We have an illustration of how Yuzhakov confuses social estate with class when he says,
“If class interests are kept in mind when drawing up the school curriculum, there can of course be no question of one general type of state secondary school. In that case the educational establishments are necessarily of the social-estate type, providing not only instruction, but also education in the wider sense, for they not only have to impart an education adapted to the special interests and aims of the estate, but also social-estate habits and a social-estate esprit de corps”. (p 462-3)
But, as I have set out above, it is precisely in class based societies, as against societies based on social estates, and so where class interests are kept in mind, that education is based upon a single curricula, a curricula itself designed to further the interests of the ruling-class, and, thereby, the dominant form of property.
“It is, most worthy Mr. Narodnik, that education is organised in one and the same way, and is equally accessible to all the wealthy. It is this last word alone that explains the nature of class schools, as distinct from social-estate schools. It is therefore the purest nonsense on Mr. Yuzhakov’s part to say, as he did in the above-mentioned tirade, that where the schools follow class interests “there can be no question of one general type of state secondary school.” Just the opposite: class schools—if adhered to consistently, that is, if they are freed of every survival of the social-estate system—necessarily presume one general type of school. Full legal equality, full equality of rights for all citizens, with education fully equal and accessible to all the wealthy—these constitute the essence of class society (and, consequently, of class education). Estate schools demand that the pupils shall belong to a given social estate. The class school knows no estates, it only knows citizens. Of all pupils it demands one thing only, namely, that they should pay for their education.” (p 464)
Of course, even with supposedly “free” public education, as with supposedly “free” healthcare, provided via a welfare state, it is not at all free. It is paid for by compulsory, collective deductions, in the form of taxes, from workers' wages, representing a huge Truck System, operated by the capitalist state, in the interests of capital itself, which is why the state is at such pains to prevent, and will never allow, even a consistently democratic control over that provision, let alone workers' control.
“The class school by no means presumes class exclusiveness: on the contrary, unlike social estates, classes always leave the road quite free for the transfer of individuals from one class to another. The class schools do not close their doors to anybody who has the means to pay for tuition. To say that in Western Europe “no success attends these dangerous programmes of semi-education and of the class moral and intellectual segregation of the various sections of the people” (9) is an utter perversion of the truth; for everybody knows that, both in the West and in Russia, the secondary schools are essentially class schools and serve the interests of only a very small part of the population.” (p 464)
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