Criticism

Anthony Martinelli

Martinelli is a Seattle-based freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Martinelli examines how Spender's poem delivers a Marxist message about Communism, education, and the need for social revolution.

Spender's poem "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" is an excellent example of his lifelong dedication to the pursuit of social change and human equality. During the earliest stages of his writing career in the 1920s and 1930s, Spender was a pacifist and Socialist. He was so stirred to action by the proletarian struggle that he joined the International Brigades — an international force of volunteer soldiers organized by the French Communist Party leader Maurice Thorez and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Clearly, Spender was an advocate for the working class and an avid supporter of sociopolitical reform. His poetry was a reflection of his support of social reform. Even as he aged, Spender continued to fight for social change and equality for all of humankind. Although he became less of a vocal supporter of Communism, these ideals were still at the foundation of his writing and his political ideology. In the turbulent decade of the 1960s, Spender wrote "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum," a vivid, didactic poem calling for a Communist social reform that mirrors the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in their penultimate work The Communist Manifesto.

In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto as the platform of the Communist League, a workingmen's association. It was unavoidably formed as a secret society, because any organized uprising of the working class in Europe would result in a dramatic change both politically and socially for the ruling class. However secret the Communist League may have hoped to remain, by 1850 The Communist Manifesto was quickly translated into most European languages and the work became the doctrine of the proletarians, the exploited, working class, as they struggled for emancipation from the bourgeoisie, the exploiting, ruling class. Escape from this social hierarchy proved very difficult. In fact, neither Marx nor Engels saw the realization of the goals of their manifesto, yet it continues to fuel social revolutionaries across the globe.

The fundamental proposition that forms the nucleus of The Communist Manifesto states that every historical generation, since the dissolution of primitive society in exchange for political society and individual ownership of property, is built upon a socioeconomic structure that necessitates a struggle between two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In order to emancipate the proletariat, Marx and Engels contend that society at large must be freed from exploitation, oppression, class distinctions, and class struggles. Looking back to the shift from primitive to political society, the ownership of property is the fuel that powers the machine that oppresses and exploits proletarians. Marx writes, "Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each case, the property question." This is the base struggle for which the proletariat must fight: the dissolution of private ownership.

If dissolution of private property is key to the emancipation of the proletariat, then there is no peaceful resolution to the class struggle. The bourgeoisie will certainly not relinquish ownership of their capital and private land, and thus the proletariat must subvert and overturn the dominant social paradigm with a forcible revolution. Marx writes

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Workingmen of all countries, unite!

This is, effectively, the proletariat's war cry. The Communist Manifesto was much more than a political theorist document; it truly incited action among the working class, igniting and fueling revolution, uprising, and social reform. Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His life mission was to overthrow capitalistic society and emancipate humanity from the constraints of a social construct founded upon the perpetual struggle between exploited and exploiting classes. This was the goal of The Communist Manifesto and the purpose of Marx's life.

Marx's message in The Communist Manifesto continued to resonate throughout Europe and Russia in the 1920s and 1930s, and it had a great impact on the foundation of Spender's writing, activism, and political ideology. Although Spender agreed with Marx's message and with the proletarian struggle, the way in which he explored Marxism and Communism changed as he aged. By 1964, when Spender wrote "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum," his political ideology had altered focus. Although he was still opposed to capitalist society, Spender seemed more concerned about human equality than about the forcible emancipation and social revolution for which he had fought in the 1930s. The poem reveals this altered perception.

"An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" is written in four stanzas. The first stanza looks at the students in the classroom. The first student, a "tall girl with [a] weighed-down head," is both mentally and physically exhausted. The next, a "paper- / seeming boy, with rat's eyes" is mal-nourished and terrified of the world. The third student is an "unlucky heir / Of twisted bones," carrying a genetic disorder, his "father's gnarled disease." The last is an "unnoted, sweet and young" boy with "eyes [that] live in a dream." Spender's description of each student is a comment on the exploitation of the proletariat.

Like the tall girl, the working class is overworked, exhausted, and sapped of any energy that may be used to turn against the ruling class. The bourgeoisie struggle to keep proletarians weak, malnourished, and frightened, again to keep their energy level too low to revolt. The third boy speaks to the lack of adequate health care for proletarians, another means of oppressing uprising. The last boy, however, seems to represent a sign of hope. Spender writes that the boy dreams of a place "other than this," showing that the proletarian class has not lost sight of an end to oppression. If there were no hope for equality, then the last boy would have nothing to fuel his dreams of a place outside the classroom in the slum. Spender uses the first stanza to paint a picture of the proletarians' plight and their hope for social equality.

