For a child who liked learning, he was not treated like one. Claude was pushed out because he wasn’t the type of kid who put his head down. No, he had a beautiful mind of his own:

• When asked to describe himself in a personal narrative unit, he wrote, “I’m funny, fast, and smart. I like to laugh and joke around a lot. I am passionate about living, and who I am today.”

• When taught to use figurative language, he wrote his best friend was “as brave as a shark.” He also loved music and word play.

• In a free-write, he wrote, “The moment I’m most ashamed of is doing online work…I think the school owes me an apology because I get bad attendance for having my camera off.”

• For his persuasive speech, he had chosen to write about how testing negatively affects students and why it should be eliminated.Instead of nurturing a child who knew how to think for himself, the public school system discarded Claude.

One purpose of capitalist education is to recreate all the inequalities of a profit system and teach obedience. It sells the fake idea that if you only work hard enough, you’ll make it so just shut up and do your job. This logic ends up blaming students for a rigged system where some have to fail in order for a very few to win (and even the winners are losers at the end). That is what we call a scam, one that disproportionately cheats Black, Brown, and immigrant students out of an education.

Claude deserves a world where we care about kids, not grades; music programs, not imperialist wars; and relationships, not suspensions. That world is not possible under capitalism.