Bosses Turn Education into Schools for Imperialism

From metal detectors, cameras and police presence to eroding union protections for teachers, trends in education point to a tightening control that is part of a growing fascism in society. Workers and youth organizing in movements to oppose an accelerating cascade of budget-cut assaults will come up against these physical and coercive elements of the police state. Through sharp, vigorous and patient organizing inside such movements, communists can win masses of workers and youth to see growing fascism not only as cause for despair but as cause for revolution.

Capitalist education always serves to teach the big ideas needed so that the ruling class can pursue its aims with minimal resistance from the workers. The Cold War education of the 1950s produced a society that mostly accepted a vicious anti-communist war in Vietnam at considerable cost in lives and absorbed its costs for ten years. As the Cold War heated up again under Reagan in the 1980s, brutal wars in Central America and huge cuts in social spending ensued. A U.S. population won to anti-communism tolerated these attacks. The (unexpected) reward for U.S, imperialism was the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main competitor. During the Cold War U.S. schools taught young-people anti-communism so they would not protest the rulers’ war plans.

Today U.S. imperialism faces a situation that is both similar and different. New competitors are rising, and as CHALLENGE has emphasized, control of Mid-East oil is key to dominance in the coming period. What teachers are asked to teach about the Mid-East matters. The ruling class needs U.S. schools to win over future workers to U.S. imperialism.

In New York State all high school students must take Regents exams in several subjects to graduate. In Global History students have been asked to write about the “positives and negatives” or the “differing viewpoints” on imperialism. These topics do more than force thousands of students to argue for imperialism on test day. Because topics tend to be recycled, these questions also exercise enormous influence over teachers who care deeply about preparing their students for examination and graduation. Teachers frame their treatment of imperialism in similar terms. Teachers are pressured to avoid teaching imperialism as the racist and genocidal system that it is. Like slavery and the Holocaust, imperialism has no positive characteristics. This moral stance is impossible when teaching to the test.

This past June, question #41 reads:
“In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The United Nations response led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. This response is an example of:
Détente
Empire building
Totalitarianism
Collective Security

In classrooms, where the struggle for literacy is desperate, teachers tempted to speak about U.S. imperialism are discouraged by such a question. The “correct” answer was choice #4. The test’s writers want Americans to understand Desert Storm not as an exercise in U.S. imperialism but “collective security.” But even more alarming than the right answer is the wrong one, specifically choice #2. Teachers who focus on actual history are in trouble. The history is clear:

The U.S. developed relations with the Saudis after World War II, calling the oil reserves of the Mid-East “a stupendous source of strategic power and the greatest material prize in the history of the world” Carter proclaimed his doctrine of U.S. dominance in the Mid-East in 1980 and created a “rapid-reaction force” designed to invade the area. Reagan transformed this force into Centcom, which has grown under every president and directed three major wars in fifteen years.

This history points to choice #2, imperialism. Teachers who speak in terms of U.S. imperialism run the risk of “confusing” their students and maybe even costing them the one point they need in order to graduate. The prospect is terrifying enough, especially to new teachers, to dampen a real critique of U.S. imperialism.

Additionally, the teacher-training taboo of never “sharing your view” finishes off many a good lesson about the true role of the U.S. in the world before it ever begins. No doubt the rulers have the good old-fashioned witch-hunt in their arsenal for teachers who refuse to toe the line of U.S. patriotism in class, and they will use it again as they have in the past. Next to these exams, however, the Cold War persecution of teachers was crude and perhaps even less effective in terms of the levels of conformity achieved.

Luckily, working class students can and do respond to real history teaching. Facts, a veteran PLP member used to say, are stubborn things. Several students informally surveyed on this question after the exam knew to stay away from choice number two even though they knew it was correct. In class, the teacher led discussions to ensure they understood the purpose of the test and what the testers were looking for. In fact deconstructing an exam this way actually makes test prep easier: “always pick the choice that makes America look good.”

When the “positives-of-imperialism” question reas its ugly head, we have an opportunity to raise important ideas among teachers and students about growing fascism, the role of education and the needs of U.S. imperialism. This article was discussed with several teachers and students in the base of PLP at a school where we’re active for suggestions prior to publication. We must take every chance the rulers give us to build our movement for communist revolution.

