Marxism and Education: International

Perspectives on Theory and Action

Lotar Rasinski
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Marxism and Education

Marxism and Education offers contemporary Marxist analyses of recent and

current education policy, and develops Marxist-based practices of resistance
from a series of national and international perspectives. The first chapters of
the book identify and critique pressure points, impacts of, and developments in
capitalism and education, as these pertain to education policy, teacher education,
and assessment. In the second half of the book, chapter authors develop Marxist
praxis, critical education practices, and resistance against the intensification of
neoliberalism and authoritarian conservatism. With contributions from leading,
globally-recognised Marxist theoreticians, this book addresses the impacts and
developments of neoliberal and authoritarian-conservative education policies
across the UK, US, Greece, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary.

Lotar Rasiński is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lower

Silesia in Wroclaw Poland.

Dave Hill is Visiting Professor at the Social Policy Research Centre at Middlesex
University, England, and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Greece, and is Emeritus Professor of Education Research at Anglia Ruskin
University, England

Kostas Skordoulis is Professor of Epistemology of Science at the Faculty of

Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
Routledge Studies in Education, Neoliberalism, and Marxism
Series editor:
Dave Hill
Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford and Cambridge, England

9 Female Students and Cultures of Violence in Cities

Edited by Julia Hall

10 Neoliberal Education Reform

Gendered Notions in Global and Local Contexts
By Sarah A. Robert

11 Curriculum Epistemicide
Towards An Itinerant Curriculum Theory
By João M. Paraskeva

12 Alternatives to Privatizing Public Education and Curriculum:

Festschrift in Honor of Dale D. Johnson
Edited by Daniel Ness & Stephen J. Farenga

13 The Neoliberal Agenda and the Student Debt Crisis in U. S.

Higher Education: Voices of Students and Faculty
Edited by Nicholas D. Hartlep, Lucille L. T. Eckrich, and
Brandon O. Hensley

14 Ethnography of a Neoliberal School: Building Cultures of Success

By Garth Stahl

15 Film as a Radical Pedagogical Tool

By Deirdre O’Neill

16 Marxism and Education

International Perspectives on Theory and Action
Edited by Lotar Rasiński, Dave Hill, and Kostas Skordoulis

17 Class Consciousness and Education in Sweden

A Marxist Analysis for Revolutionary Strategy in a Social Democracy
By Alpesh Maisura

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/

Routledge-Studies-in-Education-Neoliberalism-and-Marxism/book-series/RSEN
Marxism and Education
International Perspectives on
Theory and Action

Edited by Lotar Rasiński, Dave Hill,

and Kostas Skordoulis
First published 2018
by Routledge
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Contents

Author Biographies vii

1 Introduction 1
DAVE HILL, KOSTAS SKORDOULIS, AND LOTAR RASIŃSKI

2 European Education Policy and Critical Education 9

GEORGE GROLLIOS

3 The Schooling of Teachers in England: Rescuing Pedagogy 20

GAIL EDWARDS

4 Transformation in the Teaching Profession in Turkey: From

Socialist-Idealist Teacher to Exam-Oriented Technician 35
AHMET YILDIZ

5 Education, Secularism, and Secular Education in Turkey 49

UNAL OZMEN

6 Assessing the Effects of the Economic Crisis on Public Education

in Greece 60
THEOPOULA-POLINA CHRYSOCHOU

7 The Endpoint of Expectation From Education, the Starting

Point of Struggle: A Critical Approach to White-Collar
Unemployment 77
AYGULEN KAYAHAN KARAKUL

8 The Position of an Educational Researcher in a Semi-Peripheral

Region: Critical Autoethnography of an Academic Subject in
Hungary 89
GYÖRGY MÉSZÁROS
vi Contents
9 Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy and the Struggle Against
Capital Today 101
PETER MCLAREN AND DEREK R. FORD

10 Considerations on a Marxist Pedagogy of Science 117

KOSTAS SKORDOULIS

11 “A Picture Held Us Captive. . . .” Marx, Wittgenstein and the

“Paradox of Ideology” 133
LOTAR RASIŃSKI

12 Empowerment in Education—A New Logic of Emancipation or

a New Logic of Power? 144
AGNIESZKA DZIEMIANOWICZ-BĄK

13 Marxist Education Against Capitalism in Neoliberal/

Neoconservative Times 160
DAVE HILL

Name Index 183

Subject Index 187
Author Biographies

The Editors

Lotar Rasiński received his doctoral degree in Philosophy in 2002 at the Univer-
sity of Wroclaw, Poland, where he was also awarded his habilitation in 2013. He
is the Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lower Silesia in
Wroclaw, Poland where he is also the Director of the University of Lower Silesia
Academic Press. He held post-doctoral fellowships at the New School for Social
Research in New York and the University of California at Berkeley. For his latest
book, In the Footsteps of Marx and Wittgenstein: Social Criticism without Criti-
cal Theory (2012, in Polish), Rasiński received the prestigious Award of the Prime
Minister of Poland (2014). As the editor of the series, Library of Contemporary
Social Thought at the ULS Academic Press, he has published Polish translations
of renowned authors, such as E. Laclau, M. Nussbaum, P. Sloderdijk, U. Beck,
and G. Deleuze. In his research and numerous publications he focuses on politi-
cal philosophy, theory of discourse, social criticism, and Marxist philosophy.
His books include Discourse and Power. Exploring Political Agonism (2010, in
Polish), Language, Discourse, Society. Linguistic Turn in Social Philosophy (ed.,
2009, in Polish) and Ludwig Wittgenstein—Contexts and Confrontations (eds. with
P. Dehnel, 2011, in Polish).
Dave Hill is Emeritus Professor of Education Research at Anglia Ruskin Univer-
sity, England and Visiting Professor at the Social Policy Research Centre at
Middlesex University, London, and at National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens. He chief edits the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, www.
jceps.com, a free, online, peer-refereed international journal (also available in
print) which has been downloaded more than a million times since he founded
it in 2003. He co-founded the Hillcole Group of Radical Left Educators in Eng-
land and chaired it 1989–2001. He has 25 books published and in-press, and
over a hundred chapters and academic articles. Dave is a Marxist academic and
political and trade union activist. His academic work focuses on issues of neo-
liberalism, neoconservatism, capitalism, class, ‘race’, resistance, and social-
ist/Marxist education/education for equality. Many of his papers are online at
www.ieps.org.uk/publications/online-papers-dave-hill/. He is the Director of
viii Author Biographies
the Institute for Education Policy Studies (www.ieps.org.uk) which publishes
JCEPs and Marxist/radical left books.
As a Marxist political activist, he has fought 13 elections at local, national,
and European levels and been an elected regional trade union leader. In
terms of Direct Action, he has recently been tear-gassed while on Left dem-
onstrations in Ankara and in Athens. He lectures worldwide to academic and
socialist activist/trade union groups and co-organises, with Kostas Skordou-
lis, the annual ICCE conference (International Conference on Critical Edu-
cation). The Sixth (2016) conference was at Middlesex University, London,
in August 2016. The Seventh (2017) conference was 28 June-2 July 2017
at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, website, icce-vii.
weebly.com.
Kostas Skordoulis is Professor of Epistemology of Science at the Faculty of
Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He has
studied Physics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK and has a Ph.D. in
Quantum Optics from NHRF (Greece). He has worked as a Visiting Researcher
at the Universities of Oxford (UK), Jena (Germany) and Groningen (Nether-
lands) holding Scholarships from DAAD (Germany) and NWO (Netherlands).
He has been the Secretary of the Teaching Commission of the International
Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Member of the Council of the
European Society for History of Science. He is currently an, Effective Member
of the International Academy of History of Science.
He is co-Editor of Almagest: International Journal for the History of Sci-
entific Ideas (Brepols, Belgium) and member of the Editorial Boards of the
journals, Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies (IEPS, UK), Interna-
tional Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (CG Publishers, USA),
Green Theory and Praxis (ICAS, USA), Advances in Historical Studies (SRP,
USA) and Science & Education (Springer/2001–15). He is also co-editor of the
Newsletter for the History of Science in Southeastern Europe and Editor of the
Journal Kritiki: Critical Science & Education. He has published extensively
on issues of History of Science, Science Education, and Socio-Scientific Issues
with a critical perspective.

The Contributors

Polina Chrysochou is a final-year Doctoral researcher (studentship holder) at

Anglia Ruskin University, UK, an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education
Academy and an Associate Lecturer in the Department of Education. She stud-
ied Physics at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and gained a Mas-
ter’s degree in Education from the National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens, Greece, where she has taught as an Academic Tutor and Lab Instruc-
tor. She was a visiting scholar in the Department of Philosophy, University of
Nantes, France in 2012.
 Author Biographies ix
She was Co-Convenor of Critical Education and Justice (CEJ) research semi-
nar series, and is Assistant Editor of the Journal for Critical Education Policy
Studies (JCEPS) and Member of the Editorial Board of International Book Series,
Marxist and Socialist Studies in Education. She is also Member of the Teaching
Commission of the Division of History of Science and Technology of the Inter-
national Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Member of the Hellenic
Society of History, Philosophy and Didactics of Science.
She has been a member of the organising committee of International and
Panhellenic Conferences, presented at various peer-reviewed international
conferences and she has been involved in publishing as single author, co-
author and co-editor (book chapters and papers in peer-reviewed journal and
conference proceedings).
Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk has a background in education and philoso-
phy, which she has studied at University of Wrocław, Poland. She works
as a research assistant at Mid-Term Analysis Unit in Educational Research
Institute in Warsaw, where she is responsible for analysing Polish education
policy (especially policy executed by the local municipalities). She also col-
laborates as an expert in the field of education with the Ferdinand Lassalle
Centre of Social Thought in Wrocław and with the Friedrich Ebert Foun-
dation in Warsaw. She is an author and a co-author of several articles and
research reports on social and education related issues. Her research interests
include critical pedagogy and sociology of education, education policy and
organisation, critical discourse analysis. Currently, she is completing her
Ph.D. thesis on radical critique of education in contemporary social thought
at the Department of Social and Political Philosophy of the University
of Wroclaw.
Gail Edwards teaches at Newcastle University, UK. Prior to this, she worked as
a teacher and advisory teacher in UK state schools. Her research interests and
published work focus on the philosophy of the social sciences and research
methodology (especially critical realism); teacher education and pedagogy
(especially critical and Vygotskian perspectives); and the sociology and history
of education (especially critical and Marxist perspectives). She is a member of
the research group Transformative Education for Equity (TrEE) and a member
of the editorial board of Journal of Critical Education Policy Studies (www.
jceps.com).
Derek R. Ford is assistant professor of education studies at DePauw University,
Indiana, USA. His research focuses on the relationship between educational the-
ory, modes of production, and political organization. He has written and edited
six books, including Communist Study (2016) and Education and the Production
of Space (2017). Other publications have appeared in journals such as Cultural
Politics, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Critical Education. He is an
organizer with the Answer Coalition, chair of the education department at The
Hampton Institute, and co-coordinator of LiberationSchool.org.
x Author Biographies
George Grollios was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied Pedagogy at the
Department of Primary Education in Aristotle University of Thessaloniki;
he finished his Ph.D. (1995) and, now, he teaches as a Professor in the same
Department. Before (1985–99), he had been a teacher in Greek State Education
for 14 years. He is author and co-author of five books about (a) the European
programmes for education, (b) the scientific activity of Greek teachers, (c) an
adult literacy programme based on Paulo Freire’s pedagogy at the “Ulysses
School for Immigrants” in Thessaloniki, (d) Paulo Freire’s view on the curricu-
lum and (e) Progressive Education and the curriculum. Also, he is author and
co-author of about 60 articles published in Greek and international journals
and edited volumes, mainly on Pedagogy and Curriculum.
Aygülen Kayahan Karakul is an assistant Professor in Izmir Katip Celebi Uni-
versity, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences in Turkey She stud-
ied mathematics in Hacettepe University, gained her Master of Science degree
in Mathematics and she received her doctoral degree in the Education Manage-
ment and Policy programme in 2012 at Ankara University, Turkey. She worked
as a mathematics teacher in the public vocational high schools for three years.
She is assistant editor of International Journal of Educational Policies (www.
ijep.org), which is one of the supporting journals of the annual International
Conferences for Critical Education.
She has various articles and book chapters on the unemployment of edu-
cated labour, the relations between education and employment, resistance cul-
ture of students against neoliberalism, resistance by women workers, critical
approach to the concept of quality in education, financing policies of education
Peter McLaren is Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies at the College of
Educational Studies, Chapman University. He is Professor Emeritus in Urban
Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (where he taught for
20 years), and Professor Emeritus in Educational Leadership at Miami Univer-
sity of Ohio (where he taught for eight years).
Professor McLaren is known and respected worldwide in the education and
social justice community. As a “philosopher of praxis” and social and political
activist, he is considered one of the primary architects of what has come to
be known as critical pedagogy. An award-winning author and editor, Profes-
sor McLaren has published approximately fifty books and hundreds of profes-
sional publications on education and social justice. His writings have been
translated into over 20 languages. He received his Ph.D. in education from the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Five of his books—including Life in Schools—have won the Critic’s Choice
Award of the American Educational Studies Association. Life in Schools has
been named by an international panel as one of the 12 most significant writings
by authors in the field of educational theory, policy, and practice.
György Mészáros is associate professor at the Faculty of Education and Psychol-
ogy, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. He has been teaching in
 Author Biographies xi
teacher education since 2004. He has been involved in several researches in
development projects since he defended his Ph.D. in 2009. He does mainly
critical ethnographic research, but his research interests include: critical peda-
gogy, academic subjectivity, teachers’ professional development, critical epis-
temology, autoethnography, participatory ethnographic research, and LGBT
and gender topics. He is the head of the Anthropology of Education Research
Group at his Faculty, and he is a member of the Administrative Council of the
Association for Teacher Education in Europe. Beside his academic duties, he
is involved in queer leftist activism in Hungary.
Ünal Özmen worked as a primary school teacher before serving as a director in the
ministry of education agency responsible for preparing syllabuses, textbooks,
and miscellaneous educational material. He has worked in the Turkish parlia-
ment as a left wing party and parliamentary consultant. He was a member of the
editorial board of the first educational critique magazine (Zilve Teneffus). He is
still acting as the chief editor of the “Elestirel Pedagoji” magazine and has been
a columnist in the nationally published, BirGün newspaper, since 2004.
Ahmet Yıldız is a lecturer in the department of Lifelong Learning and Adult
Education in Faculty of Educational Sciences at Ankara University. He con-
ducts studies in the areas of Social Movements, Non-Governmental Organi-
sations and Education, Adult Literacy, Adult Education Research, Critical
Theory, and Critical Adult Education, Transformation of Teaching Profession,
and Effects of Neoliberalism on Education. He is the editor of the following
books: Yetişkin Eğitimi/Adult Education (Kalkedon Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2009);
Yaşam Boyu Öğrenme/Lifelong Learning (Pegama Yayınevi, Ankara, 2003);
Öğretmenlik Mesleğinin Dönüşümü/Transformation of Teaching Profession
(Kalkedon Yayınevi, İstanbul, 2013). He is the editor of Eleştirel Pedagoji
(Critical Pedagogy) Journal. Also, he is a part of the editorial collective of the
Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies
1 Introduction
Dave Hill, Kostas Skordoulis, and
Lotar Rasiński

We live in such times! ‘There are decades when nothing happens, there are weeks
when decades happen’.1 We live in such times. The elections and governments
of Trump in the US, Erdogan and the AKP party in Turkey, the successes of the
openly Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece, the Law and Justice Party government led by
Kaczyński in Poland, Orban and the Fidesz party in Hungary, the votes for UKIP in
the UK and for Marine Le Pen in France, the vote for far-right parties in Austria and
the Czech Republic in elections in 2017, and the influence of openly Nazi and Fascist
in Ukraine,—we live in times of savage neoliberalism and its enforcer, conservative
authoritarianism that is xenophobic and racist. We live in these times. And we try to
contest them, for example, in Radical Left conferences, publications, mobilisations,
political parties and groups, social and community organisation and movements.
The current economic, social, and political crisis is manifested more deeply
in education on a global scale. The crisis—part of, and resulting from domi-
nant neoliberal and neoconservative politics that are implemented and promoted
internationally as ‘the only solution’, under the slogan ‘there is no alternative’
(TINA—have substantially redefined the sociopolitical, economic, pedagogic,
and ideological roles of education. Public education is shrinking). It loses its sta-
tus as a social right. It is projected as a mere commodity for sale while it becomes
less democratic, de-theorised, de-critiqued.
Understanding the causes of the crisis, the particular forms it takes in differ-
ent countries and the multiple ways in which it influences education, constitute
important questions for all those who do not limit their perspectives to the horizon
of neoconservative, neoliberal, and technocratic dogmas. Moreover, the critical
education movement has the responsibility to rethink its views and practices in
light of the crisis, and in the light of social, political, and educational resistance
in different countries—the paths that this crisis opens for challenging and over-
throwing capitalist domination worldwide.
One such mobilisation, conference, is the annual International Conference
on Critical Education, the ICCE Conference, held in Athens at the National and
Kapodistrian University of Athens (2011, 2012), the University of Ankara (2013),
the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2014), the University of Lower Silesia
in Wroclaw (2015), Middlesex University in London (2016), and the National
and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2017). It is a forum for scholars, educa-
tors, and social movement, trade union and political activists committed to social
2 Dave Hill, et al
and economic justice. The International Conference on Critical Education (ICCE)
regularly brings together between 250 and 400 participants, provides a vibrant
and egalitarian, non-elitist platform for scholars, educators, activists, students,
and others interested in critical education and in contesting the current neoliberal/
neoconservative/nationalist hegemony, to come together and engage in a free,
democratic, non-sectarian and productive dialogue.
The 5th ICCE: ‘Analyze, Educate, Organize—Critical Education for Social
and Economic Justice’ took place at the University of Lower Silesia in the Polish
city of Wroclaw from June 15–18, 2015. It is from contributions at that confer-
ence that this book has arisen, arising from and developing on and updating ple-
nary papers given at that conference. The updating is important, living as we are
in ‘weeks when decades happen’.
In this book, we bring Marxist theoreticians and activists and their analyses
from the UK, US, Greece, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary.
The volume includes perspectives from the Anglo-Saxon world, from post-Soviet
countries, from the European country most hit by neoliberalism (Greece) and from
Turkey, whose politics and education policy are exemplified by intensive neoliber-
alism accompanied by an Islamicising neo-conservatism—and accompanied, since
the July 2016 coup attempt, by the dismissal of tens of thousands of socialist, com-
munist, Marxist teachers and academics who had nothing to do with the coup, but
were targeted solely because of their Left activism and/or their Kurdish ethnicity. A
number of those dismissed from their posts, their passports withdrawn, many facing
prosecution and imprisonment, are regular participants in the ICCE conferences.
The repressive neoliberal/neoconservative right-wing nationalist anti-minority poli-
cies, ideology, and actions of the Erdogan government in Turkey serve as a warning
to many countries and populations. It is therefore fitting that the book includes a
number of chapters from writers/activists working in the context of Turkey.
Methodologically the chapters of this volume are varied, ranging from empiri-
cal studies, through political and policy analyses, to theoretical papers, and even a
narrative interview. This rich variety of approaches reflects the special interdisci-
plinary character of the network of scholars and practitioners who regularly meet
and work within the community that has formed around the annual International
Conference on Critical Education, and the Journal for Critical Education Policy
Studies. Similarly to the journal and conferences, the authors of papers that you
find here talk across traditional disciplinary boundaries in an effort to find mean-
ingful ways of understanding Marxist thought in the present times. Therefore, in
the first half of the book, chapters 2 through 8, you will find empirical case studies
that take a critical approach to neoconservative and neoliberal trends in differ-
ent parts of Europe (Grollios, Edwards, Yildiz, Özmen, Chrysochou, Karakul,
Mészáros). The second part of the book, chapters 9 through 13, on the other
hand, includes theoretical (and historical) studies that try to find ways of bringing
Marxist and critical theory to inspire the analysis of current educational problems
(McLaren and Ford, Skordoulis, Rasiński, Dziemianowicz-Bąk, Hill).
Because the writers are activists in various arenas such as political parties, trade
unions, social movements, as well as in academia, the media and publications, the
 Introduction 3
unifying theory behind the chapters in the book is Marxist analysis and theories
of resistance. The book represents work by leading Marxist theoreticians, in many
cases, globally recognised. This is indeed a state of the art, up to date/contempo-
rary collection.
It is widely understood in academia nowadays that Marxism is returning as
the most effective theoretical body of ideas providing the most accurate analysis
of the current crisis of the capitalist system, a crisis that is not only economic but
is also cultural, social, political, ecological and in the last analysis, a crisis that
affects all aspects of human life.
The theoretical superiority of Marxism is attributed to the superiority of its
method i.e. to the philosophy of dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism
provides us with a scientific and comprehensive worldview. It is the method on
which Marxism is founded. According to Engels, dialectics was “our best work-
ing tool and our sharpest weapon”. And at the same time, it is a guide for action
and for our activities for the emancipation of the working class and the toiling
masses.
Ernest Mandel, in his The Place of Marxism in History2 (Mandel 1986),
defends the view that Marx transformed the idealist dialectics of Hegel into mate-
rialist dialectics. The basic premises of Materialist Dialectics are as follows:

