Schools should be wondrous centers of discovery and learning. They should be places where students develop life-long interests and abilities, where they gain confidence and knowledge, where they find cherished friends and mentors, and where they feel protected and cared for.
But public schools under capitalism fail on every count. First, they sort students into racist tiers to determine who will obtain the better-paying jobs at the top, and who will be left with the least desirable, lowest-paying jobs at the bottom. Put simply, schools define who will occupy the corporate executive suites and who will clean them! They also decide who will be the unemployed pittied against other workers; who will be the soldiers to kill workers around the world.
Of course, there are still plenty of people in the middle, including teachers. But the number of good-paying jobs in the U.S. is dwindling, while low-paying jobs (many with few or no benefits) are on the rise. According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 30 occupations with the most projected job growth between 2012 and 2022, only five require a four-year college degree.
Jobs requiring master’s degrees are not exempt from these cuts. More than 75 percent of college teachers are on non-tenure (non-permanent) tracks. Many adjunct professors earn poverty-level wages with no healthcare benefits.
Starving the Schools
For the capitalists, it makes no sense to fund a school system generating lots of college-ready graduates when fewer and fewer jobs call for a college education. In fact, the bosses are understandably nervous at the prospect of millions of college graduates who are frustrated and angry about their limited future.
Since it costs more than $600 billion a year to operate K-12 public schools, and money is needed for war preparations with its imperialist rivals, the U.S. ruling class can kill two birds with one stone. By cutting spending on public schools, it will turn out more workers for the low-paying jobs that U.S. capitalism is creating. To deflect the anger of young workers, they need to sell the racist myth that people have disappointing careers because they weren’t capable of “higher-level” thinking — or because they didn’t work hard enough in school.
Across the country, public schools employ about 250,000 fewer people than before the recession, according to figures from the Labor Department. Enrollment in public schools, meanwhile, has increased by more than 800,000 students. To maintain pre-recession staffing ratios, public school employment should have actually grown by about 132,000 jobs in the past four years, in addition to replacing those that were lost, said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
The New York Times (12/22/13) goes on to describe what the loss of school positions has meant for students: larger class sizes, reduced services, fewer guidance counselors and reading and math specialists.
The decay in public school conditions — on top of the higher fail rate in the Common Core exams — means that most students will be labeled unprepared for college. In New York City, for example, only 22.2 percent of 2013 graduates were considered “college-ready” by Department of Education standards. But it gets worse: In the bottom half of New York’s high schools — that’s 170 schools — only 4.5 percent of the graduates were college-ready.
Most students in these low-performing schools are black and Latino. The public school sorting machine is racist at its core. This continues the growing stream of black, Latino, and immigrant workers who suffer the racist super-exploitation that nets U.S. capitalists hundreds of billions of dollars in super-profits. Meanwhile, this deterioration of the entire school system drags down the conditions for white working-class students as well.
The Game is Rigged
U.S. bosses like to pretend that schools offer “equal opportunity” for all. In reality, affluent families gain a huge advantage by sending their children to expensive private schools or public schools in wealthy suburbs. Because most of public school funding comes from local property taxes, the result is stunning inequality. In New York State, the wealthiest 10 percent of school districts spent an average of $35,690 per student in 2012-2013, nearly double the average spending ($19,823) for the poorest 10 percent of districts.
Tests such as the SAT and ACT and standardized exams play a central role in sorting students for the top colleges and the best jobs. When students do poorly, they are told it’s because they are dumb or lazy and therefore deserve a future of low-wage and precarious labor.
The politicians, at the bidding of their corporate masters, recently added a new wrinkle. They have convinced large sections of the public that teachers — and not the big capitalists — are responsible for their children’s lack of success on the exams. Therefore, the bosses’ argument goes, teachers are undeserving of tenure, seniority rights, decent pensions or wage increases.
Teaching Obedience and Patriotism
The second crucial aspect of schools under capitalism is ideological indoctrination. Schools say they teach critical thinking; if students were really taught “critical thinking,” they would rebel against a social order in which 400 U.S. households have as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. They’d refuse to accept a “global war on terror” based on lies, a war that masks inter-imperialist rivalry to control valuable resources, markets and investment opportunities. They’d organize against a political system where Big Money calls the shots, and where the richest companies get what they want and the rest of us endure wage freezes, lower benefits and high permanent unemployment.
Instead of critical thinking, students are taught passivity from an early age. They are taught to follow orders and be patriotic and support the U.S. military, no matter how many countries it invades or how many workers it displaces or kills. Students are told they are responsible for their own success or failure, which is the rulers’ strategy to build individualism and hide the system’s failure to provide meaningful, rewarding jobs for all. Finally, students are taught the anti-communist myth that only capitalism works and any attempt to build an egalitarian society must fail.
This last bit of instruction is particularly important as more and more people are beginning to question capitalism. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 49 percent of young adults (ages 18 – 29) have a positive view of “socialism,” while only 43 percent had a negative opinion. In this age group, more people support anti-capitalist ideas. This is an indication that youth are open to communism. Let’s take this oppurtunity to build a movement for communism and explain to our friends the differences between
socialism (state capitalism) and communism (see Our Fight on page 2).
Teachers in Progressive Labor Party tell students the truth: that they are bright and capable of tremendous learning. In fact, they can learn how to run society, not for the profit of a few but for the benefit of the entire working class. A critical part of that understanding lies in anti-racism and multi-racial unity. When students and workers grasp the fundamental truth that our class can transform society into one that runs by the communist principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” we will have aced the most important test of all.
