The motion around public education provides tremendous opportunities to introduce new ideas and reach new revolutionaries. The capitalist class is handing revolutionaries the ammunition to convince the people that they cannot secure quality public schools without nationalizing them in the interests of our class, not in the interests of corporate privatization.
The State is reorganizing public education at every level to put corporations in control. But corporations are driven to make private profit at the expense of the public. They can only exacerbate problems with our schools and colleges, since private property leads to the destruction of society. We hold government responsible and accountable to the people to guarantee the highest quality of education for everyone.
Chicago occupies center stage in the battle over public education, where a historic 49 schools were closed at the end of the last school year, 3,000 school personnel were laid off (including nearly 10% of all the teachers). As if the layoffs weren’t enough, the city blames the estimated $1 billion school budget deficit on teacher pensions. The city and the state are orchestrating the total destruction of public worker pensions, using the teachers as their chief target.
In a further slap to the face of teachers and parents and students in the schools that remain open, severe cuts slashed the budgets of all Chicago Public Schools – especially those communities in where Latinos and African Americans are concentrated.
Within Chicago, the movement leading up to the teachers’ strike last September showed a beginning recognition of common interest among teachers, parents and students. The city launched an unprecedented campaign of sham public hearings and lies to split communities, antagonize races, and set one school population against another. Yet through all this the section of society being dispossessed of their education voiced a united opposition to CPS and their elected officials and their appointees.
All eyes are on Chicago, but the public education crisis is raging across the country, from Detroit’s bankruptcy to school closings and layoffs in Philadelphia to the privatization of the entire New Orleans school system to the destruction of city colleges in California.
Rally, Comrades! has spoken to why the attack on education and at whom that attack is leveled: a new class is in formation and expelled from capitalist relations. The ruling class will not educate workers who are no longer a source of profit. The dismantling of public education will encompass this new class and affect all of society. And while what most of the public sees is the crisis in the pre-college educational system, the systemic crisis is also eviscerating public access to higher education.
Can there be any doubt that we have abundant resources for education that could resolve all the “shortages”? Do we not have enough teachers, books, electronic resources, school buildings? Is there any reason in the world that we could not provide education for all, with resources allocated according to need? Can’t we guarantee every individual the right to fulfill all their potential?
We call on any and all who answer yes to join with us in creating the new America that is possible.
November/December 2013. Vol23.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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