• Material reality (nature and society) exists independently of the desires, pas-
sions, intentions, and ideas of those who try to interpret it. It is an objective
reality, which thought seeks to explain. Naturally, the processes of cognition,
of mastering knowledge are themselves objective processes, potential objects
of critical scientific examination.
• Thought can never identify totally with objective reality, if only because the
latter is in perpetual transformation and the transformation of reality always
precedes in time the progress of thought. But it can get closer and closer to
it. Reality is therefore intelligible. Thought can progress (though not neces-
sarily in a linear and permanent manner), and this can be verified concretely
and practically, in human history by the consequences (verified predictions,
successful applications) that are the practical results of these advances. The
ultimate criterion of the veracity of thought is therefore practical.
• Thought is effective (scientific) insofar as its explanation of the real processes
is not only coherent to explain what already exists, but can also be used to
predict what does not yet exist, to integrate this prediction into the interpre-
tation of the real process considered as a whole, and to alter and transform
reality in line with a pre-established goal. In the last analysis, knowledge is a
tool of survival for humankind, a means by which this species can change its
place in nature and, thereby, increase its viability.

This general methodology of effective, scientific thought, of thought advancing

through successive approximations towards understanding the whole of reality,
constitutes an enormous step forward compared with the purely analytical method
of fragmentary knowledge.
4 Dave Hill, et al
The method of Marxism requires a critical appropriation of the data produced
by the most advanced academic research combined with a critical analysis of the
emancipation movement of the working class.
Marxism does not believe in innate knowledge. Nor does it behave as the “edu-
cator” of the proletariat, or the “judge” of history. It constantly learns from the
continuously changing reality. It understands that the educators themselves need
to be educated, that only a collective revolutionary praxis, rooted on the one hand
in scientific praxis, and on the other in the real praxis of the proletariat, can pro-
duce this self-education of the revolutionaries and all toiling humanity.
The moment is ripe for such Marxist analyses/proposals, the moment being a
crisis of Capitalism (since 2008) with its accompanying austerity, social disloca-
tion and activism and political polarisation to the Left and the Right.

Contents
In the first half of this volume, writers from England, Greece, Turkey, and Hungary
use Marxist theory to analyse and critique neoliberal and neoconservative educa-
tion in their different countries. The theories they develop and apply, the critique
they make—and resistance proposals they make—while situated within specific
national contexts have a wider significance and resonance, beyond the borders
from within which they write.
It commences with, as Chapter 2 (following this Introduction) European
Education Policy and Critical Education, by George Grollios, who analyses the
main concepts and directions of European education policy. More specifically, he
shows how the historic development of the European Union as an alliance of the
dominant capitalist social classes of its members-states has shaped a neoliberal
European education policy. This policy imposes particular educational goals and
standards on the educational system of each member-state in order to empower
the European Union in the economic and political international competition.
Grollios suggests that educators in Europe need to be aware of the main concepts
and directions of the European education policy if they are serious about build-
ing an international community fostering economic, social, and political change
towards socialism.
Chapter 3, The Schooling of Teachers in England: Rescuing Pedagogy, is
by Gail Edwards. She writes that pedagogy is a progressive force for social trans-
formation and, though European countries have had a strong pedagogic tradition
historically, the English education system has been overwhelmingly concerned
with character formation as part of the reproduction of classed social relations.
Pedagogic advance represents a threat to the social order and has been blocked by
government legislation, particularly during times of capitalist crisis. In this chap-
ter however, Edwards argues that this is not a full explanation and that pedagogic
neglect is further explained by the success of educational movements which pose
as progressive but which are in reality profoundly pessimistic. In the context of
class struggle, they are a conservative force. The analysis is therefore instructive
for critical teacher educators aiming to understand the interplay between ideology,
 Introduction 5
class consciousness, and structural forces. The research presented here relates to
England, the author having worked as a teacher educator in England for many
years. But the analysis has wider relevance.
In Chapter 4, Transformation in the Teaching Profession in Turkey: From
the Idealist Teacher to the Exam-Oriented Technician, Ahmet Yildiz writes that,
as in all other professions, the practices and social status of teaching is shaped
by the social, economic, and political conditions of a given era. As a result, each
era gives rise to its own unique teacher typology. He argues that it is, therefore,
essential to know the historical background of the issue in order to deepen our
understanding of the new teacher type imposed by the neoliberal project, to show
that this new teacher is not normal-natural or universal, and that a different teach-
ing practice is possible. Yildiz considers the changing teacher typology in Turkey
in four traditional political stages.
Yildiz is followed, in Chapter 5, Education, Secularism, and Secular Education
in a Muslim Community, by Ünal Özmen, who examines the policies against
secularism, the basic principle of democracy, developed by the Middle East mon-
archs, who became annoyed at the “Arab Spring” revolts and became annoyed,
especially, at the invasion of Iraq for the purpose of exporting “democracy”. In this
context, Turkey’s participation in this process as a model country and the transfor-
mation of its schools, which play an important role in building a secular society,
are analysed.
The purpose of Chapter 6, Assessing the Effects of the Economic Crisis
on Public Education: A Preliminary Data Analysis from Greece, by Polina
Chrysochou, is to investigate the effects of the economic crisis in Greece on the
working lives and experiences of teacher professional communities. Her chapter
is based on qualitative research, involving 24 semi-structured focus group inter-
views and a total of 24 public primary schools in the Attica region and in the
city of Volos and its suburbs. The interviews with teachers covered themes such
as teaching/learning conditions, school resources, employment issues, household
income, effects on students and teachers’ initiatives, collective activity and cop-
ing strategies in the face of the current neoliberal crisis and its impacts. Based on
interviews with 102 primary teachers of various teaching disciplines, Chrysochou
considers their constant referring to changes in the larger social and political envi-
ronment, such as unemployment, changes in family, poverty, racism, and authori-
tarian government policies, along with their fears and anxieties of the potential
implications of those changes to both the professional/interpersonal relationships
within the school and the nature and purpose of public education. In making a pre-
liminary assessment of the situation, Chrysochou explicates the complex, numer-
ous, and significant impacts, affecting not only teachers, but also students and
parents.
In Chapter 7, The Endpoint of Anticipation from Education and Starting Point
of Struggle: The Unemployment of White-Collar Workers, Aygulen Kayahan
Karakul critically examines important changes in the vocational structure with
advanced capitalism. White-collar workers, that is, educated labour power, are pre-
pared for work in qualified, high-paying jobs that require intellectual effort, with
6 Dave Hill, et al
job security and good working conditions. White-collar, middle-class workers have
gained privileges by using their level of education, along with the developing needs
of capital, during recent decades of capitalism. But with the huge changes in labour
markets under neoliberalism, white-collar workers have lost their privilege and are,
in some cases, started to revolt, seeking new conditions. This chapter illuminates
the changed nature of working conditions for white-collar workers and questions
this new starting point of struggle, acting together with all those oppressed by
capitalism.
Chapter 8 is by György Mészáros and examines The Position of Educational
Researchers in a Semi-Peripheral Region and the Rise of Neoliberal Policies in
the Academia: The Case of Hungary from a historical materialist and dialectical
perspective. The capitalist modes of production and the wider context of global
capitalism determine the position, yet leaving place for agency. Wallerstein’s con-
cept of the world system theory offers a useful framework to identify some speci-
ficities of this position in a semi-peripheral region such as Hungary. The chapter
focuses particularly on the rise of neoliberal policies influencing the position, role,
and life of educational academics. Mészáros claims that neoliberal policy tenden-
cies have entered the academia in Hungary, only recently bringing devastating
consequences. Standardisation, high expectations towards researchers, pressure
followed by the lack of resources, and economic constrains in higher education
have made the situation of academics more and more difficult and exploited. This
chapter is based upon policy and documentary analysis combined with autoeth-
nographic self-reflection.
The second half of the book, addressing Marxist theory regained, critical
education and resistance, brings together scholar activists from the US, UK,
Greece, and Poland. It starts with Chapter 9, by Derek Ford—an interview with
Peter McLaren, the most well-known proponent of that version of critical educa-
tion, the Marxist version, called Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy. Chapter 9 is
Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy and the Struggle against Capital Today: An
Interview with Peter McLaren, interviewed by Derek Ford.
The interview revisits some of the distinguishing features of revolutionary
critical pedagogy, why this approach is politically and ethically necessary given
the current historical juncture, and the need to work out the broad content of what
a social universe outside of value production might look like as we fight to transi-
tion to a socialist alternative to capitalism.
In Chapter 10 by Kostas Skordoulis, Considerations on a Marxist Pedagogy
of Science, Skordoulis writes that existing science education curricula, even those
advocating the social impacts of science, are inadequate to meet the needs and
interests of students faced with the demands, issues, and problems of contem-
porary life under capitalism, especially in an era of crisis. Skordoulis argues that
a much more politicised approach for science education is required, with major
emphasis on social critique, empowerment, and political action.
Skordoulis suggests that Critical Education as an alternative, currently inves-
tigated and developed by a number of radical science educators and critical peda-
gogues, is largely based on Critical Theory and Freire’s Critical Pedagogy and to a
 Introduction 7
lesser extent on Cultural Studies and ‘identity politics’. In this chapter, he studies
the perspectives for a renewed Marxist pedagogy of science interpreted within the
framework of classical Marxism and more specifically in terms of Bernal’s views
developed in the “Social Function of Science” and Zilsel’s theory for “the Social
Origin of Modern Science”. Both scholars under study are considered as initiators
of Marxist history of Science. So, this chapter first and foremost sets out to re-
establish the actuality of Marxist History of Science through its interaction with
the currently established field of Science Studies.
Analysis of the legacies and works of these scholars of the Marxist tradi-
tion shows that intellectual enrichment of and with the modern problematic can
form the basis for a Marxist pedagogy of science that can change society and its
practices.
In Chapter 11 by Lotar Rasiński, ‘A Picture Held Us Captive. . . .’ Marx,
Wittgenstein, and the Paradox of Ideology, Rasiński attempts to rethink and
reformulate Marx’s concept of ideology from the perspective of Wittgenstein’s
critique of language. Rasiński finds the sources of classical formulation of Marx’s
concept of ideology in German Ideology, where Marx makes an analogy between
ideology and camera obscura. Rasiński calls a paradox of ideology a traditional
difficulty related to Marx’s concept of ideology: on the one hand, it denunciates a
falsity (“reversion”) of the picture that we see through ideology, and on the other
hand, it postulates the idea of a pure (“not reversed”) view of reality which can be
seen from the proletariat’s position. He uses Wittgenstein’s concepts of “perspicu-
ous representation” and “aspect change” to demonstrate the possibility of thinking
about the critique of ideology that could be free of Marx’s dogmatic assumptions
concerning the role of a privileged subject and economic reductionism. In the
conclusion Rasiński demonstrates how the critique of ideology can be still useful
for critical education.
In Chapter 12, Empowerment in Education—a New Logic of Emancipation
or a New Logic of Power? Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk discusses the idea of
empowerment in education as undoubtedly one of the main interests of critical
and progressive educators. She writes that this is usually presented as promot-
ing emancipation through education, but emancipation that comes rather from
an individual and collective engagement rather than from an external “liberator”
(such as teachers, schools, education, or social system). It puts the emphasis on
the internal, subjective roots of empowerment that distinguishes contemporary
approach to the emancipatory potential of education from pedagogical ideas
of Enlightenment and Modernity (Rousseau, Helvetius, Kant, Schiller), which
tended to see emancipation as something that needs to be provided by someone
already in power. In the chapter Dziemianowicz-Bąk discusses the category of
empowerment as it is seen and used in the field of critical pedagogy and philoso-
phy of education (e.g. Paulo Freire, Jacques Rancière). Then, in order to critically
analyse this category, she refers to the Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian perspec-
tive: she discusses the post-Foucauldian concept of educationalization (Dapaepe,
Smeyers, Simon) seen as a manifestation of governmentality (Foucault, Dean,
Miller, Rose)—the form of power that can be identified with the neoliberal
8 Dave Hill, et al
technology of governing through freedom. Educationalization, according to her,
describes the tendency to extend the pedagogical ideas, categories, and methods
to the non-educational aspects of life, such as economy, politics, civil society, cul-
ture, or even personal life. Through the processes of educationalization, originally
non-pedagogical problems are being redefined and become educational issues. In
the chapter, Dziemianowicz-Bąk indicates how the concept of educationalization
may be used to present the idea of empowerment as a concept of power rather than
of emancipation.
The volume concludes in Chapter 13 with Dave Hill’s Critical Education Policy
Proposals, and Proposals for critical Marxist education, Developing a Schooling
System for Equality: Marxist Education in Neoliberal and Neoconservative
Times. Hill calls for activism within micro-, meso-, and macro-level social and
political arenas. The focus, however, of this chapter is on activity within formal
education institutions, calling for teachers and education workers (and others) to
be “Critical Educators,” Resistors, Marxist activists, within and outside official
education. The article asks questions such as ‘What is specifically Marxist’ about
proposals regarding Pedagogy, Curriculum, the Organisation of Students, and the
Control of Education. The chapter seeks to locate such proposals within Marxist
theory and practice.
This book is valuable. At a time of economic crisis, when education is under
siege by neoliberal capitalism, (neo-) conservatism, and aggressive national-
ism, when teachers and academics are being proletarianised, youth criminalised,
schools and universities turned into marketised commodities, and when different
forms of nationalist and religious fundamentalism are growing, critical education,
as a theory and as a movement, is gaining in relevance. International communi-
ties of activist critical educators, such as those writers taking part in this book,
together with others outside the formal education apparatuses, work to build resis-
tance to these processes and are engaged in fostering social change leading to a
more just, equal, and fair society. This book is part of that struggle.

Notes
1 Quotation attributed to Lenin (1918), derived from ‘The Chief Task of Our Day’. Online
at www.marxists.org/archive/len . . . 918/mar/11.htm
2 Mandel, E. (1986). The Place of Marxism in History. New York: Humanities Press.
2 European Education Policy and
Critical Education
George Grollios

1957–73: European Educational Policy During the

“Thirty Glorious Years”
In the postwar era, the state’s intervention in socioeconomic life had been
accepted by the developed capitalist nations of the West. In some countries, such
as the US, this political idea was understood as a means for the construction of
powerful economic and social structures. In other countries, like Sweden, the
same idea was related to the creation of a mixed economy, a meta-capitalist soci-
ety or even a non-Marxist socialist state. For thirty years after World War II, the
idea of progress through state’s intervention, which could improve choices and
freedom for individuals and communities, formed the basis of a broad consensus
between the dominant and the dominated social classes of the West. The state was
considered the most appropriate vehicle for the promotion of welfare. Citizens’
individual interests and particular needs could be achieved within a ‘progress for
all’ paradigm, prescribing policies that would protect the weak from the power-
ful elites. After the defeat of Nazism and Fascism in the 1940s, the powerful state
that intervened in the economy represented the principal agent through which the
hopes for a better and more just life would be embodied. Rapid economic devel-
opment would become the critical response to these challenges enabling the pos-
sibility of financing a programme of social welfare. Apparently, the concept of
welfare state was used in order to express the attempt of economic development
through state intervention. The institutions that provided social services were
viewed as the best means for social welfare and the nation-state was supposed
to work for the progress of the society as a whole. Progress in this respect was
strongly associated with an active role of the state in the economy and with
appropriate interventions on the part of managerial experts, which would pro-
mote justice and effectiveness.
Regarding the European educational policy, in order to understand this period,
we must keep in mind the difference between education and training because the
European Economic Community, based on the Treaty of Rome, could implement
only policies concerning training. The central question for European integration
was its economic integration. Training was only a supplement to this kind of inte-
gration. Nevertheless, some features of European economic integration caused
10 George Grollios
problems concerning education. For example, the free movement of workers in
the European Economic Community addressed the problems of their education
and their children’s. The European Economic Community responded using a
policy of “small steps.” These steps were mainly taken by the European Court of
Law, which decided that the construction of a common economic policy meant
other policy sectors could be used to enforce economic integration. Educational
policy was one of these fields. In other words, the decisions of the European Court
of Law slowly but steadily legitimised the need for a European educational policy
from 1957 to 1976 (Stamelos and Vasilopoulos, 2004).
There are several factors behind this slow progress, both economic and politi-
cal. The first main factor is that European integration was taking place during the
Cold War. The European countries that signed the Treaty of Rome were under
the NATO umbrella, and they were not strong enough to challenge the military
and political hegemony of the US in enforcing their political unity. The second
main factor is that their economies were growing much stronger during the ‘thirty
glorious years’ (1945–75) after World War II. The slow progress of the European
Economic Community’s educational policy reflected the contradiction between
these two factors. However, the economic crisis of the 1970s forced the domi-
nant capitalist social classes of the European countries to confront and solve this
contradiction.