Liberals’ School Reforms Serve Profit System, Leave Kids Behind

At the coming American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Chicago convention, nearly everyone wants to reform or repeal NCLB (“No Child Left Behind” or, as some call it, “No Corporation Left Behind” or “No Child Left Untested”).  McCain and Obama both support NCLB’s goals and its testing to measure schools’ success, but both want “changes.”

McCain emphasizes “market forces” (privatization) and freezing federal education spending. Obama backs more active federal government intervention.  “More accountability is right,” he says. Neither candidate can or will change the basis for the U.S. educational system: it has always served the needs of the capitalist class, not of workers and our children.

The current educational reform movement’s two wings are more alike than they appear.
Straight from U.S. rulers comes the $60 million “Ed in ’08” campaign, sponsored by The Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Comparing U.S. students to those in other industrialized countries, they conclude, “The world is changing, jobs are evolving, and far too many students are simply not being prepared to be successful adults…. Many of those who do graduate are not ready for college, for the workplace and for life.” For the sake of “our economy” (meaning U.S. capitalism that exploits millions worldwide), they want “strong American schools.” “Improving our educational performance will pay huge economic dividends” — for these capitalists.

U.S. imperialists are facing unprecedented competition from European and Asian bosses, a sharpening rivalry leading to ever wider wars. So, led by Roy Romer (former Colorado governor and ex-superintendent of LA schools), they’re pressuring presidential candidates Obama and McCain to support their agenda: privatization (charter schools), accountability (teacher pay based on students’ test scores) and union-busting (ending tenure).

A new coalition, led by NYC school head Joel Klein and ex-FBI informer and Democratic Party hack Al Sharpton, is joining Romer and his billionaire pals to brand these capitalist policies as an “Education Equality Project.” They stress that black and Latino students still lag far behind their white counterparts in test scores and graduation rates, fifty years after court-ordered school desegregation. But capitalism is racist to the core. It reaps $250 billion super-profits annually from the difference in income between white families and black and Latino families.

Broad or Broader?

The other reform wing (the Forum on Educational Accountability and the Forum on Education and Democracy) advocates “A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education,” appearing to challenge the “Ed in 08” program.

But the two sides are essentially similar. The “Broader, Bolder” group also wants to make NCLB “work better” by backing expanded early childhood education and better health care. While not rejecting aspects of privatization (charters) they also want the federal government to spend more money on “accountability systems” (testing).

They want schools to promote “upward social mobility,” but don’t challenge class society where a few wealthy at the top profit from exploiting the many workers on the bottom. They want to retool schools to produce the loyal and well-trained workers and soldiers urgently needed in the pre-World War economy: “The increasingly inter-connected world of the 21st century places a premium on the preparation of all of our young people to take their places as effective workers, citizens, and family members.”

The “Broader, Bolder” group includes many Clinton administration officials; Chicago schools boss Arne Duncan Rudy Crew, Bella Rosenberg (long-time associate of former AFT President Albert Shanker), members of the Brookings Institution and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Harvard’s Christopher Jencks and William Julius Wilson, and a raft of well-known liberal reformers. Several (including reported Obama advisor Linda Darling-Hammond), are also part of the Forum on Education and Democracy (FED), with its roadmap for education reform entitled “Democracy at Risk.”

The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) is a broader coalition of over 140 liberal organizations with similar goals and policies. It’s “committed to the No Child Left Behind Act’s objectives of strong academic achievement for all children and closing the achievement gap….The federal government has a critical role to play in attaining these goals. We endorse…an accountability system that helps ensure all children, including children of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and of limited English proficiency, are prepared to be successful, participating members of our democracy.”

These groups appeal to teachers and school activists who are rightly appalled by the present situation. Their programs might seem to be “a step in the right direction” despite their continued embrace of federal “accountability” and intensive testing. But reforming the system means making it work better — for the bosses who run it! To fight for our children and our future, amid sharpening inter-imperialist rivalry and war, we need to destroy that racist system before it destroys even more of us.

