Living on the Edge

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report on the continuing gaps between the educational attainment of our poorest and richest children has emerged at the same time as the Scottish launch of Living on the Edge, John Smyth’s and Terry Wrigley’s critique of poverty, class and schooling (publisher: Peter Lang).

Smyth and Wrigley review education in the neo-liberal world, in Scotland, where Wrigley has worked (until recently at Edinburgh University’s Moray House School of Education) in England, Australia and the US. They challenge the particular venom with which those pauperised by deindustrialisation and austerity politics are blamed for their own suffering.

The work questions the broad generalisations which pose a clear correlation between poverty and limited intellectual ability. It asserts that unemployment, poverty and a reserve pool of low-paid labour are inevitable consequences of an economic system owned by a few and geared primarily to profit.