1973–92: From the Economic Crisis to the Maastricht Treaty

The rise of the New Right that had been developed in the 1970s as a reaction to
the ‘waste of public wealth’ was impressive. The new dominant political direction
expressed the return to the basic Western bourgeois political values:

• Naturalisation of market forces against the bureaucratic madness of state’s

expansion and economic intervention,
• Moral superiority of personal choice against the tyranny of collectivity in the
formation of decisions,
• Need for a powerful state in the name of law and order against the weakness
that had been produced by the welfare state’s conception of justice.

During the thirty glorious years of highly rated economic development, political
scientists were examining the concepts of welfare, social security, state’s respon-
sibility, full employment, equal opportunities, social mobility through education,
bureaucratic structures, technocracy, meritocracy, political stability, and consen-
sus building. In the 1970s, the economic crisis became the central issue that had
to be examined and interpreted.
Regarding education, neoliberals and neoconservatives in the 1980s pro-
moted strong cuts in education’s funding, the revival of disciplinarian thought
and practice that had been challenged in the 1960s, and a closer relation of
education with corporations’ needs. In the US, schools were accused of being
places of illiteracy, in which moral values were in decline. According to the
 European Education Policy 11
neoliberal-neoconservative discourse, the critical issue was the alignment of
education with changes in the labour market. For this reason, priority was given
to the 3 R’s and to other areas of knowledge, like logistics, business manage-
ment, and computer science. After the second Reagan presidential election,
the schools’ close connection to businesses’ needs was combined with a strong
emphasis on conceiving schools as places of cultural production. This strong
emphasis referred to the development of a national curriculum and the promotion
of the language, the knowledge, and the values that were essential in Western civ-
ilization. The neoliberals’ and neoconservatives’ central aim was to fight against
(a) the so called ‘cultural crisis’, which was supposedly caused by cultural rela-
tivism that did not recognise the superiority of Western tradition’s texts over
other texts, (b) the use of students’ experience in the process of teaching, and
(c) the idea that unequal relations between social classes, genders, and races play
an important role in the formation of dominant culture. They claimed that stu-
dents’ progress is a personal matter and everyone who cannot succeed in school
was solely and entirely responsible for his own failure. Personal responsibility
became the ultimate explanation for every social problem, such as unemploy-
ment, poverty, divorce, youth pregnancy, and the like. Neoliberals and neocon-
servatives suggested schools’ accountability and the provision of vouchers so
that parents would freely buy educational services. Families were conceived
as the alternative power against the bureaucratic function of state education. In
Great Britain, the neoliberal and neoconservative reconstruction of education
was implemented through (a) the empowerment of parents’ participation in the
processes of consuming educational services, (b) the deprivation of local author-
ities’ control over schools, (c) the enforcement of schools’ competition in the
educational services market, and (d) the imposition of a national curriculum with
detailed and pre-specified standards. Generally speaking, the analyses of educa-
tional policy in the US, Great Britain, and other countries highlight a dramatic
shift of educational aims from an emphasis to equality and children’s access to
public education to a priority towards ‘educational quality’ and choice in the
1980s. Neoliberal and neoconservative restructuring of education was penetrated
by the belief that every change which is founded on market’s functions is the
key for the improvement of education’s effectiveness. Moreover, the neoliberal
and neoconservative restructuring took advantage of the critique against pro-
gressive education, which due to the rationale of initiating education based on
children’s interests, was accused of being responsible for the decline in students’
performance. The movement of ‘effective schools’ that dominated the educa-
tional studies during the second half of 1970s used the aforementioned critique.
A central characteristic of the ‘effective schools’ movement was its focus on
researching ‘internal’ schools’ processes, like school culture, teachers’ effective-
ness, and schools’ management. The attack against progressive education and
the dominance of the ‘effective schools’ movement were important ideological
aspects of the neoliberal and neoconservative restructuring of education in the
1980s. The founding of educational aims on market’s functions was necessar-
ily supported by the marginalisation of any dialogue concerned with the social
12 George Grollios
character of education. This kind of dialogue was promoted by some perceptions
of progressive education and inevitably by theories that interpreted education
through the concept of reproduction (Grollios, 1999).
The primary cause of the 1973 economic crisis was the decline in the average
rate of profit. Neoliberal-neoconservative restructuring may then be understood
primarily as the answer of powerful sectors of capital to the crisis of the 1970s,
an expression of their need to respond to the fall in the average rate of profit by
expanding in every sector. In the early 1980s, the European Community entered
into a process of corrosion so intense that for many years it could not provide
solutions to budgetary problems and issues in its agricultural policy. The crisis
was sharper than in the US and Japan, resulting in the loss of competitiveness.
From 1973 to 1983 the average annual growth rate of the US’s GDP was 1.9 per-
cent, which exceeded that of the nine-member European Community (1.7 percent),
while at the same time Japan had reached 3.7 percent. The number of employees
decreased in Europe by an average of 0.1 percent annually, while it increased by
0.9 percent in Japan and 1.5 percent in the US. In the same decade, the European
Community’s competitiveness in such crucial economic sectors as electric and
electronic equipment, automobile industry, industrial equipment, and informatics
had been reduced. The European Community faced the dilemma of ‘progress or
dissolution’ (Busch, 1992; Roussis, 2012; Sakellaropoulos, 2004).
The alliance of the dominant social classes that formed the nucleus of the
European Economic Community had to make crucial decisions. One was the
strengthening of European integration through the establishment of the first pro-
gramme of action in the education sector. This program included collaboration in
tertiary education, collection of statistical data, improvement of contact between
educational institutions, and expansion of foreign language learning (Stamelos
and Vasilopoulos, 2004).
A year after the European Act of 1986 gave European integration a powerful
push, the first generation of European programmes was announced. The imple-
mentation of these programmes had a strong importance mainly in the ideologi-
cal level during the next decade, when it would be obvious that they promoted
ideas like “the only knowledge that deserves to be taught is useful knowledge”,
“the criterion for the validity of knowledge is the market” and “schools’ aim is
the transmission of skills that are required for corporations’ profitability.” In the
context of these programmes, teachers and students search for sponsors, they
advertise them, and schools are converted to simulations of corporations (Goulas,
2007; Grollios, 1999). The ideology of Europeanism legitimised a political solu-
tion that was the ‘vision of 1992’: the vision of a strong capitalist Europe, which
was meant to be competitive as the third pole in the world against the US and
Soviet Union.
Moreover, some decisions of the European Court of Law regarding tertiary
education ruptured the academic tradition of European universities, linking them
to the impermanent needs of the labour market and strongly emphasising their
economic effectiveness. A European guideline produced in 1989 was another cru-
cial point establishing a mechanism among the 12member-states for recognising
diplomas pertaining to professional activities (Stamelos and Vasilopoulos, 2004).
 European Education Policy 13
1992 and After: European Union and Education
Under the Maastricht Treaty, education was distinguished from training and offi-
cially recognised as one of the European Union’s policy sectors. Moreover, the
European Commission obtained the right to intervene in the members-states’
compulsory education. The signing of the Maastricht Treaty was intensely cel-
ebrated, but it was also the starting point for the accumulation of problems and
contradictions.
The adoption of the Treaty was subject to fierce political debate in Denmark
and France, where it was confirmed by a narrow majority. The referenda on
admitting Sweden and Finland to the European Union also won by narrow majori-
ties, while in Norway a negative vote prevailed. The lack of effective European
institutions of legitimisation was seen as a major cause for the vicious cycle of
reproduction of social and economic problems. In terms of foreign policy, the
motto for political intervention by the European Union in the international sys-
tem was that it is an economic giant, a stuttering diplomat, and a political dwarf.
The complete ineffectiveness of its policy in the war in Iraq and the civil war in
Yugoslavia sharply contrasted with the affirmation of the US’s global political and
military domination.
At that very juncture, education was a key issue in the European Union. The
White Paper of the European Commission that encapsulated the EU education
policy in the 1990s argued that the society of the future would be one that
invested in intelligence; a society where people would teach and learn, where
everyone could build on his own skills; a knowledge society. The ‘three major
trends of our time’—globalisation, acceleration of the scientific and technical
revolution, and the advent of the information society—increased opportuni-
ties for access to information and knowledge, modifying the necessary skills
and labour systems. However, at the same time they increased uncertainty for
all citizens while creating intolerable exclusion for some. The White Paper
urged that education and learning should (a) focus on a broad knowledge base
and emphasise flexibility, (b) connect schools and businesses, (c) combat
social exclusion, (d) develop proficiency in at least two foreign languages,
and (e) treat capital investment and investment in training equally (European
Commission, 1995).
Scepticism about forecasting future developments has now overshadowed the
triumphal tone of the statements that emerged when the Maastricht Treaty was
being signed. Of course, the scepticism on the part of the European Commission
did not question the neoliberal guidelines. The three major trends appeared to
be politically neutral, and social consequences were inevitable. Europe, like the
rest of the world, would have to learn to live with them. What was required was
a policy mix that would minimise social cohesion and maximise socioeconomic
adequacy for the relentless international competition. The central goal was for the
European Union to take the lead over its competitors globally.
The main guidelines of European educational policy that were founded on
the Maastricht Treaty and the White Paper of the European Commission were
(a) enforcing students’ mobility and cooperation between educational institutions,
14 George Grollios
(b) connecting educational institutions with the labour market, (c) forming struc-
tures of accession and re-accession to the labour market and (d) finding ways to
compare members-states’ educational systems and push them to a convergence
process. On the basis of these guidelines, in 2000 the European Union created a
list of sixteen quality indicators meant to judge the quality of compulsory educa-
tion. Indicators fall into four areas: (a) achievement (in mathematics, reading,
science, foreign languages, learning to learn, ICT, and civics), (b) success and
transition (dropout rates, completion of upper secondary education, participation
rates in tertiary education), (c) monitoring of school education (parental participa-
tion, evaluation, and steering of school education) and (d) resources and structures
(educational spending per student, education and training of teachers, participa-
tion rates in pre-primary education, number of students per computer). The report
on the quality indicators states that they were generated by a representative body
of experts, presumably on education evaluation. This suggests ‘technical’ rather
than political criteria, but little if any explanation of why these indicators and not
others were selected is provided (Dale, 2003).
The European Council in Lisbon established the ‘open method of coordina-
tion’ to control national educational planning. This method included definition of
directional lines, combined with timetables for implementing educational goals;
definition of indicators (qualitative and quantitative) and benchmarks that take
the best international standards into consideration; specification of European
directional lines by member-states; and recurrent examination, evaluation, and
re-examination (Zmas, 2007).
Soon the aforementioned 16indicators were replaced by five qualitative indica-
tors that had to be reached by 2010: (a) an increase of 90 percent in graduation
rates from compulsory education of a generation of students, (b) an increase of
up to 15 percent of students graduating in mathematics, science, and technology,
(c) an increase of up to 85 percent in graduation rates from the upper sector of com-
pulsory education, (d) a decrease to 20 percent in 15-year-olds’ failure in reading
and writing, and (e) an increase of up to 12.5 percent of adults who attend lifelong
learning programmes (European Council, 2003).
In tertiary education, 15 members-states of the European Union and 14 other
European countries, aiming to strengthen the competitiveness of European uni-
versities’ diplomas in the international market, agreed on the Bologna Process,
which established the 3–5–8 scheme (3 years for a bachelor’s degree, 2 more
years for a master’s and 3 more for a Ph.D.). The European Commission published
Rethinking Education: Investing in Skills for Better Socio-economic Outcomes. In
this text, the Commission argues that in the context of the current economic crisis,
a massive increase in international supply of highly skilled workers signals the
end of the era of competition between Europe and countries offering low-skilled
jobs. Efforts need to concentrate on developing transversal skills, particularly
entrepreneurial skills, while the demand for skills related to science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics is still high. But the first step is that basic skills be
achieved by all, while language learning is important for jobs and needs particular
attention (Stamelos and Vasilopoulos, 2004).
 European Education Policy 15
As we have elsewhere claimed,

In the context of the current economic crisis, the process of European inte-
gration has become a process of building a union of states under the lead-
ership of Germany. By imposing the same goals to every member state, the
Maastricht Treaty failed to lead to supranational convergence. By erecting
into a doctrine disinflationary policy and falling interest rates, alongside
the reduction of deficits and public debt, economic and monetary unifica-
tion implies a nominal, not a real, convergence of economies, given that
the exchange rate stability in countries with different economic structures
and varying competitiveness leads to real exchange rate variance. For the
less internationally competitive sections of capital, the price for sustain-
ing the unity of capital at the European level was austerity with no end in
sight. Germany is currently not seeking to strengthen the cohesion of the
European Union, but to boost its own economy, slipping into a variation
of old nationalism. Essentially, Germany’s ruling class uses the crisis as a
vehicle to rearrange the Union’s geometry, and promote more decisively the
notion of a multi-speed Europe (it should be remarked that crisis manage-
ment mechanisms—the EMSF and the EFSF—do not work like the other
European Union institutions based on the formal equality of all Member
States, but under the rule of those who qualify for the highest credit rating).
EU institutions confirm largely prejudged decisions made by the Franco-
German axis, in which the primary role is played by Germany, which sys-
tematically imposes the basic principles of neoliberal orthodoxy. It seeks
to ensure that the other Member States comply with its own economic and
political choices, promoting the controlled credit rating downgrade of the
deficit countries of the European periphery and threatening them with the
spectrum of insolvency. Thereby, it presses hard on other EU countries to
follow the path forged by its own ruling class, namely, to radically reduce
wages and pensions, increase retirement age, degrade education, and
advance educational programs of skills acquisition. Alongside the process
of transformation of the relations between EU countries as outlined above,
democracy in their interior is increasingly waning. This is a general trend
affecting the majority of Western European and North American countries
during the period of neoliberal-neoconservative restructuring. Key fea-
tures of this trend, accentuated by the current crisis, include (i) a dramatic
reduction of civic participation in both central political processes—party
and parliamentary—and those involving the exercise of collective rights
(protest marches, strikes); (ii) the exercise of politics by technocrats, com-
munication specialists and managers; (iii) the weakening of the working
class as an agent of social transformation leading to loss of rights and
gains; (iv) the acceptance of neoliberalism as a one-way street by all the
government parties; (v) the loss of the credibility of politics and its conver-
sion into a managerial task; (vi) the substitution of civic commitment to
social justice for identity movements and non-governmental organizations;
16 George Grollios
and (vii) the degradation of the concept of ‘general interest’ and the
spread of corruption.
(Kotzias, 2012, 2013; Negreponti-Delivani, 2011; Belandis, 2014
as cited in Grollios, Liambas and Pavlidis, 2015, pp. v–vii)

The Character of European Educational Policy and

Marxist Critical Educators
Based on the above review, we can understand that the fundamental purpose of
European education policy is to promote the interests of Europe’s dominant capi-
talist social classes, which require a dynamic employee able to meet the harsh
demands of global economic competition. The discourse of European texts on
education is characterised by a strong promotion of specific objectives inextrica-
bly connected to the economy, precisely because the European educational pol-
icy serves the aforementioned fundamental purpose. Education turns into a field
of skills acquisition with the concurrent loss of its key characteristics as a field of
apprehending the natural and social world on the basis of scientific knowledge.
European educational policy promotes the formation of educational systems
within which two main areas could be identified: general education and training.
The kind of general education is determined by training. General education is not
an education that harmoniously combines the acquisition of knowledge, values,
and skills connected with the sciences that study societies and their culture, on
one hand, with the knowledge, values, and skills associated with the sciences
that study the natural world, on the other. It is subservient to the needs of training
and therefore is bound to emphasise the knowledge, values, and skills associated
with the sciences that study the natural world. The priority given by the European
Commission to physics, technology, engineering, and mathematics springs from
this very submission, resulting in the downgrading of humanistic education and
the fields of study that serve it.
This priority is directly linked to the dominance of neoliberal doctrines that
promote the direct subordination of education to the needs of businesses, resulting
in the shrinking of public education; competition between educational institu-
tions; the priority of efficiency versus equality; the emphasis on accountability
and the processes of control; the imposition of flexible types of labour on teach-
ers; and the apotheosis of individualistic perspectives whereby everyone is solely
responsible for his/her success or failure.
These neoliberal doctrines are reproduced by various bodies that dictate
European educational policy (mainly the European Committee and the European
Council). Each member-state participates in accordance with its economic and
political power; in turn, it transfers and implements these doctrines. This pro-
cess does not signal the end of national educational policies, since all member-
states agree to the selection of a common educational policy. Rather, it means the
enforcement of neoliberal educational policies as the only possible policies in the
context of tough international competition. These policies are in fact reshaped
 European Education Policy 17
to adjust to the existing sociopolitical balance of power for each member-state
(Sakellaropoulos, 2004).
European educational policy uses popular buzzwords to impose its neoliberal
agenda. The main component of this agenda is the emphasis on the economic
value of education. Training, assessed and renewable skills, lifelong learning,
employability, standards, certification of quality, innovation, productivity, com-
petitiveness, effectiveness, entrepreneurship, accountability, regulation, and effi-
ciency have been established as pivotal contemporary educational terms strongly
related to the emphasis on the economic value of education.
Moreover, this process includes comparing evaluations, timetables, indicators
of progress and benchmarks in the context of an “open method of coordination.”
Nowadays, the above do not operate exclusively as tools to describe educational real-
ity. They construct a field of, and they are used for the classification and the restruc-
turing of European educational systems in the direction of strict neoliberal lines.
The proposed ‘Euro-university model’ abandons the historical model of
European universities of the past, promoting structures that adapt to the labour
market’s needs. Such corporatisation of the university is leading to the degrada-
tion of systematic basic research and teaching (Mavroudeas, 2005).
The university’s corporatisation, combined with a strong increase in student
population, gives prominence to a great danger: the formation of two networks.
One is ‘centres of excellence’; the other is a massive network of institutions char-
acterised by uncertain quality. This network will produce a great majority of the
‘employable’ who can’t resist the deregulation of the labour market and will not
fight for democratic and social rights. Moreover, the ECTS system, the Diploma
Supplement, and the expansion of transnational educational programmes, which
use a franchising system and e-learning education, give prominence to another
danger connected with the aforementioned: the deregulation of public academic
systems by means of students who will accumulate large numbers of ECTS unre-
lated to their field of study (Stamelos and Vasilopoulos, 2004).
European educational policy contributes to the transformation of universities
into a quasi-market, giving great importance to applied research and knowledge.
Voices that denounce the marginalisation of humanistic education in European
universities are topical because the search for truth has been replaced by sus-
penseful efforts for the production and diffusion of useful knowledge and infor-
mation (Zmas, 2007).
Under these conditions, the creation and promotion of a project of Marxist criti-
cal educators for education that will challenge European educational policy becomes
critical throughout the European Union. Such a project must address the purpose
and structure of education, proclaiming the necessity of public preschool education
and of a single, public, free, compulsory school for all children up to age 18.
Of course, such a claim is linked with an entirely different set of goals from
those promoted in the European education policy: the all-around cognitive, emo-
tional, and physical development of children; the development of students’ critical
consciousness in the sense of understanding the natural and social world; their
conscious work towards sociopolitical transformation.
18 George Grollios
The single, public, free, compulsory school for all children up to age 18 dulls
the antithesis between humanitarian and technical education that is connected
with the capitalist division of labour and, of course, signifies the abolition of pri-
vate education. It is a school of a new, high quality of teaching, a centre of popular
culture, and a centre of pedagogical research and reflection.
Unlike European educational policy, the single, public, free, compulsory school
for all children up to age 18 does not give priority to the acquisition of skills,
downgrading such fields of study as history, literature, philosophy, sociology, fine
arts, and music. It connects humanistic education with basic scientific knowledge
of the main areas of production. This horizon of knowledge, values, and skills is
approached through teaching founded on themes that are meaningful for students
and schools’ communities.
Marxist critical educators should speak clearly in favour of the single, public,
free, compulsory school for all children up to age 18 that is aligned with a social-
ist society, a school that combines humanistic and polytechnic education. This
school will be structured by relations of comradeship and solidarity. It cannot be
confined solely to transmitting knowledge of the fundamental fields of the sci-
ences of nature and technology. In other words, the content of education is struc-
tured around students’ basic concepts, ideas, and practices, offering possibilities
for discussing crucial matters in a concrete social, political, and cultural context.
Of course, the planning of this kind of curriculum cannot be a responsibility of
experts, but rather a collective democratic process joined mainly by teachers and
students. Moreover, the single, public, free, compulsory school for all children up
to age 18 systematically uses students’ collective work and democratic dialogue,
in contrast with the traditional approach of merely transmitting knowledge that
leads to teachers’ verbalism and students’ passivity.
The European Union’s education policy stands in opposition to the great
importance of education for the emancipation of humanity, which can be revealed
only as a result of the abolition of capitalist and class relations of production. In
other words, this policy is diametrically antithetical to an education for people’s
fundamental development that is closely associated with the abolition of existing
property relations that reproduce workers’ alienation, and with the process, means
and results of their labour. The European Union’s education policy is hostile to
a change that requires a radical upgrade of workers’ education as a deliberate,
methodically organised, systematic and progressive process of acquiring and
producing knowledge, capacity-building, and cultivating substantive aspects of
personality.
Therefore, Marxist critical educators must systematically critique European
education policy to open a new road of radical social, political, and educational
transformation in the framework of a socialist strategy and a corresponding transi-
tion programme. European educational policy does not have a “progressive” char-
acter because is not a nationalistic policy or because it uses one kind of rhetoric
against racism, as some left supporters of European integration contend. These
contentions are constructing a false dichotomy between the European Union and
its member-states, veiling the fact that the Union favours the dominant capitalist
 European Education Policy 19
social classes and promotes certain reactionary neoliberal policies. Marxist criti-
cal educators must know that the dominant social classes of Europe use educa-
tional policy as a weapon against any radical and critical approach on education.
This knowledge is a basic parameter of their efforts to build an international com-
munity fostering economic, social, and political change towards socialism.