For schools to serve the working class, we need a society that serves the working class, not the capitalists. We must unite students, parents and teachers in a class struggle against the rulers’ attacks. Out of this struggle, with red leadership, we can acquire the understanding needed to end the racist profit system with a communist revolution that abolishes wages and inequality, building this movement in the factories, barracks, communities and schools. That means teaching and learning everything, from the history of our class to the philosophy of dialectical materialism, from politics and economics to science and mathematics. Join the Progressive Labor Party in this historic task!

Puerto Rico: Teachers’ Strike On Hold, Fight ‘Rat’ Rivera

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, March 5 — After a 10-day militant strike, 10,000 teachers held a mass meeting at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum and agreed to the proposal of Rafael Feliciano, president of the FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico) for a temporary suspension of the strike in order to evaluate the weaknesses and strengths of their struggle without surrendering the right to strike again.

The strike included many mass actions, street marches of thousands, militant picket lines, battling vicious attacks by riot cops and confronting the gang-up of the Dept. of Education (DOE) bosses, governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá and a court order to decertify the union for violating the anti-strike Law 45.

The strikers also had to deal with backstabbing by international union hacks like Dennis Rivera, vice-president of the SEIU “Change to Win” Federation and former president of NYS Local 1199 of the Hospital Workers Union. He lunched with Governor Vilá to urge decertification of the FMPR in favor of an SEIU union. During a mass rally, when a speaker called Rivera a “vulture,” striking teachers repeatedly chanted, “He’s a rat.”

The strikers did win a $150-a-month wage hike on top of a $100 monthly increase agreed upon last year. While the cost of living here is much higher than in the U.S., teachers’ starting pay here is $19,200-a-year, much lower than any U.S. school district. The DOE agreed not to punish any striking teachers “except those involved in criminal activities” (it was the cops who criminally attacked strikers) and to put on hold the privatization of many public schools (the DOE’s plan to make the 500,000 public school students and their working-class parents pay even more for the rotten conditions).
The strikers received support from other workers and students here, many of whom joined the marches and other activities during the struggle. A mass student meeting at the Univ. of Puerto Rico Río Piedras campus organized a 24-hour strike to support the teachers. Scabbing “dissidents” had little mass support among the teachers but got a lot of coverage in the bosses’ media. And the opportunist leadership of the National Hostos Independence Movement issued a press release backing the bosses.

In the U.S., the strikers won support from both college and public school teachers. (See adjacent article on support from the City University of NY Professional Staff Congress union). The March 5 Delegate Assembly of the NYC United Federation of Teachers (UFT), with 92,000 members, also unanimously passed a solidarity resolution “to support the Puerto Rican teachers in their struggle to be treated with dignity.” But the UFT leadership gave no real support to the strikers.

On March 4, the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Agency in Manhattan was picketed, backing the strikers. PLP teachers participated in these support actions, and distributed a PLP leaflet in NYC and L.A. supporting them.
The strike was more than a trade union struggle; it was a political fight-back against the rulers’ strike-breaking Law 45 (similar to the U.S. Taft-Hartley and NY State Taylor Laws which forbid public workers’ strikes). It also fought the colonial-master politics of the Change to Win and AFL-CIO hacks, as well as the brutal repression by the “shock police.”

The strike demonstrated that, despite all the odds, these teachers dared to fight back in a day and age when so many workers accept the bosses’ attacks that make us pay for their economic crisis and endless wars (the death rate of soldiers from Puerto Rico in the Iraq war is very high). But it also showed the limitations of reform struggles.
Workers must turn these battles into schools for communism, learning how to forge a revolutionary internationalist movement to carry on the long-range fight-back for a world without vicious cops, union traitors and capitalist-imperialist oppressors. That’s the goal of workers’ power — communism — that PLP fights for. Join us!

CUNY Faculty Union Supports Puerto Rico’s Strikers

NEW YORK CITY, March 6 — The February 25 Delegate Assembly of the City University’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC) voted unanimously to “participate in strike support and solidarity efforts on behalf of the striking teachers of the FMPR [Puerto Rico’s teachers’ union].” Delegates contributed $700 on the spot, and quickly organized a network for strike support on the campuses. Fifty PSC’ers took 7,000 flyers and petitions to union colleagues and students on at least half of CUNY’s 20 campuses. Another $900 was raised by PSC leaders at a board meeting of the state teachers’ union body.