While at an Advisory Board hearing for parents and teachers in Newark, NJ, we had several hours to distribute 400 CHALLENGEs. There was time to take in the bitter cold. I glanced at the nearby cemetery. It was there I made my decision to join Progressive Labor Party. I used to study there, as it’s a beautiful spot, full of trees, shade and quiet.
My boyfriend back then had urged me to get a subscription to CHALLENGE, though he was not himself a PLP member. After a year of reading the paper, I wrote PL asking if I could do Spanish translation. Not long afterward, a newly married couple came to my door, themselves students and members of the Party. They had checked with my (now former) boyfriend to see if he vouched for my honesty and asked if I’d like to meet for a few months with them. (Back in the day, a six-month period of candidacy was required.)
That very week I went to “my” cemetery to contemplate about what I’d been reading in CHALLENGE: the organizational powers of the wealthy had waged the Vietnam war; the logical conclusion being that a revolutionary party was the only way to end the atrocities of capitalism. I recalled how words like revolution and communism had at first grated on my mind. Gradually, they took shape with each article as part of the logical beauty of science. Though joining seemed like the right thing, I knew to do so would put me in difficult situations, and sometimes danger. I might lose my life.
I pictured closing the lid on my own coffin, there in that cemetery. I then knew I couldn’t die with integrity unless I lived a life making progress for the working class. While my anti-sexist pride takes joy in the fact that I joined without my boyfriend’s urging and before he did so, it’s only right to thank him today for insisting I pick up the subscription.
These are the reasons why, for forty-eight years, CHALLENGE has been so essential to my life. It is much more than a newspaper — it’s more like a comrade.
Longtime Roja
PITTSBURGH, March 5 — Militant protests rocked this city on March 3 and 4, bringing traffic to a standstill. Over 1,000 workers, some beating drums and others carrying banners, gathered at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) headquarters here to protest the anti-worker policies of the UPMC bosses. Members of the Service Employees International union, they are paid starvation wages while the bosses rake in millions, similar to tens of millions of other workers nation-wide. These protests in Pittsburgh demonstrate that workers are prepared to fight back against the bosses.J
Rap artist Jasiri X fired up the crowd with his song, “People Over Profits” which seemed to sum up the sentiments of all the workers. However, workers must fight for a society without profits. It will take a communist revolution to gain true equality and justice for all workers.
CHICAGO, March 8 — A multiracial group of 30 workers gathered here to celebrate International Women’s Day. The purpose of the event was three-fold: to give a presentation and speeches concerning the history and importance of the holiday; to be social with friends and comrades; and to formally invite those present to May Day in Brooklyn and raise some of the funds for transportation.
After everyone got settled and ate their fill of some delicious international cuisine, the presentations began. A new comrade, originally from Michoacan, Mexico read aloud in Spanish a letter she had written to CHALLENGE recently. It highlighted her satisfaction with finding an international communist party, committed to the working class and the destruction of capitalism. Coming from a region of Mexico suffering from poverty and drug cartel/police violence, she expressed that she knew firsthand the importance of fighting back.
Next, a slide presentation was given by another PL member which provided history of women-led struggles in the former Soviet Union, revolutionary China, and Cuba. It showed the massive social, political and economic advancements that can be made when sexist and patriarchal capitalist ideology is rejected and workers of all genders are allowed to contribute to many different types of labor.
Both presentations generated important conversation and criticisms. It was pointed out that while the slideshow explained the importance of women filling roles traditionally held only by men, it didn’t go far enough to recognize the immense significance of domestic labor (child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, and so much more) and why it is best when those tasks are equally shared among all genders.
The comrade explained that men also suffer because of sexism because without performing the activities of raising a child, male workers don’t reach full human potential.
The event was a success. The local Financial Committee was able to raise some money for May Day, and a number of friends committed to taking part in the celebration. I was very happy to have learned a great deal more about International Women’s Day, and even happier to have spent the evening with other workers involved in the fight to destroy the sexist and racist society in which we currently suffer, and replace it with one that will value all labor which moves humanity forward.
Red Nurse
PARIS, March 18 — Nearly a quarter million workers marched in 140 rallies across France — 60,000 here and 42,000 alone in Marseilles — under slogans like “Frozen wages, job cuts, enough!” They were protesting the “Responsibility Pact” (read: Profitability Pact) engineered by Socialist president François Hollande who appeared to give a virtual blank check to French bosses. Hollande’s “Pact” would reduce employers’ contributions to social security and place fewer restraints on corporations, including lowering their taxes in the billions.
In 2013, the 16 multinationals listed on the Paris stock exchange made profits of € 28 billion (USD $40 billion) while receiving a tax credit of € 1.72 billion (USD $2.4 billion).
The newspaper Le Canard enchainé reported that Hollande wants to finance the “Pact” by cutting another €10 billion (USD $14 billion) from the government budget, meaning cutting public services and giving the money saved to French bosses.
The demonstrations appeared to be aimed at arousing people to turn out in the coming municipal elections. But for workers to seek solutions to the problems created by capitalism in the system’s electoral process is a losing proposition. The winning alternative would be to destroy that system along with its bosses’ elections and create a worker-run society, communism.
Recent electoral victories of LePen’s fascist National Front and attacks on workers’ standard of living show the need for a communist party to organize the revolution.