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[The left and power: The ‘democratic way’ to socialism]. Athens: Topos.
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Dale, R. (2003). The work of international organizations making national education
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A. Patramanis (eds.), Teachers and European Integration. Athens: Educational Institute
INE GSEE, pp. 86–118.
European Commission. (1995). White Paper on Education and Training—Teaching and
Learning—Towards the Learning Society. COM (95) Final, 29 November 1995.
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European Average Performance in Education and Training (Benchmarks) 2003/C
134/02.
Goulas, V. (2007). Evropaiki Ekpedeftiki Politiki. I Agora os Pedagogos [European Educa-
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Grollios, G., Liambas, A., and Pavlidis, P. (2015). Introduction. In G. Grollios, A. Liambas,
and P. Pavlidis (eds.), Proceedings of the IV International Conference on Critical Edu-
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[The Politics of Salvation against the Troika: A Crisis of Sovereignty and Democracy].
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talismo [Three Ages of University. The University in Capitalism]. Athens: Ellinika
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[The Whole Truth about Debt and Deficits and how to be Saved]. Thessaloniki: Ianos.
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Policy]. Athens: Metaichmio.
3 The Schooling of Teachers
in England
Rescuing Pedagogy
Gail Edwards

Introduction: Pedagogy in England

During his long and distinguished career, the English educationist Brian Simon
stressed the importance of pedagogically skilled teachers for educational and
social progress (Simon, 1974, 1981, 1985). Simon linked pedagogy not just to stu-
dents’ cognitive development but to social transformation and historical change.
His analysis built on earlier arguments against mechanical materialism (which
supposes that people are mere products of their environment) and against ideal-
ism (which supposes that social and personal transformation originates in ideas)
to distinguish pedagogy as a much broader concept than teaching. People, Simon
insisted, do not develop as the result of a didactic or voluntarist process but rather
through goal-directed social labour. What distinguishes human beings from other
species is the capacity to learn from conscious reflection upon their world and
their impact upon it:

Insofar as man transforms his external world, and by changing it changes

himself, the whole historical process must be accounted essentially educative.
(Simon, 1985, p. 23)

Simon’s conclusions derived from his extensive historical research. He noted that
pedagogy has been associated with personal and social improvement since ancient
times. However, it was the linking of it to science and reason as part of Europe’s
modernising Enlightenment ambitions which radically changed how pedagogy
was conceived (Simon, 1974). This occurred partly as a result of a new reflexiv-
ity which, as Callinicos (2007) notes, emerged from the deliberations of seven-
teenth- and eighteenth-century citizens as they made sense of a radical rupture
with their feudal past during the transition to capitalism. The shift from rule by a
medieval oligarchy to a modern democracy, along with rapid industrial and urban
expansion, produced new kinds of social unrest and imperialist wars. As empiri-
cal knowledge about non-European societies expanded greatly, there arose an
entirely novel critique of ‘human nature’ and ‘society’. It dawned that society can
take radically different forms in different times and places. This was a new self-
awareness: human beings make themselves. Humanity has the capacity to improve
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 21
itself and the world. A new consciousness of the capacity for transcendence—
the human ability to stand back from and critique tradition, dogmatism, ignorance
and superstition—was born.
Modern pedagogy developed out of this new reflexivity. The post-Renaissance
period of knowledge growth in Europe saw important advances in the human sci-
ences with the publication of John Amos Comenius’s book The Great Didactic
(1633/1967) which laid out principles for teaching based on rudimentary psy-
chology. By the nineteenth century, Johann Friedrich Herbart was working on
his Science of Education (1908) and Alexander Bain had written Education as
a Science (1877). These texts began to sketch an outline of human cognition to
inform pedagogy, a scholarship which later spread beyond Europe and which
Simon (1981) traces through Froebel, Pestalozzi, Dewey, and Vygotsky. The
work of Soviet psychologist Vygotsky in particular has transformed pedagogic
understanding. He argued that humans develop through reflection upon labour,
mediated via socially-distributed tools (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987). Labour continu-
ally transforms the environment, cultural tools, and human consciousness. It is
fundamentally educative (Duarte, 2006) and recalls Marx’s aphorism that teach-
ing and learning is revolutionary, dialectical labour within which the ‘educator
must be educated’ (Marx, 1845/2002).
However in English policy and practice, pedagogic scholarship has been super-
fluous to devotion to the system. During the nineteenth century, teachers in English
monitorial schools were uninfluenced by pedagogic developments in Germany,
France, Holland, and Switzerland (Rich, 1972). It was the system that mattered,
not “the education of the teachers of the people” (Rich, 1972, p. 1). School teach-
ers were restricted to a civilising role and teaching the ‘3 Rs’ (Partington, 1999).
Senior pupils taught juniors, overseen by a supervisory teacher (who themselves
lacked an education). And, even today, when the term pedagogy has become more
common, it is as if it is synonymous with teaching styles matched to diverse edu-
cational ideologies (see for example, Partington, 1999). The assumption is a lib-
eral one, namely that pedagogy is a personal or pragmatic choice amongst many
‘pedagogies’ rather than a human science.
Simon (1974, 1999) explained how this state of affairs has come about. The
historical record shows how medieval universities and fee-paying public schools
were designed to train functionaries of the church and operate as finishing schools
for the landed gentry. In the nineteenth century, following widespread secular-
isation and the introduction of a national education system, this reproductive
function continued as a consequence of a class alliance between the aristocracy
and the new capitalist bourgeoisie. Elite, fee-paying schools such as Winchester,
Westminster, and Eton reproduced the British ruling class—statesmen, civil ser-
vants, military leaders, executive directors, bishops, and judges. These schools
developed the character traits required of leaders of an imperialist country
(MacDonald Fraser, 1977). The other type of institution—the state school—
focused upon character formation, but of a kind policy-makers thought suited to
the labouring class. The state’s response to capitalist industrialisation initiated
the creation of schools which were never designed for pedagogy; rather, they
22 Gail Edwards
were designed to teach the basics required for wage labour and to gentle the
masses (Best, 1973; Chitty, 2004; Perkins, 1969). Though records from early
nineteenth-century pupil-teacher centres, School Boards, and teacher training
colleges show interest in pedagogical scholarship, it is evident that legislation
has, for the most part, blocked theoretical advance. Indeed, during the neoliberal
period leading up to the current economic crisis, English education policy docu-
ments rarely mention theory as policy makers reassert the logic of profit through
legislation designed to enforce centralised control whilst at the same time expos-
ing schools to commercial culture and market rationality (Hill, 2007; Wilmott,
2002). Schooling in England has always been—and still is—primarily concerned
with reproducing class relations, rather than personal or social transformation
(Matthews, 1980).
This is not to offer a determinist account of history. In what follows, I argue
that such long-standing pedagogic neglect also required the assistance of popular
teacher education movements. In this chapter, I examine three of the most influ-
ential movements—efficiency, learner-centred, and post-structuralist—and situ-
ate them in their social, intellectual, and economic milieu. I suggest that they are
incompatible with pedagogic advance because they are, at political root, liberal
or sceptical responses to capitalism’s contradictions. They either express the idea
that human progress involves reform of capitalism (rather than its overthrow), or
are entirely sceptical towards Enlightenment ambitions. I suggest that they are
(to borrow a phrase from Callinicos, 2007, p. 218) “historically specific expres-
sions of class interests” which harbour fatalistic views of human capability. They
are, in other words, better understood as part of schooling, rather than educating,
teachers. Resistance—and the rescue of pedagogy—is possible but requires better
understanding of these movements and the transformative alternative. Although
I devote the analysis below to England (the context I know best), I believe the
argument has wider relevance.

The Schooling of Teachers

As we have seen, modern pedagogy grew out of enlightened Western societies
seeking validation in science and knowledge rather than traditional authority.
However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, rather than build-
ing upon previous pedagogic developments, the positivist scientific management
movement, a business ‘efficiency’ outlook inspired by Frederick Winslow Taylor,
had migrated from the factory to the English state-school classroom (Ross, 2010).

The Efficiency Movement: Regulation Displaces Pedagogy

The efficiency movement applied methods which were assumed to mimic the
natural sciences to teaching effectiveness. Closely associated with industrial mass
production, the movement rejected the ‘learning-on-the-job’ pupil-teacher model
of training, and proposed instead that teachers should be trained in empirically-
established standardised techniques. Rather than theorising or illuminating
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 23
pedagogy, patterns were identified in the relationship between teaching inputs
and achievement outputs, in order to produce statistical, law-like formalisations
(Hyland, 1994). The assumption was that discrete behaviours and their products
could be measured and techniques disseminated. Pedagogy was irrelevant. Schön
(1983) referred to the outlook as ‘technical rationality’ since it assumed a separation
of knowing and doing whereby researchers in universities codified professional
knowledge and technicians (the teachers) applied it. The endurance of the move-
ment is partly explained by the concurrent popularity of structural-functionalism,
a sociological framework rooted in assumptions of scientific detachment and a
denial of human agency. The movement has assumed different forms and includes
the competency movement of the 1970s and the standards movement imposed
by government legislation from the 1990s onwards. Whilst the most recent
manifestation lays less claim to scientifically established laws, a crude empiri-
cism nonetheless prevails, repackaged for a ‘knowledge-economy’ whereby the
exteriorisation and formalisation of practical knowledge is claimed to contrib-
ute to workplace organisational knowledge (see De Vos, Lobet-Maris, Rousseau
and Wallemacq, 2002).
To understand the efficiency movement’s success we have to understand the
contexts in which it has flourished. The functionalist vision of society wherein
workers and employers are assumed to have convergent, rather than antagonis-
tic, interests originated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century when
the industrial class was worried by increasing social unrest. Nation-states were
having to expand their regulation of production, industrial labour, and social wel-
fare (De Vos et al, 2002). Intellectual legitimacy came from French sociologist
Emile Durkheim who insisted that unrestrained economic individualism could not
ensure a stable social order. ‘Anomie’, the absence of moral boundaries (rather
than capitalism’s contradictions) was leading to social breakdown and the health
of capitalist society (when in crisis) must be restored through state regulation. The
efficiency movement’s political response to social crisis is to assume the solution
lies in reform, rather than overthrow, of the system.
Waves of educational reform in England and the UK have effectively displaced
pedagogic critique and theoretical advance. This is because the efficiency move-
ment’s reformist roots contradict its espoused commitment to personal liberty. In
asserting that teachers and students undergoing education do not shape the world
but rather are regulated by external forces (social laws or government policies),
it is pessimistic about pedagogy as a motor of progressive change. Indeed, part
of the attractiveness of technicism is the sanctuary of ‘impartial’ territory; pro-
fessionally vulnerable teachers can deliver and assess state-mandated curricula
without having to bear moral responsibility for the consequences. However, com-
pliance involves a high level of detachment from material contradictions and risks
student and teacher alienation, particularly where curricula suppress critique of
the structural disadvantages faced by some communities. There may be a claim to
neutrality but in reality the efficiency movement supports a politics which rejects
participatory democracy whereby workers are involved in the governance of soci-
ety. At best, it assumes a narrow, representative variant of democracy. Indeed,
24 Gail Edwards
it was this democratic deficit which provoked an alternative teacher education
movement in the middle of the twentieth century, to which I now turn.

The Learner-Centred Movement: Individualism Displaces Pedagogy

The inspiration for the developmental, learner-centred model of teacher education
was a broader philosophical trend in European thought taking hold at the start of
the twentieth century. A widespread backlash against positivism expressed anti-
authoritarian scepticism towards the notion of disinterested science as the means
for Western societies to validate themselves. Wilhelm Dilthey (1883/1976), the
German social philosopher, insisted that the natural and human sciences are dis-
tinct and that the human sciences should be hermeneutical or interpretive, a posi-
tion subsequently adopted by several German social scientists, notably Weber
(1922/1978) and Husserl (1936/1970). It was argued that only a totalitarian polity
could result from the misapplication of the methods of natural science to social
questions. The argument was that human cognition is culturally situated and never
impartial.
This ‘interpretive turn’ influenced teacher educators in England. Steps towards
an all-graduate teaching profession began in England in the 1950s as restructur-
ing saw universities take the dominant role in teacher training (Partington, 1999).
Critics of (then influential) educationalist R. S. Peters (1969)offered interpretivist
epistemological arguments antithetical to the dominant theory-to-practice model
of teacher education (Young, 1971). Some found philosophical legitimacy in
pragmatism, a revised form of empiricism popular in the US. Pragmatism under-
stands truth as rooted in the consequences of action (Novack, 1975) and in the US,
pragmatism inspired what Schön (1983) called the ‘reflective practitioner’ model
of professional development. Its influence in England is visible in the ‘teacher-as-
researcher’ movement, developed in the 1960s by Stenhouse (1975).
However, this interpretive turn shifted focus away from pedagogy towards
the learner. Constructivist psychology introduced the idea of the teacher, not as
pedagogue, but as facilitator of student-initiated enquiries. Moreover, facilitators
needed a learner-centred teacher education which foregrounds what Clandinin
and Connelly (1988) call teachers’ ‘meaning-making’. Teachers, it was claimed,
learn through action research which starts with a practitioner-initiated problem
prompting an individual’s reflection in and upon their practice. Influenced in
part by Lewin (1948), the assumption was that change occurs gradually through
problem-solving. This reversed the efficiency movement’s top-down authoritari-
anism by reconceptualising theory as personal, as emerging bottom-up, out of a
teacher’s practice and values. Though the term pedagogy underwent a revival,
particularly after the publication of Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970),
its usage was reframed within interpretivist assumptions. In place of a human sci-
ence, there were many ‘personal pedagogies’.
This appropriation has only undermined pedagogy. Although it can appear
liberating to emphasise the personal nature of knowing, the idea of personal
pedagogy substitutes an aim to understand the mind-independent world with
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 25
the less ambitious aim of understanding personal experience as it (apparently)
emerges from the consequences of one’s actions. Even though Dewey (1957),
the philosophical inspiration for reflective practice, tried to rescue objectivity by
equating it to social agreement or ‘warranted assertability’, pedagogy has been
displaced by a concern with ‘what works’ in the experience of teachers. This
denial of the possibility of discovering autonomous biological, social, or psy-
chological processes which might place ontological limits on how teaching and
learning is understood and practised, has left teachers to act in accord with their
socialisation. Transcendence—the capacity to critique existing interpretations of
classroom events and move beyond one’s cultural situatedness—is assumed to be
impossible. Ultimately this has undermined a progressive agenda by sanctioning
stasis; it has rejected the possibility of a mind knowing the world beyond itself
and thereby denied itself any foundation for critique.
Understanding the learner-centred movement’s popularity requires an exami-
nation of the social democratic context within which it flourished. After World
War II in England, there was renewed hope that capitalism’s volatility could be
managed through Keynesian-inspired welfare reform. The ontological flight from
theory was part of a broader liberal impulse to reconcile plural values in a society
keen to heal the wounds of war. The economic boom which came out of the mass
destruction of capital during postwar renewal made it seem possible. Schön’s
(1983) reflective practitioner model endorsed reform through local negotiations—
through individuals intersubjectively constructing, not just the means, but also the
ends of education. The focus on cultural solutions located the origin of human
disempowerment in modernity’s instrumental rationality—in culture—rather than
capitalist structural relations.
The problem with culturalism, as Sayer (2000) notes, is that meanings run up
against structural reality. A constructivist ontology provides no foundation upon
which to disagree. Relativism creates a political vacuum, soon filled by structural
imperatives. A case in point, as Blake, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish (2000) note, is
the contradictory demand for ‘personalised practice’ in a capitalist education system
tethered to non-negotiable, normative test scores. The criteria by which inequality
is reproduced are defined in advance. This structural reality has practical as well as
intellectual consequences for teachers and, within the restricted framework of rep-
resentative (parliamentary) democracy, it is something over which they exert little
political influence. Moreover, in the neoliberal period, we find the rhetoric of per-
sonal freedom being used to label people as failures as the rhetoric of meritocracy
places fault for low educational outcomes with individuals rather than the system.
It is these criticisms which led to another teacher education movement in
England which, from the 1990s, argued that teacher learning results less from
personal reflection and more from a plurality of competing discourses.