Class unity across borders is essential for teachers and all workers, so PL members and friends in the PSC took the lead organizing strike support on the campuses. Exclusive focus on economic gains for a single union’s members is a loser for all workers because it isolates us from each other. We need to combine struggle for our own demands with equal efforts to build international working-class unity and class consciousness, to win workers to PLP.

This struggle will remain a significant political one among PSC leaders and activists for some time. While all are sympathetic to the striking teachers, there is disagreement about priorities: amid a tough PSC contract campaign and an uphill battle for more State funding, should we spend time and resources on FMPR strike support?

PLP members and friends and other PSC’ers answered that question with a mass approach, working hard on the campuses to persuade our colleagues and students how vital it is to support our fellow teachers in a bitter struggle. We were not deterred by comments like, “I wish you’d spend this kind of energy on the contract campaign!” Some were anxious about relations with other unions “if we got too far out front” supporting the FMPR, which disaffiliated from our national union, and is being raided by SEIU VP Dennis Rivera. But we persisted, getting a warm response from CUNY students, especially those entering teaching and those from Latin America.

One cafeteria worker urged others to sign the petition, exclaiming, “This is to liberate my people!” And all workers, we told him. One signer was a union chapter leader in his high school.

We used different tactics: tabling, roving the cafeteria, faculty distributing flyers to their classes, getting signatures and donations in department meetings. We proved that relying on the masses of PSC’ers and students to express their international solidarity with the strikers was the way for revolutionaries to work in reform struggles, not as some sectarian groups do, saying some apparently “correct” things but building no base among the mass of workers.

Self-critically, comrades in the PSC know we must intensify our efforts amid these kinds of struggles to build the Party itself at CUNY. The Party is the essential weapon to win, not reform demands to be reversed by capitalists’ state power, but win all workers’ liberation — communism.

We’ve recently had two CUNY PLP forums, one on racism and another on immigration, each attracting 30 or more faculty and students. We’ve also expanded CHALLENGE readership and study groups, have collected $800 worth of new subscriptions. We’re planning a Party newsletter at CUNY, and winning some friends closer to joining, but we have more to do. Time presses: the whole world is a tinder box leading to a major imperialist war. Teachers in Oaxaca and Puerto Rico have taught us a good lesson in fighting capitalism: “¡Lucha sí! ¡Entrega no!” Struggle yes, surrender no!

PLP Students Lead Action vs. Racist NYC Budget Cuts

NEW YORK CITY, February 14 — A multi-racial group of over 500 parents, teachers and students rallied on the steps of City Hall today, protesting the recent racist budget cuts. On January 30, a $180 million cut had been announced and it was carried out the very next day.

The idea for the protest grew out of a teachers union Delegate Assembly on February 6 when PLP members called for the immediate organization of a protest rally for February 14 at Department of Education (DOE) headquarters. They called for teacher unity with parents and students and for the union to use the press, radio and leafleting subway stations to bring out as many people as possible.

The union leadership attacked the call, saying the 14th was “too soon” to bring anyone out. (This from a union with over 100,000 members!) They said, “We can’t ‘hide’ behind our students.” Clearly the union leaders feared thousands of angry workers and students on the streets. Instead they called for a “coalition rally” for March 19, six weeks after the cuts were made.

But PLP students and teachers showed what could be done NOW. At several schools, PLP’ers immediately called for meetings to plan a student-parent-teacher fight-back. They proposed a rally on Valentine’s Day at DOE offices.

The students wrote a flyer advertising the rally and e-mailed it to other student governments city-wide; posted copies around schools; made announcements over school loudspeakers; explained the impact of the cuts in the classrooms. The news of the rally quickly spread to other schools and they took up the organizing as well, encouraging students to join the fight-back.

No Love on Valentine’s Day

At the rally some student speeches emphasized the need to build a movement to smash capitalism, that we must not rely on lying politicians. Some of the latter said they would “help” the students, asserting that the students and parents need Democratic politicians “to save them.”

