NEWARK, NJ, October 15 — So what do you get when you put Oprah Winfrey, Newark Mayor Corey Booker, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on a stage to talk about how to reform the Newark public schools? Another attempt by the U.S. ruling class to make schools more efficient warehouses, producing capitalist ideas and maintaining class inequality and racist divisions of the working class. Especially in a place like Newark, where the “official” unemployment rate is well over 14%, and over 70% of students can’t pass state tests, the bosses need to cover up their racism with a U.S. nationalist “We are all in this together” mentality. This is where Zuckerberg comes in.
On September 24, Zuckerberg announced that he is setting up a foundation, like fellow billionaire Bill Gates, to focus on the improvement of education in the U.S., and particularly Newark.
Along with his $100 million “matching grant,” Zuckerberg also gave suggestions on how to reform schools: “So we should close schools down that are failing, get a lot of good charter schools and figure out new contracts for teachers so that better teachers can get paid more money,” he said during an interview on the techcrunch website1. After the Oprah show, that comment was deleted from the site.
All the hoopla on Oprah couldn’t cover up the backroom deal between Christie, Booker and Zuckerberg that would leave Newark parents out in the cold. Although it seems dishonest, this is how education under capitalism has been operating since the founding of this country. Public education has always been controlled by the ruling class: from early factory owners, who built the movement for mass public education as a means to control immigrant workers, to today’s corporations giving millions to school systems to run things their way. Only a communist revolution could put workers in command of the policy and practice of education.
One example of capitalist control of the schools is in Washington, D.C., where private groups like the Walton Family (owners of Wal Mart) Foundation have the right to take back $64.5 million if the D.C. political leadership changes2. Zuckerberg’s latest “donation” with strings attached comes at a time when the Newark public schools face devastating cutbacks from Christie totaling $56 million and eliminating around 200 positions. Meanwhile, the U.S. spends over $1.5 billion per month to secure gas pipelines and key minerals in Afghanistan and gives the bankers billions in interest on government debt.
While it seems that the billionaires are in a much stronger position than the workers, things are changing, even if not as fast as we would like. Last week around 100 students from Barringer High School, one of the most neglected schools in Newark, staged a walkout to protest the terrible conditions there. In the first month of school, there were many students still without a schedule, one young girl was sexually assaulted in a classroom and there were fights every day. This symbolizes what many black and Latino students go through — the worst of the worst from the bosses’ racist system.
In the teachers’ union, a study group has formed where teachers and parents from all over the city will read about the history of the union (including the past role of communists), study the role that racism has played in keeping parents, teachers, and students from uniting and analyze the results of the cutbacks and corporate-backed “turn-around schools.”
On October 13, over 200 Newark parents, teachers and students held a community forum to talk about how we can build an alliance to ensure that our students benefit from any increase in funds. While many parents still believe that public schools can solve students’ problems, PLP was there to get to know more of these fighting parents and spread our ideas: that even if these schools had all the technology and good teachers around, they would still be controlled by the ideology of the ruling class. Even the “best” schools reproduce unequal class relations and win young people to patriotic ideas. Some of the parents agreed and took CHALLENGE, but many believe that “community control” of the schools is still the answer.
We in PLP both have a lot to learn and a lot to give to this movement. Only through our consistent base-building and involvement in the struggle will we win thousands of workers in the city to our revolutionary communist ideas. The bosses are giving us plenty of opportunities; let’s run with them.
1. http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/tech crunch-interview-with-mark-zuckerberg-on- mn 100-million-education-donation/
2. Turque, Bill Washington Post, April 28, 2010