The Poststructuralist Movement: Scepticism Displaces Pedagogy

Poststructuralism refers to an academic, interdisciplinary movement originat-
ing in 1960s France which rejects a representational role for language. The term
26 Gail Edwards
postmodernism refers to a wider cultural movement of which poststructuralism is
part. Poststructuralists take the interpretivist insight that human consciousness is
culturally situated very seriously. They conclude that rational negotiation between
culturally diverse groups is impossible and that knowledge disputes are settled
through the exercise of power. The poststructuralist teacher education movement
has therefore recommended equipping teachers with the rhetorical capacity to
defend their practice (Parker, 1997; Moore, 2004). Their argument is that moder-
nity’s pretensions of transcendence is foolish because the modern world—like
the epochs preceding it—is riven with inescapable conflict. Knowledge embodies
a Nietzschean ‘will to power’ and Enlightenment notions of knowledge liberat-
ing humanity are mistaken because there is not one Truth but rather many truths
(Sarup, 1988).
Poststructuralists have critiqued reflective teacher education (see Brown and
Jones, 2001; Parker, 1997; Moore, 2004). They object that reflective practice implic-
itly assumes unmediated access to empirical data as a catalyst for cognitive recon-
struction. Poststructuralists deny that beliefs arise from the consequences of action
because, they reason, persons have no unmediated access to those consequences.
There is no ground for pedagogical knowledge. The explanation for change must lie
elsewhere. Teachers cannot stand aside from their consciousness to compare their
beliefs with reality and thus it must be beliefs (not experience) which change beliefs.
The division between the knower and the extra-discursive world to be known is
collapsed into ‘discourse’ and the rupture of pedagogic stasis is assumed to occur
in clashes within and between circulating discourses. Indeed, in asking upon what
ground we should accept the poststructuralist truth claim that ‘there is no Truth’, we
must assume there is none. The movement is, in other words, a form of epistemologi-
cal scepticism. And, since that scepticism is founded upon assertion, it is also a form
of dogmatism.
However, in order to understand its appeal, we must examine the political and
intellectual backdrop to poststructuralism’s rise to academic respectability in the
1990s. English teacher education policy at that time was becoming increasingly
prescriptive. The poststructuralist movement appeared liberating; it encouraged
‘pedagogic eclecticism’ and ‘bricolage’. In contrast, the scientific notion of peda-
gogy appeared symptomatic of a ‘totalising’ impulse or positivist hubris. Teacher
educators were encouraged to celebrate plurality rather than seek closure in expert
practice. The mood was anti-theoretical and relativist. The pedagogic question
seemed to be the educational equivalent of the philosopher Richard Rorty’s objec-
tion to the use of universal criteria to judge whether any society is better aligned
with human nature than any other. Whilst liberals seek solutions in a pragmatic rec-
onciliation with capitalism, poststructuralist illiberals object there are no context-
independent standards available allowing persons to judge the merit of different
‘truths’ and it is only the rhetorical power of discourse which provokes belief
change, rather than correspondence to the way the world is.
The historical record shows that this relativist mood has ancient roots. Far from
being novel, as Lyotard (1984) suggests, it is a recurring pessimistic response to
political upheaval which can be traced back to the Sophists of antiquity. Callinicos
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 27
(2007) argues that its twentieth-century expression is a form of widespread politi-
cal disillusionment in response to the collapse of so-called ‘communist’ states
in 1989 and the perceived emergence of capitalism’s triumph, expressed by
Fukuyama (1989) as the ‘end of history’. The view is that, whilst Enlightenment
science had promised emancipation for humanity, its instrumental rationalism has
instead produced world wars, ‘metanarratives’, and totalitarianism.
The problem is that this sanctions political and educational conservatism.
Celebrating difference renounces the possibility of contesting oppressive educa-
tion practices. Even critical perspectives seem in danger of collapsing into defeat-
ism. Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997, p. 24), for example, remind us that “critical
pedagogy is the term used to describe what emerges when critical theory encoun-
ters education.” But, as Callinicos (2007) points out, critical theory emerged
from the postwar defeatism of the Frankfurt School. It expressed disenchantment
with Enlightenment science and human rationality, and encouraged cultural over
structural analysis. Structural analysis gives due priority to the opposing interests
of the capitalist and labouring class whereas cultural analysis is more conserva-
tive and ultimately hostile towards the possibility of transcendence. The latter
views teaching as a practical activity learned through apprenticeship and aimed at
acculturating students into ‘inherited cultural traditions’ codified in academic dis-
ciplines. The educationist Oakeshott (1962, p. 6) is perhaps the most well-known
English proponent of this position; he condemned as rationalists those who are
“fortified by a belief in a ‘reason’ common to all mankind.” Pedagogic scep-
tics like Oakeshott agree with Marx’s assertion that social practices are acquired
unconsciously but from this conclude that there is no vantage point for critique.
Human knowing is framework-dependent and there can be no view from nowhere.
Indeed, Oakeshott’s criticism of socialist education was premised on his assertion
that abstract ideals cannot guide society since these derive from concrete activity.
The mistake which poststructuralists and conservatives like Oakeshott make
however is in overlooking the possibility of critique being an immanent process.
In other words, they forget that capitalist society is internally divided along class
lines, producing a struggle which generates conflicting experience and conscious-
ness from which critique can and does emerge. Oakeshott’s conservative politi-
cal philosophy by contrast, like that of the Radical Right, emphasises tradition
and distrust of theoretically informed expertise (see Hill, 1989 for a critique
of the Right). Though modern political conservatism accepts some aspects of
Enlightenment thinking, its roots lie in the English Restoration which supported
feudal notions of class rule by birth right. Hence, even though postmodern eclecti-
cism can seem like resistance against experts’ overbearing authority, ‘meta nar-
ratives’ and state prescription, it is a type of rebellion available only to those
positioned structurally so as to be sheltered from the worst material effects of
capitalist crisis. Privileged teachers in English independent fee-paying schools,
for example, require no professional qualification and historically, as Partington
(1999, p. 23) notes, “The more prestigious the school, the more likely was it
that the new teacher was directly recruited after a first degree from Oxford or
Cambridge”.
28 Gail Edwards
Beyond Schooling: Teacher Education and the
Advance of Pedagogy
My argument has been that the undermining of pedagogy in England has been
assisted by popular teacher education movements. These have not taken us beyond
epistemological incoherencies rooted in empiricism and rationalism. Politically,
these align with liberal and sceptical responses to capitalism’s economic and
political contradictions. In this section, I draw upon the scholarship of political
theorist Karl Marx, who offered an alternative exit from the epistemological and
economic crisis through a reformulation of reason and progress along dialecti-
cal lines. Indeed, it was Marx’s fundamental insight that, though the natural and
human sciences have allowed us to acquire knowledge, we have misunderstood
the process by which they do so. As we shall see, if we take a dialectical view,
modern pedagogy is not neutral or ahistorical but rather one expression of the
normative principles continuing the Enlightenment project.
As Suchting’s (1986) scholarship shows, Marx saw that existing answers
to the epistemological question fell into difficulty when trying to identify
the ground upon which human beings establish knowledge. Marx noted that
human perception is unreliable, which crude empiricists merely deny and
which rationalists use as justification for concluding that knowing is grounded
in reason rather than mind-independent reality. The problem for empiricism is
that there is no way to explain how a person can perceive unmediated reality
so that they can compare this state of affairs with their own beliefs. (We have
seen how the efficiency movement cannot answer critics who point to the dis-
torting influence of human bias.)The problem with rationalism, on the other
hand, is that there is no way to assert that anything is incorrect by virtue of the
way the world is. (We have seen how teacher education grounded in discourse
lacks an ontological foundation.) Indeed, Marx thought that rationalism (and
idealist philosophy) mistakes human enquiry for mere ‘scholasticism’. He
noted how a priori projects accept closure about what exists in advance of
practical action and fail precisely because they imply a desire “to know before
we know” which is “just as absurd as the wise resolution of that Scholastic
to learn to swim before he ventured into the water” (Hegel, cited in Suchting,
1986, p. 106).
Marx’s solution was to understand the knowing-subject and the world-to-be-
known (the object) as dialectically and mutually constituted in activity:

Humankind’s primary relation to the world is an active one, specifically the

relation involved in labour. In transforming the world through labour, two
things happen simultaneously. Firstly the object of labour is changed, in
accordance with certain human aims, into a new sort of object—a ‘human-
ised’ object. But, secondly, the subject of labour, the labourer, develops new
sensory capacities adequate to the reception of the new objective character-
istics thus brought forth.
(Suchting, 1986, pp. 12–13)
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 29
The transformative properties of labour mean that we cannot characterise Marx’s
work as a ‘totalising metanarrative’. Marx understood scientific enquiry as an
immanent process whereby method develops in conjunction with empirical
results (Suchting, 1986). His insight did not emerge from a ‘view from nowhere’
but rather was triggered by scientific findings. Over the last two centuries there
has been increasing evidence for a dialectic of nature (for example, in evolution-
ary biology, in cosmology, and in complexity theory—see Matthews, 1980).
We can therefore understand pedagogy as a form of dialectical, transformative
labour. Whilst we can agree with social constructionists that persons are born
into social activity not of their own making and from which their consciousness
derives, pedagogy is not merely reproductive. Human consciousness emerges out
of labour, as a reflection, not of, but upon reality. This is because the socially
constructed world acts back, calling forth new responses from the teacher and
learner. Pedagogy therefore involves the continual assessment of norms and nor-
mative concepts and it is in this (rather than the pragmatist) sense that teachers
are researchers.
Pedagogy therefore does not equate to simple laws. Whilst theory certainly
corresponds to reality, correspondence should not be confused with representa-
tion. Correspondence is a matter of theoretical success in activity and is not mere
mirroring as assumed by traditional epistemologies. If I lift a box and say that it
is a heavy, heaviness does not refer to a property visible or inherent in the box.
Heaviness exists as a relation between the box and myself as I deal with it in activ-
ity. Vygotsky’s (1987) pedagogic concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’
(ZPD) similarly refers to the relation between a learner’s actual level of develop-
ment and that achievable with intervention. Concepts like ‘weight’ or ‘ZPD’ do
not mirror objects but are helpful theoretical abstractions. Similarly, classroom
interactions, educational policies, and employment contracts are relations and
forces shaping (but not wholly determining) human judgement and experience in
its practical relation to the world.
Since these forces and relations are not directly observable, we should be wary
of educational movements based entirely upon empirical data. In navigating our
relations with the world, we use data as clues to underlying reality. Patterns in our
experience must be explained by reference to potential explanatory mechanisms,
expressed as theoretical models (as in weight explaining our visible struggle in
lifting a box!). The critical realist Bhaskar (1978) identifies three interacting lev-
els of reality: the empirical domain (phenomena available to human perception),
the actual domain (events available to perception but not necessarily perceived
at any particular moment), and the real domain (causative forces underlying
the empirical). Objects in the real domain may provoke empirically observed
conflicts which intrude so as to bring into question existing theory about how
the world works. Theoretical abstractions refer to real entities as they intrude
in human activity—that is, to forces and objects which lie behind the empiri-
cally observable patterns they explain (Greenwood, 1994). Theoretical error is
noted when empirical phenomena intrude in ways not explainable in terms of an
existing theoretical model. Theorising helps teachers explain and transform their
30 Gail Edwards
pedagogy by analysing relations, processes, and tendencies, the actualisation of
which is a contingent not determined matter (Matthews, 1980). A teacher may
notice, for example, that a particular psychological theory cannot explain certain
events perceived by her in the classroom. New theoretical research projects may
then emerge aimed at developing better tools of explanation for these phenomena.
Theory is thus necessary to the education of teachers and is neither a prescriptive
nor an arbitrary tool.
Therefore, although pedagogy is goal-directed labour it is dialectically related
to scientific labour. Whilst utility always enters in to the selection of problems
which science pursues, science’s search for new theory begins only when rela-
tions within or between activities based in human needs yield troubling con-
tradictions (Suchting, 1986). This is why, contrary to what is suggested by the
reflective practice movement, teaching strategies are not adequate merely because
they appear to satisfy instrumental needs. A teacher must be satisfied that their
theory of, for example, consciousness, knowledge, society, or education is valid.
Teachers’ ‘common sense’ knowledge brought from their own schooling (what
Vygotsky would call ‘spontaneous’ concepts) must be brought up against science.
For Vygotsky, understanding the world depends upon critical consciousness, which
depends upon relating common-sense concepts to scientific concepts. Critical con-
sciousness is “an act of consciousness whose object is the activity of consciousness
itself” (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 190). To be educated means to transcend—to be able to
think not just with but also about cultural thought-objects and their conditioning
effects. The systematised nature of abstract thought allows critical consciousness
to develop by helping the learner analyse the supra-empirical relations between
their consciousness and their society. Theory is thus never tested against uninter-
preted reality but rather against the everyday spontaneous concepts grounded in
concrete activity. Where contradictions occur, thinking can be transformed and
new relations recognised. This includes relations between oneself and the world
which introduce new potentials for acting differently—that is, for transformation.
Indeed, Marx’s view of rationality was influenced by Hegel’s insight that such con-
flict is not “a kind of abnormality” but rather is “the root of all movement and life”
(Hegel, cited in Callinicos, 2007, p. 41). This explains documented tensions stu-
dent teachers feel when negotiating the theory-practice dialectic between univer-
sity and school (see Fang, 1996). Pedagogically skilled teachers are critical; they
stand back from what they are doing and compare it with other ways of achieving
the same end and may even consider new ends to pursue.
Of course, the direction of change is not determined. The world of relations,
tendencies, and processes includes human agency but this does not guarantee
agency absolute primacy. The work of critical realist Wilmott (2002) demonstrates
this well. Though economic, social, and theoretical systems are constructed by
agents, these systems nonetheless, once created, have ontological autonomy from
those agents; they constitute forces which are distinct from, and irreducible to, the
human agency which created them. Agency and structure are separable domains
out of phase with each other over time. Structure pre-exists the actions of the
agents who reproduce or transform it but the structure also post-dates the agents’
 The Schooling of Teachers in England 31
actions which constructed it. How a particular teacher responds depends on the
state of their pedagogic knowledge at the time but also upon extra-individual obli-
gations attached to the structural role they occupy as a teacher. Structural forces do
not determine pedagogic action, but they do frame it. External forces are exerted
upon teachers regardless of their awareness of them. Failure to meet structural
obligations carries penalties independent of their interpretation. Teachers can be
required by national policy to accelerate pupils’ test achievements to the detriment
of pedagogy (Wilmott, 2002). Failure to do so may incur penalties such as with-
drawal of material resources (through job loss, pay cut, or demotion for example).
The rescue of pedagogy is therefore no apolitical undertaking. Capitalist societ-
ies are distinguished by relations of production which give rise to particular social
and legal structures organised around class. Relations to productive forces are
antagonistic between those who must sell their labour and those who have control
over the means of production, leading to conflict, particularly at times of economic
crisis. Different structural locations lead to contestation over the purpose of school-
ing. A pedagogy which is transformative, and which raises critical and revolution-
ary consciousness, will incite resistance from those who have vested interest in
existing social relations. The case of England illustrates this well. Pedagogy has
been a casualty of competing class interests as capitalist profit has clashed with the
labouring classes’ search for enlightenment and a new social order (Simon, 1974).

Conclusion
In this chapter I have argued firstly, that we should be clear that pedagogy, like
any modern science, is not neutral but rather embodies Enlightenment values and
principles rooted in a transformative agenda. Secondly, I have suggested that it
is important to understand the political backdrop to pedagogic neglect expressed
in efficiency, learner-centred, and poststructuralist teacher education. Politically,
these are expressions of liberal or sceptical responses to capitalism’s contradic-
tions which either assumes that human emancipation can be achieved through the
reform of capitalism rather than its overthrow, or that the scientific ambitions of
the Enlightenment have been discredited. I have suggested therefore, that they are
conservative and backward ideas for teacher education. Thirdly, I have aimed to
show that a reassertion of pedagogy as dialectical, situated historically in the class
relations peculiar to capitalism, can continue the transformative expectations cap-
tured in the Enlightenment agenda.
The dialectical lesson for teacher educators is that, just as students teach their
teachers, teachers teach their teacher educators. Theory may be a guide for action
but teacher educators must also learn from the class struggle of which their stu-
dent teachers (and their pupils and communities) are part. Teacher educators can-
not impose pedagogic or theoretical agendas any more than political leaders can
usher in socialism on behalf of the working class. Of course, this is not to say
that concrete struggles alone advance teacher understanding. Many teachers have
conflicting and uneven consciousness, particularly in England where the concept
of pedagogy has atrophied to the point where it is now synonymous with tips for
32 Gail Edwards
delivering prescribed content and testing for retention. In such a context, the con-
nection between theory and practice is severed and teachers require support to
theorise out of their experience by appropriating theoretical tools to their objective
class interests. There are opportunities for teacher educators to link theory gener-
ated out of past struggles to teachers’ current experience of, for example, industrial
disputes and the dehumanisation and commodification of students in their care.
Teachers need support to connect their work to the concrete political and economic
struggles in which their students are embedded so they can be responsive to the
dialectical interplay between their students’ consciousness and wider structural,
cultural, and economic forces. Vygotsky distinguished between the ‘spontaneous’
awakening of class antagonisms and self-conscious action informed by systematic
generalising about the social order. It is through this process that teachers and stu-
dents learn about their objective interests and at the same time learn how to struggle
together against structural injustice. Thus, the development of pedagogy depends
upon teachers’ sociological, political, and educational understanding, as well as the
degree to which teachers recognise their own class interests, as they assess the pos-
sibilities immanent in their own labour as they work with communities. Moreover,
the rescue of pedagogy is neither predictable nor capricious. The possibilities must
depend in each situation where capital and labour intersects, occurring not just in
classrooms but in events in the wider political sphere.
Pedagogy’s transformative agenda is becoming ever more urgent. The neo-
liberal period is unprecedented in terms of the extent to which educational val-
ues have been displaced. Much discourse now reduces education in schools and
universities to a matter, not of social transformation, but of creating wealth. The
question of whether the pursuit of profit is an end in itself or the means to living
well is rarely discussed. Certainly, economic elites see little need for such discus-
sion in their ‘edubusiness’ agenda, and—as their policies stoke resistance—it is
left to critical educators to advance pedagogy through activism, research, and
critical teacher education.