One young woman speaker said if politicians really cared, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg would pay the school “deficit” out of his $11 billion fortune because he CAN. Instead we have Democratic candidate Obama wanting 92,000 more troops in the military while NYS Senator Hillary Clinton allows $504 million to be cut from the school budget. Some “help”! The speaker concluded that we need a revolution to end this racist system. Condemning the budget cuts as racist, students also linked them to the widening war and to a growing police state.

Liberals in the crowd told the cops that the students “weren’t a part of the demonstration” and wanted them to leave. The cops, eager to end the event, tried to negotiate but we told the crowd what was going on and they all began chanting, “Let them speak!”

The final speaker described the growing repression against workers fighting the attacks of the system. While Bloomberg rolled out the red carpet a week before for the NY Giants, he will never do that for angry parents and students on the steps of City Hall. Fight for communism!

Anti-Racists Unite, Teach Racist Educators A Lesson

NEWARK, NJ, February 2 — “You can see Jim Crow alive and well in debate,” said one coach in the New York Urban Debate League (NYUDL) after a tournament here.

The head of the Jersey Urban Debate League (JUDL) ejected a Bronx high school from the tournament, accusing three black students of “trying to steal a pack of paper.” This incident has sparked outrage and action amongst the debaters and communities involved. PLP members can explain to fellow workers and youth that the only way to destroy racism is fighting for communist revolution worldwide.

THE REAL STORY

A school safety officer and another woman — a teacher or administrator — accused three black student debaters in the girls’ bathroom of trying to steal a pack of paper (which was in a nearby janitor’s closet). The debaters denied this.

The accusing woman dismissed their claims and got the JUDL head to interrogate them. Frustrated and angry, the students refused to speak to him so he removed them from the tournament.

The entire team of nine made a quick collective decision to leave together to protest this racist attack. The debate coach dispatched an e-mail detailing these events, and many coaches, including PLP members, responded with encouragement, support and most importantly suggestions for action, including writing the JUDL head and the woman and possibly addressing it to the entire JUDL. Other coaches detailed how their students also experienced racism at other mostly-white tournaments, ranging from whispers to dirty looks to openly racist comments and accusations.

Urban Debate was founded as “anti-racist” leagues that would include black and Latino youth in an “advanced,” nearly all-white, academic activity. But just as U.S. bosses use black history month and Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy to mislead workers into believing conditions are improving for black workers, this incident — like the Jena 6 case —-shows how capitalist schools give students repeated lessons in tolerating racism as youth in order to accept racism as adults.

The black CEO of NYUDL, tried to ward off protest letters, saying “removal was not an unreasonable decision,” arguing that the debaters’ silence implies their guilt — not anger at actual racism — and stating that the incident wasn’t racist! Coaches responded to him with more suggestions for action, although a coaches’ letter has not yet been drafted.

PLP members — rather than preparing youth to accept racism — are organizing the working class to build a classless communist world that will abolish the false concept of “race” through struggles against the bosses’ racism.

Inside the Bronx school, staff, students and parents were furious. Parents are drafting a petition asking the JUDL head and the other woman to travel to the Bronx and personally apologize to the students and their families. A student petition will be circulated amongst their classmates, and the school staff is working on a separate petition, all asking for a formal apology and condemning the acts as racist.

Amidst increasing attacks on students through racist budget cuts, this struggle has mobilized dozens of students, parents and teachers to take action and can involve hundreds more. PLP is helping spread the struggle within the schools, explaining that the problem isn’t just one “bad administrator”; it’s capitalism’s racist education system.

Schools spread the lie that “anyone can succeed.” Meanwhile, they help ensure that working-class students — especially black, Latino, and immigrant students — accept “their place” as future docile cheap labor, prisoners or cannon fodder in imperialist wars. PLP aims to teach working-class youth that their future lies in joining the international multi-racial fight for a communist world without bosses and their racist agents.

Oaxaca’s Mass Struggle Leads To PLP Growth

  Oaxaca, MEXICO, Feb. 15 — Today, 70 thousand teachers of Section 22 of the SNTE carried out a one day strike and mass marches to protest against the state government and Governor Ulises Ruiz. Teachers demanded that the jailed political prisoners be freed (teachers, students and workers arrested during the teachers strike of 2006), better working conditions, and that the schools taken over by the state and given to Section 59 (supporters of the fascist governor) be returned.