In the second stanza, Spender brings in the distant, yet invasive role of the bourgeoisie in the proletariat's classroom. He writes of books, maps, a bust of Shakespeare, and other classroom items that are all "donations." These items show the students a world outside the slum, an existence that is "belled, flowery," and beautiful like the "Tyrolese valley." However, this world is as fantastic as an imaginary, alien world. The world the children see is "painted with a fog. / A narrow street sealed in with a lead sky"; this is their existence. Anything beyond this world is pure fantasy.

In the next stanza, Spender writes that the donations are "wicked" and "a bad example" that tempts the students "to steal." Spender suggests that the bourgeois donors of these classroom gifts intend to use the donations to hold the proletarians in place. The donations do not help advance the children's education; they simply show the students in "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" a glimpse of a beautiful world outside of what they have come to accept as reality. However, this beautiful outside world is wholly unattainable because of their position as the exploited working class.

Spender seems to be pounding his fist, proclaiming that the donations leave only two options for the students in the classroom: resist the donors' temptation and live moral lives with unfulfilled dreams or give in to temptation and resort to a life of crime with the hope of gaining enough capital to break the chains of exploitation and escape the working class. Neither option is adequate, as one forces the students to remain in the "fog" as proletarians and the other compels them to exchange their proletarian life in the "fog" for one of an "endless night" as bourgeois thieves.

In the final stanza, Spender makes a plea for change. He begs the "governor, inspector, visitor" to help the students. Spender is calling for a change in the way in which donations are given and used and, thus, in the way in which society intervenes in education. He writes, "show the children to green fields, and make their world / Run azure on gold sands, and let their tongues / Run naked into books the white and green leaves open." Spender is asking society to change for the benefit of the children. He is not directly calling for a working-class revolution as Marx did; instead, he is asking that the donations, that is, the money, be used to empower the students to freely explore the books they have been given. His message is that all students, regardless of social class, should be given the opportunity to "Run naked into books" without suffering fear, mal-nourishment, exhaustion, or disease. Spender is asking for a change to benefit all students; although this change might mandate a change in society, his concern is education and children, not necessarily the proletariat revolution.

Marx states in The Communist Manifesto that education is "social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention of society, direct or indirect, by means of schools." Therefore, neither Marx nor Spender hopes to remove society from education — as both see education as inherently social — but both hope to change the way society intervenes in education. Without a new approach to education, Spender would say not only that there is no hope for proletarian children but also that there is no hope for children in general. Here, too, we see Spender's new emphasis on a fresh vision for bringing about human equality.

Spender does not simply posit a different way of looking at the same struggle. In this poem, he takes us away from the struggle of the proletarians against the bourgeoisie and reminds us that behind this adult struggle are the children of all classes. Suddenly, the political revolution for equality takes a backseat to the general oppression of children. Regardless of social class, adults undeniably have a responsibility for the care of children. Spender uses this position to forward the Communist agenda and, at the same time, to shed light on the inequalities affecting poverty-stricken, underprivileged children. "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum" seems to demand a social change for the benefit of all children — not only proletarians — and delivers a strong, Marxist message about Communism, education, and the need for social change.

Source: Anthony Martinelli, Critical Essay on "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum," in Poetry for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

What Do I Read Next?

• Letters to Christopher: Stephen Spender's Letters to Christopher Isherwood, 1929 – 1939 (1980), edited by Lee Bartlett, is a collection of letters Spender sent to his great friend the poet Christopher Isherwood during their early years as writers and political activists.
• World within World (1951; reissued in 2001) is Spender's autobiography. The book explores his life, his friendships, and his unspoken bisexuality.
• W. H. Auden's Selected Poems (1989), edited by Edward Mendelson, provides the original versions of many of Auden's poems, which he revised later in his career as his ideologies matured. Auden and Spender met in their twenties and maintained their friendship throughout their lives.
• The Berlin Stories (1946) combines Christopher Isherwood's two finest novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, in one volume. These stories of exile, which meld Isherwood's real life with an imaginary life, formed the basis for the Broadway musical Cabaret.