References
Bain, A. (1877). Education as a science I. Popular Science Monthly, 10(February
1877), pp. 418–428. Accessed online 15 May 2015 at http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/
Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_10/February_1877/Education_as_a_Science_I
Best, G. (1973). Mid-Victorian Britain 1851–1875. London: Fontana Press.
Bhaskar, R. (1978). A Realist Theory of Science. Brighton: Harvester Press.
Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R., and Standish, P. (2000). Education in an Age of Nihilism.
London: Routledge Falmer.
Brown, T. and Jones, L. (2001). Action Research and Postmodernism. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Callinicos, A. (2007). Social Theory: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Chitty, C. (2004). Education Policy in Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (1988). Studying teachers’ knowledge of classrooms:
Collaborative research, ethics and the negotiation of narrative. The Journal of Educa-
tional Thought, 22(2A), pp. 269–282.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Wonder Island boys
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of
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Title: The Wonder Island boys

capture and pursuit

Author: Roger T. Finlay

Release date: September 2, 2023 [eBook #71543]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: The New York Book Company, 1914

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS ***
 Contents
List of Illustrations
Glossary of words
used in text of this volume

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS

By ROGER T. FINLAY
Thrilling adventures by sea and land of two boys and an aged Professor who are cast away on an
island with absolutely nothing but their clothing. By gradual and natural stages they succeed in
constructing all forms of devices used in the mechanical arts and learn the scientific theories involved
in every walk of life. These subjects are all treated in an incidental and natural way in the progress of
events, from the most fundamental standpoint without technicalities, and include every department of
knowledge. Numerous illustrations accompany the text.
Two thousand things every boy ought to know. Every page a romance. Every line a fact
Six titles—60 cents per volume

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS

The Castaways
THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS
Exploring the Island
THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS
The Mysteries of the Caverns
THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS
The Tribesmen
THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS
The Capture and Pursuit
THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS
The Conquest of the Savages

PUBLISHED BY
THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY
147 Fourth Avenue New York

THE WONDER ISLAND BOYS

————
CAPTURE AND PURSUIT
 “The warriors approached unsuspectingly”
[See p. 53]

The Wonder Island Boys

CAPTURE AND PURSUIT

BY

ROGER T. FINLAY
 ILLUSTRATED

THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY

New York

Copyright, 1914, by
THE NEW YORK BOOK COMPANY
 CONTENTS
I.The Fight at the Savages’ Camp Page 11
The reappearance of Harry in excitement. Explaining the situation hurriedly. The arrival of a
new band. Putting the wagon in position to resist attack. Absence of John and George. The
warning from the Professor. The shot west of the camp. John and George circling the camp.
Unexpected meeting with the warriors. The pursuit. The second band from the north. The
Professor scouting to the north of the camp. Discovers the approach of reinforcements. The
flight of George and John. Reaching the wagon. Searching for the Professor. Concentration of
various tribes. Discovering the wagon. Preparing for attack. The absence of John and the
Professor. The boys’ ruse. The attack and repulse. John and the Professor approach the wagon.
After the attack. Taking a hand. Results of the fight.
II.The Reconnoitering Seat in the Tree Page 23
Bringing in the wounded warriors. Ascertaining that the savages knew of their home at the
Cataract. First noticing the different headdresses. Distinguishing the different tribes. The curly
hair. The Kurabus. The Saboros. The Tuolos who captured Ralph and Tom. The savages
temporarily disappear. Waiting for reinforcements. Determined to resist. In the morning.
Surrounded. The interview with the wounded captive. No attack during the day. Determine to
reach the river. The escape in the night. Discovered. Difficulty in moving through the brush.
Sighting a small stream. Erecting the fort. Awaiting the attack. A trinket. The blue stone
talisman. Angel reconnoitering. The adjacent tree. How he made a seat for George. The rope
ladder. Making observations.
III.The Midnight Return to Defend Cataract Page 34
A view of the besiegers. Angel’s gun. The surprise of the savages at Angel’s antics with the
gun. Two tribes. The Saboros and Kurabus. Ralph and George as tree pickets. Symptoms of
blood poisoning in the captive. Inflammation. Septic poisons. Infection. Toxins. Causes of
fever. Chills. John’s midnight maneuver. A shot. Excitement in the native camps. The noises
coming nearer. John appears in native garb. His story. Encouraging strife between the
besieging tribes. Hostilities. The fight. The Kurabus defeated. Cut off. Retreating to the north.
Fear they will go to the Cataract. Reinforcements for the Kurabus. Discover the wagon. Learn
of the fight with the Saboros. Determine to return and defend Cataract. The midnight march.
IV.The Attack on Cataract Page 46
Avoiding the warriors. Crossing the stream. The march through the forest. Sighting Cataract.
No natives in sight. Cataract home intact. Concealing the wagon. Preparing for the arrival of
the war band. Trying to talk to the captive Saboros. The “Tree of Life.” Oil. The savage use for
ointment. Health and comfort. Biblical use. The approach of the warriors. The Kurabus.
Reinforced. They approach unsuspectingly. The volley. Consternation and retreat. The savages
refuse to treat. Bringing in the wounded Kurabus. Internal bleeding. Coagulation a safety.
Nature’s way of protecting. Paralysis. Patient improving. The constant watch. An apparent
conflict among the besiegers. John’s reasoning. The attack delayed.
V.Trying to Establish Communications with the Natives Page 58
Awaiting the night. How news travels among savage tribes. Questioning the Saboros. The
pictures of the boys shown to the captives. Recognized by them. The headdresses. From their
own tribes. The talk between the Kurabus and the Saboros. John shows the Saboro the picture
of a bearded man. Recognizes it. Knives and forks. Surprise of the captives. Nature’s knives
 and forks. The besiegers examining the water wheel. Mischief on the part of Harry and Tom.
Giving the warriors an exhibition. Hitching up the sawmill. A startled audience. The accident
to Harry. The decaying bodies of the dead warriors. The burial. Refusing to let Harry
participate. The explanation. The terrible poison of putrefied human flesh. Why the putrefied
germs of a specie is so deadly to its own kind. Utilizing the knowledge in the making of
serums. Trying to communicate with the besiegers through the captives. A litter. Harry’s
inscription on it. Carrying out the wounded captive. Sabbath. How determined. The captives
and the skeletons. Making trinkets. Disappearance of the besiegers.
VI.Approaching the First Hostile Camp Page 71
Significance of gifts. What are the real kinds. The Bible and the gun. Preparing weapons.
Ammunition. Overhauling the wagon. Stut and Chump. Preparing a new expedition.
Determining a course. The Osagas. The Chief Uraso. Encamping on upper Cataract River. The
enemy’s country. John and George as advance scouts. Observations from trees. The tributary of
West River. Angel’s danger signal. Sighting the inhabitants. Tribal warfare. A number in sight.
A village. The objective point. Camping for the night. Familiar ground to John. Their policy. A
bold front. Caution. Absence of fires. Tribes at war. The hostile camp. John’s approach.
Thoroughly examining the camp. Encircling their position. Peculiar picketing of the native
camp. An elevation.
VII.John and Stut Rescuing Three Captives Page 85
The lights beyond the elevation. The village to the rear of the savages’ camp. Unusual
commotion in the camp. The arrival of new warriors. Hilarity in camp. Bringing in captives.
The fire around the captives. Three bound victims. A bearded white man. Returning to the
wagon. The Professor’s investigation of the camp. John determines to rescue the captives. The
preparations. Stut assisting. Using the captives’ garments. Reaching the natives’ camp. Waiting
for the fires to die down. John and Stut approaching cautiously. Entering the camp circle.
Lying down. The guard of the prisoners. Selecting Stut for guard. John at the side of the
captives. Stut encouraging the guards to sleep. John holds up a warning finger to the white
man. Pushing over a knife. Releasing the cords of his fellow captives. The captives’ stealthy
movements from the camp. Discovered by a guard. A dash for freedom. John and Stut
covering the retreat. The Professor accosts the rescued captives. Stopping the pursuit. John and
Stut deceiving the warriors. Eluding them. John and Stut at the wagon. Stut recognizes his
brother.
VIII.The Rescued Chief Muro Page 97
The white captive John’s shipmate and companion. Joy in the party. Giving Muro a spear.
Blakely admiring the wagon. The Brabos. The Osagas. The interposing forest. Taking up the
fort. Moving toward the village. Fording the river. Morning. The Saboros amused and
surprised at Angel. The boys telling Blakely about Cataract. The hungry captives. Forming a
picket line. The romance of wheels. Early origin. John and Stut’s trip to the native village.
Learn of another village to the south. Blakely’s story of the captive boys. The savages carry a
boat east from the West River. Tuolos the bitterest foes. How Blakely evaded the inhabitants.
His home at the edge of the forest. Twice captured.
IX.March to the South. The Message to the Saboro Tribe Page 109
A council of war. The talk with Muro. Appearance of a band of Brabos. Passing the fort. The
trying winds. Monsoons twice each year. The night pickets. Why the inhabitants all lived in
southwestern portion of the island. Climatic reasons. Spanish Missions. Indian village sites.
Capacity of primitive races to find the best locations. The deference shown Muro. The guns
fascinating him. Muro’s admiration for Harry. Muro’s sign of eternal friendship. Gratitude
sacred in savage minds. Blakely training the force. The Saboros taught how to use the guns. A
 fighting force of eleven. The Saboros forming the camp guard. Tracking the wagon by the
wheel imprints. Putting up the fort. Muro delegates Stut to go to his tribe. His departure.
X.The Capture of the Professor Page 121
The long watch by night. Subjects discussed. Savage persistency discussed. Cardinal points in
human nature. The savages seen to the north. The “Fire Fiends.” Muro exhibiting himself to
his late captors. He sees the work of the guns for the first time. The siege of the wagon.
Surprise parties in the night. Taking up the fort. Continuing the advance to the south. Muro
advises avoiding the Kurabus territory. The camp surrounded the second night. Mysterious
disappearance of the Brabos during the night. The Professor prospecting in the hills. The noon
hour. Captured. John sees the natives to the South. The effect of the Professor’s capture on the
boys. The pursuit. The forest where Blakely made his home. Uncertainty as to the tribe which
captured the Professor. John, Muro, and the other Saboros follow the trail of the natives. The
wagon following. How the Professor was captured. Taken to the Berees’ village. The meeting
with the chief. Curing the chief’s daughter. Gratitude. The chief indicates that the Professor
may return to his people. He refuses. Examines the village. Treats the wounded. Synthetic
food. Refuses to take food. Wonder of the natives. Mystery and its part in savage life. The
medicine men. Impressing them with his power. John finds himself before a hostile party.
XI.Finding More of the “Investigator’s” Boys Page 136
Another tribe coming up. Two tribes at war in their front. Barring the way. The next day. Still
fighting. The Professor’s doubts and perplexities about John and the boys. His discovery of the
prisoners’ stockade. Finds two boys who belonged to the Investigator. Removes them from the
enclosure. Takes them to the chief. The Professor explains why he is there. The boys
understand the language. Teach the Professor. The boys take a bath. Furnished clothes by the
chief. Finding a soap plant. Explains why he uses the food tablets. Living without eating. The
boys tell their story. The elaborate meal set out by the chief. Furnishing the Professor and the
boys with a hut. Learning the principal words in the Berees’ language. A small vocabulary.
Finding peculiar nuts. The uses of salt.
XII.The Pursuit Intercepted by Fight Between Tribes Page 145
An exasperating situation. The fighting tribes preventing John from continuing the search.
John approaches the camps at night. Fails to find evidences of captives. The Berees. No news
from John in five days. Muro and Nomo, disguised as Berees, approach their camp. No
captives there. Visit the Osagas with like results. Nomo captured. John determines to enter the
Osagas’ camp alone. Instructions to be followed. Angel in the tree. The telltale chatter.
Looking to the north. Kurabus. No word from Stut. Perplexed. With whom were the Kurabus
allied? The advance scouts of their tribe. Discovering the wagon. The fight between the Berees
and the Osagas. The Kurabus making a detour. The fort taken down. Hurrying the team to the
east. John’s reasons for escaping from the vicinity. John and Muro as rear guards. Making
tracks in the wrong direction. Crossing the ridge to safety.
XIII.The Berees Warriors Under Command of the Professor Page 157
Names of the rescued boys in the camp of the Berees. Commotion in the village. Learning
about a bitter fight. News from the Osagas. Calling on the chief. Uraso’s name startles the
chief. The Professor learns that the Berees believe the white men sacrificed Uraso. Fighting for
revenge. The Professor explains the situation to the chief. The warriors instructed to follow the
Professor. His talk with the chief about thunder and lightning. The Great Spirit. The good and
the bad. The chief’s peculiar theology. Growing, or being made. Sacrificing captives. Reasons
for it. The wise men. Prayer, asking. Sacrificing, giving. Ralsea, sub-chief. John and his party.
A long night. How war prevents agricultural pursuits. Promoting the island. Rich soil. Utilizing
the inhabitants. The law of least resistance. Property. Its sacred character. Want one of the first
 signs of civilization. Law. A party of Brabos going through Kurabus’ country. The Brabos
attack. A stinging defeat. The charge on the enemy. Pineapples.
XIV.The Wagon in the Fighting Zone of Four Tribes Page 170
Getting the number of the different tribes. Learning about their quarrels. The Professor tells
about the white man’s power. The chief’s questions. A litter for the Professor. On the march.
Ralsea agreeable. More Berees from the north. Learning about the actions of the Kurabus. The
Professor decides to go to the Osaga’s village. Refuse to permit any of their people to be
injured. Learn the route of the Osagas’ warriors. Going forward. Decides to send a runner to
John. Ralsea picks Sutoto. The message to John. How and on what it was written. Sutoto’s
character. His departure. John learns that Muro’s wife is Uraso’s sister. The Berees good
people. Suros chief of the Berees. The Illyas near the mountains. Only Illyas, Tuolos and
Kurabus kill captives. The wagon going southeast. Kurabus appearing in front. A hurried
retreat to the east. Warriors ahead of them. The Brabos. The wagon in the central fight zone of
the four tribes. Determine to fight.
XV.Uraso Captured by the Berees. Welcomed by the Professor Page 182
The Professor within Osaga’s territory. Advises the people they will not be injured. Telling
them Uraso was not injured by the white people. Following the Osagas to prevent them from
attacking the wagon. Blakely and John notice the peculiar manner in which the tribes march.
Characteristics of people. Unaware of the presence of the wagon. Discovered by the last tribe.
The fort ready for the fight. Kurabus circling the fort. Muro’s first shot with the gun. A good
marksman. Defeat of attacking party. Rain. Inability to use the bows. An uncomfortable night.
A call in the darkness. An object held up outside the fort. Sutoto arrives with the message from
the Professor. Helping him into the fort. A royal welcome. Tells the story of the Professor.
Recognizes Muro. Blakely recalls Sutoto. The Professor hurrying forward. A lurking native.
Cries of Osaga. Recognizes Uraso. Captured and escaped. Uraso’s surprise at the Professor in
command of the Berees. Uraso explains. Tells the people about the Professor.
XVI. A Perplexing Mix-up Page 195
Preparing to attack the wagon. Sutoto recognizes the Brabos. Natives on four sides. A mix-up.
The attack from all sides. The first volley. A charge. The terrible fire from the fort. Repulsed.
Sutoto’s delight. The Kurabus sight the Brabos. The peculiar movements of the Brabos. Going
to the south. The Illyas in pursuit. The charge of John and party on the Kurabus. Flight to the
north. The Professor hears the boom of the guns. Intense haste. Fearing the Osagas have
attacked. The firing continues. Sending out a scout for John. No word from the front.
Midnight. The Professor learns that the Osagas are not engaged. Showing feeling by
expressions. How different people express their emotions. National characteristics. Who is the
wise man? What is wisdom? Learning who are the people to the west of them. Ralsea and
Uraso go to the north. The Kurabus again attacking the fighting parties. Decide to go west and
cross the river. Evading the warring factions.
XVII.The Saboros Coming to the Rescue Page 208
The Kurabus joining the Illyas. The Brabos to the south of the Illyas. The wagon arrested in its
westward flight. The tribes opposing each other. The arrival of the tribe from the east. A
surprise. Believe it to be the Saboros. The defeat of the Illyas and Kurabus. The retreating
forces. The Professor gets no word from Ralsea and Uraso. Other scouts go forward. A scout
returns. No sounds of guns for three days. A war party east of the Professor. The Saboros
appear. The Professor appears before them. Their astonishment. Stut rushes forward.
Recognizes the Professor. Combining their forces. Stut’s story. Causes of the war. Escaped
when Brabos attacked Kurabus’ village. Indications that the Osagas had joined the Brabos. Stut
 surprised to know that Uraso had been captured by the Illyas. Learning of a treaty between the
Illyas, Tuolos and Kurabus. News of the defeat of the Illyas and Kurabus. The advance.
XVIII.The Terrible Fight and Final Victory Page 219
The retreating tribes approaching the wagon. Angel discovers a tribe coming from the north.
The Tuolos. Going to the assistance of the Illyas and Kurabus. Again in the path of the hostiles.
Trying to escape to the river. The Kurabus driven to the river. The intercepted journey. Erecting
the fort. The Brabos pursuing the Kurabus. A stealthy warrior. Muro sees him. Recognizes
Uraso. The boys wild with excitement. Uraso points out the Osagas nearest the river. Tells
them about the Professor. The Tuolos coming from the north. Reasons why Uraso could not
return to the Professor. Tells why the Professor went to the Osaga’s village. The Professor and
the two tribes passing over the battlefield of the previous day. Ralsea returns with news of the
wagon and its safety. News that the Brabos and Osagas were wreaking vengeance. The sound
of the guns from the fort. The Professor advancing in haste. The Tuolos charging the wagon.
The frightful volley. The Kurabus coming to assist. The Illyas driven back by the Saboros and
the Osagas. A combined attack. Complete defeat of the allied tribes. The Professor and his
allies surround the wagon. The happy reunion.
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“The warriors approached unsuspectingly” Frontispiece
“When George reached the limb which Angel occupied, the latter was jubilant in his
expressions of pleasure” 23
“ ‘Do you think they will be able to read that?’ asked Will” 166
“Each one trying to be the first to grasp Uraso by the hand, and welcome him” 230
Angel’s Seat 32
Rope Ladder 37
The Cataract Home 49
Savage Headdress 59
Primitive Forks 61
Harry’s Message on the Litter 66
Angel in a Papaw Tree Sighting the Savages 78
The Primitive Wheel 102
Arrow Type Most Frequently Used 123
Shell Vessels 130
Soap Plant 140
Pistachio 144
Pineapple 168
The Plantain 177
Message on the Plantain Leaf 190
Map Showing Position of the Parties 204
The Battle Ground at the Wagon 223
CAPTURE AND PURSUIT
 CHAPTER I