  The fight between Oaxaca’s working class and the government began when the teacher’s union demanding a better contract had confrontations with the police in which several of its members where beaten and another killed. This event unleashed years of Oaxaca’s workers’ pent up anger at the government that has done nothing to improve the massive poverty, racism against indigenous people, and unemployment in the area, and has instead used the police to savagely oppress students and workers who demand better conditions. A coalition of different community based and student organizations, as well as, the teachers’ union and political parties formed APPO (Asemblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca) to lead a struggle which took over major roads, schools, government buildings, and radio stations in Oaxaca. The struggle climaxed in the fall of last year when students and workers bravely fought several battles against the Mexican government’s federal police over control of Oaxaca. Eventually, the Mexican government prevailed over the APPO led forces taking Oaxaca back and imprisoning leaders of the struggle.

  Now, a little over a year later workers and students who participated in this struggle continue to fight. Teachers are fighting to change Sec. 22’s leadership whom they blame for having sold out during last year’s struggle. Many workers and students also blame APPO leaders for too closely allying themselves with mainstream political parties like Lopez Obrador’s PRD. More importantly, teachers, workers and students are talking about the movement’s strengths and weaknesses. What went wrong? Why did it fail?

  Overall, the struggle in Oaxaca has elevated the political consciousness of workers and students.  Members of PLP have participated in these struggles and in these discussions inside the teachers’ union and on university campuses.

  Recently, at a neighborhood committee led by teachers, a group of PLP’ers gave a political economy presentation explaining how the capitalist system is responsible for the exploitation and oppression of workers. They also pointed out that the movement was limited primarily by the reformist politics put forth by its leadership. One teacher agreed and stated that fundamental and permanent change would only come as a result of a revolution; but to take on the Mexican government we need communist ideas and, to defeat it, armed struggle for workers’ power. The PLP’ers introduced CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and argued that the most difficult part of the struggle is the one over ideas and developing a political understanding that enables workers to build a movement with a long term and revolutionary communist outlook. The discussion concluded with the committee agreeing to organize a study group based on CHALLENGE/DESAFIO and other PLP literature.

  As a result of PLPer’s participation in this movement, the Party has grown and strengthened. Many students and workers in Oaxaca know about PLP and respect its principled stance on the need for revolutionary communism. Now, as workers and students reflect on the lessons learned from the struggle, they are more open and willing to learn about PLP and its politics.

‘Small Schools’: Rulers’ Education for Fascism, War

(The previous article — 2/27 –– maintained that the move to small schools enables the rulers to increase fascistic control in a sort of “creeping” fascism.)

NEW YORK CITY — Although the separate identity and sharing of resources in these small schools may not seem fascistic, the subtle effect is that the working class is falling victim to these changes without connecting them to the ruling class’s need to increasingly control our lives. Indoctrinating students in schools seems like a natural way for the ruling class to prepare them for its future imperialist wars.

The rulers’ need to control by force all aspects of society is, for them, a necessary part of capitalism in crisis. The small schools help control not only the teachers and administrators but also to “creep” fascism into students at a very young age and win youth over to the bosses’ ideology.

The fact that over 70% of this city’s school population is black and Latino gives a racist character to this manipulation of the education system, and drags conditions down for ALL students. The rulers figure the large black and Latino student body is grist for their low-wage economy to grind out super-profits for the bosses, and drives jobless youth — the “fruit” of this inferior education — to enlist in the bosses’ military to fight and die in imperialist wars.

The small schools deepen the divisions the ruling class pushes on the working class. Not only does the working-class student suffer racism, nationalism and sexism, but the small school intensifies capitalist individualism under the guise of “school identity.” In one high school divided into smaller schools, the new schools insisted on “branding” — identifying each school in the building so visitors would know each school’s location. But this branding also separates the students and punishes those who were not present in the area of “their” school. Many students often faced disciplinary action because they traveled to their next class down the “wrong” staircase or hallway.

