In Antonio Gramsci’s “The Formation of Intellectuals,” an excerpt from Prison Notebooks, Gramsci outlines two kinds of intellectuals – the traditional and the organic. Both of these groups of intellectuals help us understand why Gramsci holds education as an important function in modern society. Admittedly, Gramsci’s text was difficult for me to fully comprehend, but I think I might attempt to express my limited understanding about his stance on education, just so that I, myself, can work my way towards something as I write this.

In short, traditional intellectuals are people who regard themselves as independent and autonomous of the dominant social group. They present themselves this way, but may not actually be this way. They can also be categorizes as “administrators, scholars, scientists, lawyers, theorists, judges and non-ecclesiastical philosophers” (1003). Organic intellectuals are those who grow with the dominant social group. It is through the organic intellectuals that the ruling class preserves its hegemony. This group of intellectuals may include farmers, entrepreneurs, and other kinds of skilled workers who maintain hegemony over the rest of society.

It is evident that Gramsci places high importance on education and deems educational institutions crucial to modern society. The school system played a part in ideological hegemony, a place where individuals learned to maintain the status quo. One critique that Gramsci makes is on specialisation, and appeals for a form of education that relates to everyday life: “Parallel with the attempt to deepen and to broaden the ‘intellectuality’ of each individual, there has also been an attempt to multiply and narrow the various specialisations,” (1005).  It doesn’t seem like Gramsci is contending that specialisations aren’t important, but perhaps need to be changed and transformed to be made accessible.

Gramsci also seems to emphasize critical thinking, and stress a modernized and synthesized take on what education needs to become: “Schools and institutes of high culture can be assimilated to each other. In this field also, quantity cannot be separated from quality” (1006). It is worthy to note that it does not seem like Gramsci is opposing the inclusion of abstract ideas in education, but that there needs to be reflection of such philosophical concepts and logic for it to work well. The social function of educations appears to serve as mobility for people to advance and elevate from. Gramsci’s plea for “modernizing” education, as it were, was to create an environment that encourages critical thinking, critical awareness, and the intellectual being part of everyday life.