THE FIGHT AT THE SAVAGES’ CAMP

The Professor, Harry and Tom were dumbfounded at the excited condition of Ralph, as he
emerged from the wood and told them to reach the wagon as quickly as possible.
“Where are John and George?” asked the Professor, as all hurriedly ran to the rear.
“George had already gone forward to take his position, when we saw a large number of the
savages appear to our left, and he asked me to tell you at once, while he went after George to inform
him of the danger.”
“It will not do to leave them in this way. Go back to the wagon and get all the guns ready, and I
will remain here, so that at the first sign I may be ready to aid them. If we do not return for some time,
or in the event you hear any firing, two of you must come to me with the reserve guns.”
The boys hurried to the wagon, all the reserve weapons were taken out, and the ammunition put in
order for instant use. They waited impatiently for the first sign which would be the signal to act, but
fully a half hour passed, and, after consulting, it was decided that Ralph and Tom should go to the
Professor at once, and take with them four extra guns, leaving Harry, who knew most about the yaks
and how to handle them in an emergency.
In order to make the situation clear, it will be necessary to make a digression from the story.
About fourteen months previous to the opening event of this chapter, an aged Professor and two of
the boys, named George Mayfield and Harry Crandall, who were shipmates on the schoolship
Investigator, were wrecked at sea, and stranded on an unknown shore. They were stripped of
everything but their clothing, and of that had only a scanty supply.
Without tools of any sort, or any of the means to procure food or clothing, they did not despair,
but set to work, in the most primitive way, to dig the different things from the earth, and to make
clothing, tools and other requirements.
They found the various metals and vegetable products; constructed a water wheel; a sawmill; put
up a small shop in which were installed the various tools, such as lathes, grindstone, drilling machines,
and the like; a loom was eventually devised, to utilize the vegetable fibers, and by means of which
clothing was provided.
During the work which necessities forced upon them, they were desirous of knowing something of
the land which had received them, and several trips were made into the interior, during which time
evidence was found of the existence of tribes of savages as neighbors, but could not learn definitely
where they were located, nor had they any means of determining the number.
Fortunately, some yaks, a wild species of cattle, were captured, and these they turned to use by
taking advantage of the milk of the animals, and also by utilizing the fur for making felt, as well as
tanning the hides for footwear.
But one of the most important uses was in training them for work, and a wagon was built, which
served in several trips into the interior.
During the excursions they learned of the existence of others who had been shipwrecked, and later
discovered that one of the boats made in the early occupation of the island, and which was left by
them in a large river, about ten miles to the south of their home, had been taken by some one, who had
put different oars and a rope in the boat, which they discovered after it had been found. This, together
with the finding of a lifeboat, companion to the one in which they were wrecked, was sufficient
evidence that some of their fellow-voyagers were on the island, and this was confirmed when a
message was found in the lifeboat, which stated that certain ones were captured by the savages.
Before they had an opportunity of making any exploring trips, the boys discovered a mysterious
cavern, not far from their home, and this was explored, with the Professor, and they were startled to
find the skeletons of a number of pirates who had inhabited the cave, and the position of the skeletons,
and the weapons, showed conclusively that the entire band had been wiped out in a terrific fight.
In the caverns also were found the skeletons of chained captives, the existence of a regular arsenal
of weapons, and an immense hoard of treasures, which had been hidden within the recesses of the
cave, for centuries.
Many mysterious things occurred to them, too long to relate, but all of them bearing on the things
which interested them, and the first serious attempt to discover the savages, was to build a boat twenty
feet long, equipped with a sail, and with this, and an ample supply of provisions on board, the course
was directed to the northwest, and along the western coast.
During the three days’ cruise, the weather was fair, but on the fourth day a terrible storm came up
and drove them back around the northern point of land, and in the height of the storm they were cast
ashore, and their boat wrecked, fully seventy miles from their home.
Just before being driven back by the storm, they had the first view of lights, which showed the
location of the savages. They laboriously made their way home, and on returning found John, one of
the present party, who suffered loss of memory, and had also an attack of aphasia, or inability to speak.
His full name was John L. Varney, and for two months did not utter a word, nor did he seem to
recognize the existence of those around him. Singularly enough, he was a first-class mechanic, and
during hunting trips showed himself to be expert, as well as in fishing, and did anything and
everything which he had seen others engage in.
Together with John, the Professor and the two boys built a first-class wagon, and undertook a trip
in the direction of the savages. In the meantime they made several guns, so that they had ten muzzle-
loaders, which, while they took time to reload, were better than bows and arrows, that the boys had
formerly made and used.
Several months after landing they captured a baby orang-outan. This had now grown to be strong
and active, and as these animals have great imitative qualities, George undertook to educate it to do
many things, and it succeeded, on its own initiative, in doing many mischievous tricks, which afforded
amusement for all the party.
He was called Red Angel, or more commonly Angel, and as he had a wonderful instinct for
scenting danger, was always taken on trips, and was with them on the first extended tour made with
the new wagon. During that trip the two boys, Ralph Wharton and Tom Chambers, were rescued from
the savages, and it was found that both boys were companions on the ill-fated Investigator, and were
captured by several tribes of natives, after they had been on the island over nine months.
During this trip they had a half dozen fights with the natives, which so depleted their stock of
ammunition that it compelled their retreat, and finally returned, with determination to manufacture a
new lot of guns, and lay in an ample supply of ammunition.
After their return John’s memory was restored, and he related his wonderful history, and together
the six set to work preparing the new equipment. This comprised twenty-five guns and two hundred
and fifty rounds of ammunition. The wagon carried with it a portable fort which could be set up on
one side of the wagon to protect the team of yaks, as well as themselves, and it was also so made as to
serve as a float for enabling them to cross streams.
The particular reason for the present trip was not revenge, but to rescue the other boatload of their
companions, and also some of the companions of John, who must be somewhere in the interior, unless
sacrificed by the natives.
 They were now on this trip, and had gone about twenty miles from home, and after crossing the
South River, the day before, set out in the direction of the savages’ village, which lay to the southwest.
Early in the morning of the day, after discovering a half dozen savages encamped less than a half
mile away, it was determined to surprise and capture them, so as to afford a means whereby they
might treat with the inhabitants.
While in the act of surrounding their camp, John discovered a band approaching from the
southwest, so that he was compelled to notify the others of the danger, and Ralph was sent back
hurriedly with the warning, as related.
As they approached the Professor, the latter held up a warning hand, and whispered: “I do not
think John and George will be able to make their way back by the left, as the new band has just come
in, and they are now all together, so that if you will remain here I will go to the right. Await my
coming, unless there should be firing, in which event go back to the wagon and prepare it to receive
us.”
Before he had taken a step a shot rang out, and the Professor continued: “Go at once and get the
wagon ready.”
The boys rushed back, and informed Harry, and the wagon was at once turned around into an
advantageous position, the yaks unyoked, and the portable fort taken from the wagon and set up in
position. The place selected was in the open, so as to compel the savages to travel over the open
spaces before reaching the wagon.
In the meantime, let us see what John and George were doing. When John told Ralph to inform
the others, he had seen the newly arriving warriors coming up slowly from the southwest, and as
George had already gone on to take up his position to his left, he followed after him, and as he caught
up, said:
“We cannot carry out our movement, as a number of savages are now coming up, and I have sent
Ralph to warn the others. We must now make our way around the camp to the north, and then strike
east. Move as quietly as possible, and follow me.”
Before they had gone three hundred feet, John held up a warning hand. “There is another lot of
them coming from the northwest. What does all this mean?”
Their only salvation now was to move directly to the west, and this took them just the opposite
direction from the wagon.
When the Professor left the boys he moved cautiously to the northwest, and before he had gone far
saw the savages approaching from that quarter. As the band which John had advised them about, was
coming in from the southwest, he was, for a time, mystified, but soon reached the conclusion that it
must be a force not noticed by John, so he circled to the north, in wonder why John or George should
have used the gun which they had just heard.
When George and John moved to the west, the band which they originally sighted, arrived in sight
of the camp, and they at once changed the course to the south, and thus enabled them to make their
way back to the wagon in that direction; but before the trail was reached, John said: “We must
approach the trail cautiously, as there may be stragglers, or some who are following behind.”
At that instant, two warriors crossed the path directly ahead of them, the brush being so close at
this point that they could not see fifty feet ahead. The savages saw them instantly, and John held up his
hand, as though to speak, but they did not wait to parley, and as one of them raised his spear to throw
it, the other fitted an arrow to his bow, but before the spear left the native’s hand, George drew his gun
and fired.
The other savage did not wait to shoot, as he saw his companion fall, but bounded forward, in the
direction of the camp. The shot, of course, aroused the entire camp, and it also accelerated the
movement of the tribe approaching from the northwest.
 “Follow me quickly,” whispered John. “Let us go south, and then make our way east.”
In a short space of time the savages were at the scene of the shooting, and, as they had no means
of knowing in which direction their enemies had gone, began the process of trailing. This was,
necessarily, slow work, and it gave John and George time to make their way by a wide detour around
to the wagon, to find that only Harry was there, but gratified to think that the precaution had been
taken to erect the fort.
“Remain here, George, while I go forward to the Professor.” As he said this he darted forward,
and soon reached the position of Ralph and Tom, and the latter at once informed him of the direction
the Professor had taken.
“Too bad, I am afraid he has fallen into the hands of the band which has just come in from the
northwest.”
This was, indeed, surprising news for the boys, but he did not wait for their comments.
“Do not wait for us long, but go back to the wagon. I do not intend to come back until I get the
Professor,” and he was away.
“I do not understand what to make of the different forces all concentrating at this point. There
must be something up, sure.”
John followed the direction the Professor had taken, making a wide detour to the north, and it was
well he did so, as the savages, having lost the trail, were now in consternation at the condition of
things. They knew the white men must be lurking somewhere near, but the direction was a mystery.
The search was continued by John for over a quarter of an hour, when a shot rang out in the
direction of the wagon, and as he turned to go back, was gratified to see the Professor several hundred
feet away, waving to him, and together they started for the wagon.
When Ralph and Tom returned to the wagon and reported the situation, they were all in great
excitement. They had no doubt but the savages would, sooner or later, discover the trail left by John
and George, and this would lead to the wagon. In this they were not mistaken, for while it took some
time to trace out the tracks made by them, they soon reached the wagon, and, in fact, entered the
clearing before they had an idea they were so near the whites.
Harry showed himself above the top of the fort, and the savages, unused at the sight of such a
spectacle, stood in amazement. He held up his hand, as several of the savages fitted arrows to their
bows, as a signal not to fight, and they withdrew a short distance in consultation.
“If they only knew it, we could plug them without any difficulty at this distance,” remarked Harry.
“What do you suppose they will attempt to do?”
“I only wish the Professor and John were here,” answered George.
“They are going to fight, that is sure,” observed Ralph.
“Let’s make a big show, anyway,” cried Harry. “Put a gun through each one of the portholes.”
The fort had four portholes on each side, and a gun was thrust through each and balanced in
position.
It now appeared that an enveloping movement was taking place on the part of the savages. After
disappearing, they could be seen at different quarters, as they again approached.
Without a word of warning a shower of arrows came from all sides, and Harry cautioned them to
be cool and shoot only when a distinctive mark could be seen.
All was quiet within the fort, until Harry said: “See that chief near the large tree? I will make a try
for him.” Carefully taking aim, he fired. This was the shot which John and the Professor heard.
They did not wait for any explanations. “I hope the boys are safe,” the Professor remarked, as they
hurried forward.
“They are no doubt at the wagon. I advised them to go there and not wait for us.”
 “Do you suppose that shot means they have discovered the wagon?”
“I have no doubt of it. They would be very stupid, indeed, not to be able to trace us, and that was
the reason I admonished them to go to the wagon.”
As they approached the savages could be seen skulking about to surround the wagon. “Well,
Professor, I suppose we shall have to give them a little surprise?”
The Professor smiled, as they crawled up to get a close position. The tactics were now well
understood by both, and that was to rush the wagon from all sides, and thus hope, by overwhelming
numbers, to succeed.
“The boys are pretty smart, after all,” said the Professor, as he noted the guns at the portholes, and
John could hardly refrain from bursting out in laughter at the sight.
At a signal the savages sprang forward, and there was a volley from the fort. “Brave boys,”
exclaimed John. “Shall we take a hand?”
“It would do me good to do so; but would it not be better to wait for the next movement on their
part. That shot staggered them.”
It was too apparent that the savages had not counted on such a disastrous result of the charge; but
they were determined now. As they were springing forward, and before those in the fort had delivered
the second volley, the Professor quietly said: “I think we can risk it now.”
Both fired at the same instant, and two of the warriors fell. The attack from the new quarter
dumbfounded them. Neither John nor the Professor appeared in the opening, but reloaded as rapidly as
possible, and while the boys were immeasurably surprised, kept their wits, and at the order of George,
fired a second volley.
This was too much for the natives, and they scampered from the vicinity of the wagon, and away
from their lurking enemies. John and the Professor deliberately walked over the intervening space, as
the boys cheered them.
The result of the shots, for ten in all had been fired, were four dead and four wounded, two of
them so severely that they were unable to move.
“When George reached the limb which Angel occupied,
the latter was jubilant in his expressions of pleasure”
[See p. 33]
 CHAPTER II

THE RECONNOITERING SEAT IN THE TREE

From the position of the wagon it was impossible to see very far beyond the clearing, and they
had no means of knowing how far the attacking party had gone. The first step of the Professor was to
bring in the two severely wounded men, and administer to them.
One was found to be beyond hope, but the other did not appear to be struck in a vital spot. The
other two, less severely wounded, were brought up and made comfortable outside of the fort, and so
arranged that any attack of their enemies would bring them within line of the arrows.
The proceeding to dress the wounds was looked at in astonishment by the three unfortunates. They
did not expect such care from their enemies. It was not their way. As soon as they had been made
comfortable, John proceeded to interrogate them, to the best of his ability.
They could understand some words, and slowly the facts were brought out. In substance, the
savages had knowledge of the existence of the white people on the island, and had by some means
learned the location. When the Professor and the boys landed the first home built was near the landing
place, but it was unsuited to their needs, as fresh water was not obtainable.
After some time they discovered a small stream, which they eventually christened Cataract River,
because they located their permanent home at a cataract about a quarter of a mile from the sea, and it
was at this place that they put up the water wheel, and erected the workshop.
From John’s interpretations of the captives’ stories, all the savage tribes were now aware of the
existence of the colony, and of the fights which had taken place near West River, but there was not
sufficient cohesion among the different tribes, to form a bond of unity, so that two of the most
powerful, or warlike, tribes had finally joined hands, and this accounted for the appearance of the
bands from two different sources.
“I notice,” said the Professor, “that the headdresses worn by these people are different from any
that we have yet come into contact with. Do you think you could draw from them any information
which would enable us to determine whether the Chief’s tribe has joined them?”
“That is just what I have been trying to discover,” replied John. “I endeavored to describe the tribe
by the location, but, as you may have noticed, we do not get along very brilliantly. The two that
George and I met this afternoon were from a tribe that I know of; but this fellow here belongs to an
entirely different people.”
The Professor turning to Harry said: “You will notice that the headdress of this one is similar to
those we took from the first one shot in the second day’s fight. Under the circumstances we have
definite knowledge of at least five tribes.”
“I will try to get some idea as to the number they have,” and turning to the more intelligent of the
two, he tried to make himself understood, but at best it was only indefinite, as to numbers.
The characteristic feature of one of the headdresses was the curly hair, and this indicated that the
enemy of that tribe was to the west, and clearly pointed out that neither of the two bands attacking
them were the captors of Ralph and Tom.
“I am going to ask them the name of the tribe from which the hair was taken,” and pointing at the
black curly hair, the captive pronounced the name “Tuolo.” This was instantly recognized by Tom,
although he could not before that time recall the proper word.
 “He says the name of his tribe is ‘Kurabu,’ and those from the south are the ‘Saboros.’ It would be
well to remember those names, as it may come in handy hereafter. I suppose Ralph and Tom will have
no trouble in recognizing the Tuolos.”
“For my part,” said Harry, “the people who sport the dark-brown hair in this fellows’ head-piece
will be recognized by me from this time on, the Saboros, because they are the first ones who attacked
us.”
This was really the case, so that it was obvious that the two tribes who had attacked them were not
the ones they had the former battles with, and things began to assume a very grave aspect.
The chief referred to by John, in the former conversation, was wounded by them and captured in
their former trip, and after his wounded legs had healed, had left them, and returned to his tribe, much
to their regret. They had treated him handsomely, and grew to like him, as he showed many desirable
traits. He belonged to the particular faction which had captured John, and was recognized by him
when memory returned, and they had hoped that he would not forget them.
The serious aspect of the case was, that the Chief had not returned, nor was there any evidence
that he was grateful for the interest which was taken in him.
The captives were constantly under guard, and provided with food, but during the entire night
three kept guard constantly, to see that they did not communicate with each other.
The savages were entirely out of sight, and there was no indication that they were in the vicinity,
and past midnight, John silently stole from the wagon and made his way across the clearing. He was
absent more than an hour, until all began to be alarmed, but his return was so quiet that he was almost
at the wagon before he was observed.
“What have you learned?” was the Professor’s eager question.
“They are still guarding our camp, and intend to fight it out, if my observations are of any value. It
is my opinion that they are waiting for the appearance of additional warriors. In any event, we must
prepare for the fight of our lives.”
Before morning came one of the wounded savages died, thus leaving three still on their hands, and
it began to be a problem what to do in this emergency. They now knew, undoubtedly, where the
Cataract home was, and the boys worried because they did not want them to destroy that, and while
the siege was in progress some of the band might go there and wreck it.
“This is a situation which demands our most careful consideration,” said the Professor, gravely.
“We have considerable at stake, and may be able to keep them interested here, and probably in time
get them to understand what our intentions are.”
John and the Professor debated the matter during the entire night, except when John was on the
scouting trip, and during such little snatches of sleep as they were able to take. There appeared to be
nothing to do but to resist to the utmost of their power, and all felt able to do this successfully, unless
something unforeseen should intervene.
When the gray light began to show in the east, George was busy preparing the morning meal, and
it was fully eight o’clock before the savages showed themselves for the first time. They were seen on
all sides of the wagon, but at distances out of gunshot range.
John again had an interview with the captives, and endeavored to make them understand that they
did not wish to attack them, and had no hostile intentions; but all efforts of that character were soon
found to be fruitless.
The day wore on, and no attack was made. They undoubtedly saw the disposition which had been
made of the three captives, and this, unquestionably, deterred them from making an attack.
“What shall we do after to-morrow for water? We have only enough to last us and the yaks for
about twenty-four hours more,” asked Harry.
 “How far is it to the river?” asked George. The Professor and John both judged the distance to be
less than a half mile.
They all looked at each other, and read the import of the question in each other’s eyes. Should
they make a fight to reach the river? With water they could defy the natives. It was a conclusion
reached after a great deal of speculation.
When night came, and quiet again settled down, preparations were made for the transport of the
wagon to the river. It was fortunate that the moon was not shining, but the night was clear, and this
added some danger to the situation. At midnight, the yaks were unhitched, and the section nearest the
forward end of the wagon pushed aside to permit them to pass through.
When they were yoked up, two of the captives were tied to the seat on the tailboard, and the top
covering of the wagon raised sufficiently to enable them to manipulate the guns. The fort sections
were secured in place, and quietly the wagon went forward.
They were as secure in the wagon as they had been in the fort, and the only danger was to the
team, which might be struck by arrows, or they might be shrewd enough to aim at the animals, and
thus prevent further progress.
“I fear,” said John, “that we shall have difficulty in guiding the animals through the brush, and I
will lead them.”
This proposal was opposed by all, and he reluctantly consented to remain in the wagon. “I know,”
answered Harry, “that I can see well enough to get us safely through, and it will be better to go slowly
than to take such a big risk.”
The march began, and to their surprise, it was not answered by a shout or a shot. The savages had
disappeared entirely. But before they had proceeded a quarter of a mile, the shouts and answering cries
of the savages could be plainly heard.
“We have, unaccountably, gotten through their guard,” cried John, as he leaped from the wagon.
“Follow me as fast as you can.” He sprang in front of the yaks to direct the way, and Harry urged the
team forward as fast as the nature of the ground would permit, following closely on the heels of John.
The demons were coming on now in earnest, and could not be far behind, and they must have
gone fully a half mile, with no river in sight. Suddenly John reappeared at the side of the wagon, and
said: “Drive to the left for the open space. There is a brook there, and it will suit us just as well as the
river.”
The wagon was rushed to the open space, and down to the little stream which came from the
southwest. Without hesitating a moment John ordered the fort sections to be replaced, and heeding the
practice lessons which they had exercised over and over again, before starting out, they were prepared,
in less than three minutes, for the foe.
The besiegers again surrounded them, but evidently feared to attack. The first care of Harry was to
provide the animals with fresh water. The two captives were again placed outside of the fort in a
position where they could be easily guarded.
While so disposing the prisoners, George picked up a trinket that had fallen from one of them,
who tried to recover it. It was a blue stone, and he noticed that the other prisoner also carried a stone
of the same character. Each had a groove midway between the ends, to receive the cord which held it
in place.
“What do you suppose they carry these things for?” asked George, as he exhibited the stone.
“They use them to ward off evil. It is remarkable,” answered the Professor, “that the Hindoos
consider the turquoise as a sure guard against sudden or violent death.”
“That also reminds me,” said John, “that the belief is a common one throughout all Asiatic
countries. Even at the present time almost all Russian officers wear the turquoise as a talisman against
fate.”
 “What is meant by talisman?”
“In all Oriental countries a figure cut in stone, metal, or any other material, and which, when made
with particular ceremonies and under peculiar astrological circumstances, is supposed to possess
certain virtues, but chiefly that of averting disease. Most savage tribes have some sort of charms or
objects which are held in reverence, and the stone before you is a sample of this belief in the most
remote parts of the world.”
“What do you think he will do if I fail to give it back to him! He made a fight for it when I picked
it up.”
“No doubt, he will think it is all over with him. We may be able to use the stone advantageously,”
remarked John, as he held out his hand. George passed it to him with a smile. He had not thought of
that.
There was no sleep the rest of the night. The excitement was too intense. To the boys it was a
period of experience they never forgot. The position was excellently chosen, although it was hurriedly
done. The stream was only twenty feet away, and water was thus available whenever needed.
The savages understood this move beyond question; when the morning broke, the clear spaces up
and down the stream, afforded no lurking places, and within ten feet of the end of the wagon was a tall
juniper tree, the branches of which were within ten feet of the ground.
Occasionally only could a warrior be seen, skulking from one point to the next, but beyond that
there was nothing to give any indication of the number they had to contend with.
Nearly the entire forenoon passed without any action on the part of the besiegers. Angel had kept
closely within the enclosure, but now he spied the juniper tree, and it was not long before his native
instinct to climb, got the better of him, and he bounded over the side of the fort, and gracefully swung
upwardly from branch to branch.
He then proceeded to do something that the boys had never witnessed before. These animals make
seats from the boughs of the trees, and construct them so deftly that in a few moments will have a
most comfortable chair. In their native state this has often been noticed by travelers.
Angel started to do this as soon as he had landed at the highest point. Ralph and Tom were very
much interested in him from the first and when the seat-weaving operation began, Tom cried out:
“Watch Angel; what is he doing? Look at him breaking the branches and twisting them!”