In one school that was “phasing out” of the building, students had classes in two separate areas, divided by one or more of the small schools. This caused them to arrive late to class because they had to walk around the small schools to avoid “trespassing” down their hallways. Often siblings would attend different small schools in the same building, causing problems when one sister tried to visit another attending a separate school in the building.

The administrators claimed the separation of the student bodies helped students focus on their studies. But in reality the rulers’ need for more control over the students in particular is the real reason behind this identity branding. The tightening of student movement is a form of preparing youth for future fascistic control.

The administrators in these small schools further push capitalist individualism by either having a dress code or a uniform students must wear while in school. Some schools have T-shirts and sweatshirts with the school logos on them to further link a student to a particular school. While there have always been school uniforms and dress codes, this new “branding” facilitates administrator’s control of the student body.

Many of these small schools are housed three or four to a building. Within the one building students must fight for resources that once served one school but now must accommodate three or four. Contrary to popular belief, small schools do not mean smaller class size. Most of the small schools face the same over-crowding as their larger counterparts. In addition, four separate schools have to share one gymnasium, making it difficult to schedule classes from four different schools in one gym.

Not only are students being short-changed in gym class, but they must share cafeterias, auditoriums and other areas of the building. At one small Brooklyn school, students were given gym classes without a certified gym teacher. Swimming classes were led by a teacher without lifeguard training, which is supposedly mandated by State Department of Education regulations. Worse, it’s life threatening for students as well.

Students are also being trapped into “theme” schools, although many “themes” are not real. Theater schools have no theater programs; law schools have no legal programs, etc. This indoctrinates youth into a lock-step way of thinking. And 12- and 13-year-olds are choosing — or being placed in — these schools without being allowed transfers (except for hardship or safety reasons). That’s fascistic.

Overall, this small-school movement is just another way the ruling class uses the education system — as they’ve done in the large schools — to herd students in the direction of supporting the bosses’ aims: a low-wage police state at home and as cannon fodder for imperialist war abroad.

(Next: The union’s role in this movement.)

21,000 Teachers On Strike in Puerto Rico against Privatization

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Feb. 25—
Teachers are waging a very important struggle for teachers and workers, here and in the U.S. They are fighting the governor and education authorities, the cops who have attacked their picket lines and AFT and SEIU hacks who have tried to raid their union. The 42,000-strong FMPR (Federation of Teachers of Puerto Rico)—the island’s biggest union—went on strike on Feb. 21 against the union-busting Law 45 (a combination of the federal Taft-Hartley and New York State Taylor Law) which bans public workers from striking. The teachers are also fighting for better working and teaching conditions and against the plans to privatize about 1,000 schools, turning them into charter schools. The average annual wage of teachers here (most of them women) is $19,500, lower than any in the U.S.

The school bosses and cops have tried to push scabs to break the strikes. On the first day of the strike, riot cops viciously attacked striking teachers. On Mon., Feb. 25, cops escorting scabs attacked striking teachers at the Republic of Colombia school in Río Piedras. But in spite of the barrage of attacks facing the striking teachers, their struggle has mass support. Most of the 500,000 students are staying away from schools even though the government is urging them to attend classes. On Sun. Feb. 17, a few days before the strike, chanting “La huelga en educación será la mejor lección (The strike in education will be the best of all lessons) and “lucha sí, entrega no” (Fightback, no sellout), some 25,000 teachers and other workers and youth marched in San Juan in support of the teachers. There were huge contingents of workers from the UTIER (electrical utility union) and UIA (water workers unon), who are also negotiating new contracts.

But while these workers are fighting mad, the sellouts of the AFT (AFL-CIO) and the SEIU’s Change to Win Federation are behaving like colonial masters, trying to stab the teachers in the back. Both are conniving with the local government to decertify the FMPR. There are rumors that Dennis Rivera, former head of NYC’s 1199 and now a top honcho in the international SEIU and the NYS Democratic Party, has offered governor Vila a huge contribution to his re-election campaign (the governor is facing charges of campaign irregularities in his previous election) in exchange for decertification.

