealth, using its influence to control the quangos and committees which shaped policy.&#8217; David Cameron has proposed that state education and its teachers are a \u201cleft-wing establishment\u2019. It is not clear that such categorisations support the improvement of understandings and knowledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>History, Marx argued repeats itself, \u2018first as tragedy, then as farce\u2019. At the OU there has been a rerun of the Marxist bias stories. In the 1980s it was Conservative Ministers who claimed to have found Marxists at the OU. Today it is Education Secretary Michael Gove. One hundred academics, including one associated with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-the-ou","category-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2586,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2584\/revisions\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}