Fig. 1. Angel’s Seat.

It was a curious sight to the other boys, as well. When the seat was ready, he settled himself in
place, with all the ease imaginable.
George, whose particular pet Angel had always been, jumped with delight. “Why wouldn’t that be
a good place from which to watch the savages?”
Without another word, he was over the side wall, after strapping the gun to his back, and the rough
bark gave him sufficient hold to make his way upwardly toward Angel, who, in the meantime, at the
sight of George, began his peculiar chuckling sound that always indicated pleasure.
 When George reached the limb which Angel occupied the latter was jubilant in his expressions of
pleasure; and then the animal did another thing which amused all of the watchers. The moment
George had seated himself on the limb Angel left the seat and moved farther out.
George kept on talking, and Angel again moved to the seat and sat down momentarily, and then
left it as before, and this was repeated several times. The Professor called up: “Don’t you see he is
offering you his chair!” and all burst into laughter.
George took the hint at once, and as soon as he was in position the action of Angel showed only
too plainly that he was pleased at the acceptance of the invitation, and proceeded immediately to build
another seat. This gave George an opportunity to learn the method by which the animals intuitively
acquire the well-known art, which is unique, even in the monkey tribe.
 CHAPTER III

THE MIDNIGHT RETURN TO DEFEND CATARACT

This little incident afforded only momentary relaxation to the tension caused by their
surroundings.
“What can you see?” asked John.
“I can see them all,” he answered, “and they know it. I imagine Angel and his gun was a big
surprise to them.”
Some months previous to the start on this trip, Angel was seen practicing with an imaginary gun,
darting to and fro, as though sighting and eluding enemies, as he had seen the boys do, and his antics
were so amusing, that George made a gun, which was presented to him.
Its possession was an infinite source of delight to him, and he was never without it in his hands,
and the surprising thing was, it did not in any way interfere with his climbing of trees. To show how
highly developed were his imitative qualities, it will be remembered that a number of extra guns were
made, and when either went on a trip which was hazardous two guns were always taken along, one of
which was strapped to the back.
This was noticed by him, and he tried in several ways, which were perceived by George, to supply
this deficiency in his gun equipment; so that a strap was given him, and fitted to the gun, and with the
new arrangement of his weapon, he would take off the gun and put it back again, and chuckle while
doing it.
When George climbed the tree his gun was strapped on, and Angel strapped on his, and as soon as
the new seat was made, and George was ready to view the surroundings, he took the gun from his
back, and Angel did likewise.
This act, as afterwards learned from the savages, had the most remarkable impression on them.
They knew the orang, and all his ways, but here was one of them, possessed of a gun, and to all intents
as able to use it as the white man beside him in the tree. Of course, they had no means of knowing that
Angel’s gun was merely an imitation of the real article.
“Count them, if you can. It will be interesting to know how many we are up against,” said Harry.
George scanned the field to the southeast, so as to take in all those on the same side of the river on
which they were encamped. “I can see forty-two. Now let us see how many are on the other side.” In a
few moments he continued: “There are only thirty.”
“Can you distinguish,” asked John, “whether all of the same tribe are on this side, or are the two
peoples mixed up, some on one side, and some on the other?”
“I shall have to study that for a little. They are hiding now, so it is difficult to get a good look. I
have seen only three, so far, with distinctive clearness, to be able to judge, but I think the Kurabus are
on our side of the stream.”
“I am glad to know that,” continued John. “It is a good indication that they are not any too
friendly with each other.” Then, calling up to George, he added: “Be very particular to look up and
down stream, and tell me if you see any crossing and recrossing.”
The boys did not question John’s motives in giving George those injunctions.
“Would there by any objection if I should go up the tree and stay with George?” asked Ralph.
“Not in the least,” answered the Professor, and John gave a smiling assent to the question.
 “While I am about it, I might as well take a rope along, so we can have a more easy way to get
up.”
“Splendid idea,” responded John, “and before you go let me make a sailor’s ladder, which you can
loop over the first limb, and thus make an easy route for our scouts.” So saying, he neatly tied and
knotted the rope, and Ralph leaped over the fort, and had no trouble in making his way to the first
limb, and after he had secured the rope ladder, ascended to the limb which George and Angel
occupied.
The arrival of Ralph was another occasion for the peculiar chuckle on the part of Angel, and
before Ralph arrived, Angel was off his seat, and began the weaving act for an additional seat, and he
worked so rapidly that by the time Ralph came up the seat was ready.
George heartily welcomed Ralph. They were chums, just as Harry and Tom had grown to be
particularly fond of each other.
It was now an easy matter to gain access to the tree; but John still facilitated this, when he
suggested that the wagon be drawn over to the tree, and as the low top of the wagon was over eight
feet high, there was no more trouble to ascend the tree than to get over the fort.
As the day passed the watchers in the top kept a sharp lookout for signs of communication
between the tribes on the opposite sides of the river.
One of the savages first wounded began to show alarming symptoms and, as the Professor stated,
there was every indication of blood poisoning, which was indicated by the high fever. Before evening
the symptoms became more pronounced.
The bullet wound was near the hip, and in making the examination was found to be very much
inflamed. George was present, and inquired: “What is it that causes the inflammation?”
“The local inflammation near the wound is produced by the tissues absorbing blood in excess, and
the result is that the vessels containing the blood are so modified as to permit an unusually large
amount of the watery portion of the blood to pass through the walls of the veins and arteries. This
entirely disorganizes the orderly manner of carrying out the function of the blood, and it is shown by
the high fever and redness exhibited.”
“Is that the same as blood poisoning?”
“That is quite a different matter. This man has what is called septic fever, which is produced by an
infection of the system from bacterial germs, which were produced by the wound, so that the blood
carried the germs throughout the body, and produced what is called a toxic condition. Toxic means
poison, or poisoned state. When the blood is thus affected it is unable to do its proper duty, and a high
heat is produced within.”
“But why is it that he has chills and then a fever?”
“During the time that the fever is rising the heat produced exceeds the heat lost. If the rise is very
rapid, as in this case, the blood is withdrawn from the skin, and this withdrawal diminishes the loss of
heat, which gives rise to a cold sensation or chill, and is combined, very frequently, with an attack of
shivering.”
It was not considered advisable for either of the boys to remain in the tree during the night, and as
soon as it was dark Tom and Harry, who were then on watch, descended, and preparations were made
for the night watch.
Shortly after midnight, John took only one of the guns, and also selecting one of the bows, and
several arrows, from those which were taken from the wounded captives, started out on a tour of
investigation.
In an hour a series of shouts and cries disturbed the silent night. It was the cry of the warriors on
the north side of the stream.
 Harry, who was one of the watchers with Tom, called to his companion: “Did you
hear that? I wonder if John is in trouble?” The sounds were repeated, and finally
reechoed by those on the south side of the river. Everything seemed to be confusion, and
the sound of tramping feet in the distance became plain.
The Professor was wakened, and the situation explained. “Hasn’t John returned?
How long has he been away? Which direction did he take?” The questions were
hurriedly asked, and when the boys stated that he had disappeared in the direction that
the sounds came from, the matter took on a very much more serious aspect.
All crowded around the Professor, and one suggestion after the other was made, first
as to the cause of the uproar, and then as to the condition of John.
“It is evident that the cause of the alarm comes through John, but how he has caused
the difficulty, or what his motive is, I do not know. I cannot advise any of you to put
yourselves in danger at this time.”
The tumult increased, and it appeared that the sounds moved near to the stream
north of their position. While thus speculating Harry noticed a movement close to the
clearing and near the fringe, along the stream. It was someone stealthily crawling along,
and coming toward the wagon.
“Shall I fire?” asked Tom. The Professor held up a restraining hand. “Wait until we
see what the object is.”
Coming nearer, a savage was plainly seen with his distinctive headdress, and he was
now within thirty feet of the wagon. The boys were shocked to see John’s gun strapped
on the warrior’s shoulder, as he carried a bow in one hand. A few feet farther and he
stood up, and held up an outstretched hand, and uttered the words: “Keep quiet.”
It was John.
The relief almost caused a shout; but they remembered the injunction, and
restrained themselves. In a moment more he was in the wagon; and the inevitable
questions began.
“Where had he gone? What was the trouble in the camps?” and many others of like
import were hurled at him.
“Let me tell the story in my own way,” he finally replied. “I had my reasons for
believing that not the best fellowship, existed between our besiegers, and that was the
reason I asked George to keep a sharp lookout to see whether they intermingled during
the day.
“When I left the wagon I took with me the headdress of the savage on the other side
of the wagon, one of the Saboros, and also the bow and arrows. I approached the
Kurabus on the other side, and after stalking one of their sentries, I shot him with the
arrow, which also belonged to the same tribe—the Saboros; the shot merely disabled Fig. 2.
him temporarily, and he gave the alarm, as I knew he would.
“I purposely dropped my headdress near his body, and seized his—the one I now have, together
with his bow and arrows, and stole away. I remained in the near vicinity until the cries of the wounded
man brought his friends, and there were the telltale Saboro arrow and headdress, and believing that the
work was one of their confederates on the other side of the river, the general alarm was given, which
resulted in the first cries you heard.
“I had just crossed the stream, when the first of the Saboros came up, and he was no doubt one of
the scouts of their party. Taking the first advantage, and before the main portion of the warriors came
up, I shot the one nearest me with the arrow I had taken from the Kurabus, and stunned him into
insensibility as he fell, and I dragged his body up to within seventy-five feet of the wagon.”
 The boys looked admiringly at John.
“They will have some time in explaining the mystery. One of the tribe on the other side was shot,
and one of the savages on this side is missing. Each will blame the other, and we may expect some
lively times in the morning.”
John was right, for when morning broke, and before either of the boys could make his way to the
treetop, there was an unusual commotion among the savages. Harry and Tom were up in the tree
without a moment’s loss of time, and the uproar was apparent to them at once.
“They are after each other. The Kurabus are about to attack the Saboros. Shall we take a hand?”
cried Tom.
“By no means,” responded the Professor. “Let us know just what they are doing.”
Those in the wagon could now see the Kurabus cross the stream. They were numerically stronger
than the Saboros, and there was now an opportunity to witness the tactics of the savages.
John could not resist the opportunity of going up into the tree to witness the combat. The attacking
party skulked forward, after crossing, and dodged from tree to tree, and as fast as an advance was
made the smaller party retreated, and took up position in a strong line of bush, well within sight of the
tree.
A volley of arrows was the first signal for attack, and this was answered, the parties now being
close enough to enable them to do some execution. The attacking party first scattered out in a line, and
the Saboros immediately advanced with a rush, for the center of the position held by their enemies.
“That was a shrewd move on the part of the Saboros. See the scattered fellows trying to get away.”
They were plainly being driven toward the direction of the wagon, but before reaching the stream near
the wagon, crossed, and the Saboros now rushed after, attacking with their spears as they ran.
The Kurabus retreated to the northeast, as they were now cut off from going southwest along the
line of the stream, and part of their force was plainly visible to the left and in the rear of the victorious
party. Within an hour they saw the last of the pursuers disappearing to the northeast.
This unexpected turn to the affairs, was received with jubilant shouts from those in the treetop,
when they announced the result of the fight.
Just as they were descending, Ralph, who was the last to go down, cried out: “Wait, look to the
south. More of them, and they are coming directly toward us.”
John saw them, and returned to his position, calling out to those below: “Keep quiet, and do not
respond to the attack. They belong to the defeated party. Undoubtedly, a part of their band.”
The shouts of the boys, so incautiously given, startled the oncoming savages, and they stopped.
From their position it was impossible to see the wagon, and they did not notice the watchers in the
trees.
After a moment’s halt they again came forward, and as they appeared at the clearing, caught sight
of the peculiar fort structure in their way, and also saw the captives on the ground. For a moment there
was consternation among them.
“I can see thirty of them, and if they go around us they will come on the trail of the party to the
north, and probably will discover what has happened to them,” said John.
They were now close enough to be within range of the guns. In fact, they were near enough to use
their arrows effectively, if the whites had exposed themselves. The Professor raised himself above the
fort, and motioned to them, in the hope that it would cause them to desist from any further attack.
At the same time he pointed to the north, and at this motion, they drew back, and John reported
that the band was making a circle around to the left. They had understood the motion, as it appeared,
and, in accordance with the expectations of John and the Professor, the battle on the brink of the
stream, and the discovery of the wounded, was sufficient to give them the information that their
friends were being driven to the north by their late allies.
 The Kurabus quickly learned from their wounded friend, the status of the quarrel, and there was a
long consultation, before any action was taken.
“We do not seem to be making much headway in getting intimately acquainted with our friends on
the island. We have only two things open to us. One is to proceed to the southwest, and meet the tribes
living there, or to follow up the warring parties, and endeavor to establish relations with them in some
manner,” was the Professor’s view of the situation.
At this juncture John descended from the tree. “I am of the opinion that the newly arrived band
will follow up and try to aid their friends. The serious thing to my mind is, the thought that as they
now know our location at the Cataract, one or the other party will go there and destroy everything.”
“Can you make out enough from the fellows’ answers outside to assure yourself that they were on
their way to attack us there?”
“I am convinced of that,” answered John.
“I think it is our duty to return there at once,” was the Professor’s reply.
There was a unanimous assent to this proposal. It was now about ten o’clock, and George, in the
treetop, called down: “They are going to the northeast.”
“Just as I expected. Keep a watch on them until they disappear, and in the meantime let us get the
wagon ready.”
Tom descended to aid in the work, and the fort sections were put into place on the wagon, the yaks
yoked on, and the two savages put aboard.
“They have gone, and are after their friends as fast as they can travel,” said George, as he
descended, and took the rope off the last limb.
The team was directed due north, and it was a gratifying surprise to find that they were less than a
quarter of a mile from the South River. The fort sections were applied at once, and without mishap the
wagon was floated across, so that temporarily, at least, they were free from the savages.