Workers shouldn’t have any faith in these hacks and in any electoral parties, including the pro-independence liberal PIP, which is offering its legal aid to the strikers. All these politicians serve capitalism.

PLP teachers are internationalist and always support our militant brothers and sisters fighting back anywhere against the same enemies we all face (education authorities, cops and union hacks). The striking teachers in Puerto Rico are an example we should all follow, fighting back in a period where teachers and workers all over face major attacks from the bosses trying to make us pay for the bosses’ economic crisis and imperialist war. Our slogan should be: teachers and workers of the world, unite!

Financial Crisis Puts: SCHOOLS ON BOSSES’ CHOPPING BLOCK

When we think schools, we think children, and when we think children our minds turn to the future. CHALLENGE readers know Progressive Labor Party’s view of the rulers’ plans for our class and our children: more fascism and more imperialist war.

Within this context we must examine the budget-cut attack launched against New York City’s schoolchildren. These cuts are racist, plain and simple, following the already existing fundamentally racist patterns in the city’s failing schools. Immediate cuts include “extras” — after-school, summer school and tutoring programs. It is precisely black and Latino youth — comprising 72% of the student population — who are most in need of such “extra” services. Their “future” is expendable.

These cuts are universal and across the board: $504 million over the next two fiscal years (NY Times, 2/1) — the worst in NYC in the last dozen years. Perhaps due to New York’s position as the capital of U.S. finance capital, this city may not have been reduced to Detroit’s school system, the most massively slashed in the country. But the sub-prime mortgage crisis combined with the economic downturn and the hundreds of billions poured into military expenditures put the Big Apple on the chopping block.

However, a broad-based movement opposing these cuts can emerge in the coming period. Several PLP’ers made a call at the last Delegate Assembly for a February 14th demonstration against the cuts. Despite local union leader Randi Weingarten doing all she could to torpedo it, networks and mass organizations across the system have taken up that call. This could be an important first response to “Kleingarten’s” cuts (Chancellor Klein + union president Weingarten).

PLP members will be active in any movements opposing these cuts. Where no movement exists, communists must spark one, within which we can advance our revolutionary ideas front and center.

These movements hold many dangers. The present status quo has been a school system filled with racist patterns of underachievement and widespread indoctrination, especially of anti-communism. The main political content of public education is the myth that “we all get a chance to make it in America” and “if you don’t make it, you only have yourself to blame.” This message is central to the ruling class’s use of public education.

The bosses need teachers and schools to produce future soldiers, future workers and — when that fails — future prisoners. But above all else, the rulers need passive ones in their pursuit of fascism at home and imperialist war abroad. The passivity engendered by this “blame-the-victim” mentality is even more important to the ruling class than the shallow patriotic platitudes history courses push on youngsters, many of whom tune out, and rightly so.

Communists must raise this general critique of education among the broad masses through our literature and among our close friends in long-term political struggle. This necessitates a discussion of communism as the only solution.

Phony leftists and reformists will come out of the woodwork and attempt to lead mobilized masses of students, teachers and parents into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party, swallowing up an anti-budget-cut movement into Barack Obama’s contribution to the rulers’ politics — mobilizing a new generation of (mainly young) folks to “believe in America” once again. They want millions in motion for “justice” while marching behind Democratic war-makers like Hillary Clinton. Throw in a terrorist “emergency” and we have a mass base for fascism. This is the grave danger we face.

Yet the opportunities are even greater. The bosses need budget cuts in their current crisis. Tens of thousands can be introduced to our communist ideas in liberal-led movements against these cuts. Amid a passive period, the simple act of organizing a contingent of students, parents and/or teachers to attend a rally can be an important political step forward, but only if communists, fighting side-by-side with these masses, seize the opportunity to make communist politics primary. We can expose the misleaders and train new communist leaders.

Confronting police goons and administration apologists, we can expose the naked force and racist neglect that saturates the schools and the capitalist system itself. We can point out the need for revolution when we show how the bosses will grant reforms when forced to, but take them away as long as they hold state power.

Yet the masses will only draw these conclusions if communists are active. As the communist leader Lenin asserted, communist ideas come to the working class from the outside. PLP dares to follow this road today. There is much work to do and a world to win. Join us!