WITH REVOLUTIONARY ZEAL, Josef Luitpold Stern—a key Social Democratic figure in the ranks of art and education, whose positions included head of the Central Office for Workers’ Education (Zentralstelle für das Bildungswesen, aka Arbeiterbildungszentrale) from 1918 to 1922 and again after 1932, as well as rector of the party's Workers’ College (Arbeiterhochschule)—in 1930 gave expression to the demands of the Social Democratic education reformers. “The art of the new education is to fire mind, character, and sentiments in equal degrees with the illuminating idea of socialism.” At this time, some of the reforms (e.g., free schoolbooks) had already been implemented, and the range of options for workers’ education had been expanded. One of the most important demands was for a unified school system (Einheitsschule) for students up to the age of fourteen, so as to give everyone, including students from socially disadvantaged families, access to higher education, instead of sending them at the age of ten to different types of schools that would preordain their future career prospects. This concept, however, was already a dead letter in 1927, following the adoption of the Secondary Education Act (Mittelschulund Hauptschulgesetz) on the federal level.

Alongside the housing construction program and comprehensive welfare and health policies, the fundamental reform of the education system was at the heart of the social renewal of Red Vienna. This reform was guided by the concept of lifelong learning, from kindergarten and school up to adult education. The idea was not only for a classical educational model, but above all to promote character building and political education. Workers, as the focus of the reforms, were to be educated in a way that would foster solidarity, independent thinking, and democratic action. The approaches differed considerably: popular educators such as Ludo Moritz Hartmann believed in the possibility of unprejudiced and nonjudgmental education, whereas Austro-Marxists such as Max Adler rejected neutral education as “self-deception.” And the educator and Social Democrat youth activist Otto Felix Kanitz called for a socialist education ideal that would overthrow the bourgeois education monopoly and abolish the classbound society.

In reality, the actual measures were more pragmatic and less radical, and the Social Democratic education policy implemented many liberal ideas and approaches.