Expose School ‘Reform’ As Rulers’ Attack on Students

BROOKLYN, NY, March 28 — A recent school forum about the threats looming for workers and their children in the public education system attracted 25 teachers and other school staff, including PL members, friends and CHALLENGE readers.

An opening guest speaker explained that for the entire history of class society, a small group of rulers has controlled the means of production and used the apparatus of the state to maintain that control and to keep power over the laboring classes. The tools they use to exercise this control include the military, the laws and legal system and cultural media, from fine art and literature to the movies and TV.

The public education system, since its inception, has been a pivotal means to control the ideas workers learn and believe. The bosses want the schools to keep workers and youth obedient by teaching them the ideology the system is built on: individualism, elitism, patriotism, racism, sexism and loyalty to the ruling class.

U.S. rulers have specific needs in the current crisis of the failing economy and threats from imperialist rivals. The rulers need to retool schools to produce patriotic workers who have more skills but will work for lower wages and fight in their widening imperialist wars. A pool of workers like this is necessary for them to compete with growing rivals like India and China.

The rulers are engaged in debate about what tactics will get these results, and their debate plays out in the “reforms” imposed on schools. These have included the standards movement, which under the auspices of “No Child Left Behind” has become primarily about testing and has been abandoned by ruling-class mouthpieces like Diane Ravitch as a failure.

Other strategies the bosses are trying out include the increase in charter schools, changes in teacher training, merit pay for teachers and business models for school management. All these strategies lead to more direct government control of schools which is another step in building fascism.  

The forum discussed how the Department of Education is moving charters or other new schools into buildings already housing a public school and pitting the parents and teachers against each other in a war over resources, funds and space. In these scenarios, the workers are encouraged to fight over which school is better and not look at the real enemy: the ruling class.

No matter which kind of schools our working-class children attend, charter or public, they are being taught ruling-class ideas, not the knowledge, skills and class-consciousness they need to make a revolution and a new society. No matter what reforms the rulers put in the schools, they cannot provide jobs for all the students who leave the schools with or without diplomas. Racism gives the majority of black and Latino youth only the choice between racist unemployment or fighting in the bosses’ imperialist wars.

Although one teacher described the situation as “depressing,” the response of the overwhelming majority was “what can we do about this?” Teachers wanted to discuss these ideas with students and make plans to fight back if specific attacks were imposed on our schools, along with starting a petition and letter-writing campaigns. The job of the workers in the school who are in, or close to, the Party now becomes to build on the class-conscious understanding and fighting spirit of our friends and coworkers.

As the results of Obama’s “Race to the Top” emerged, coworkers expressed more anger to us about the state of education. One of them fumed as she read an article about the subject, saying, “Look at what they are doing to us!” declaring her unity with PL’s communist analysis and the class interests of workers and students.

The forum allowed us to see where people stand so we can build relationships and engage them with us in struggle against the rulers. This is a long-term process, but a necessary one to build a fighting Party. We need to unite students, parents and teachers at our school, and around the world, to destroy the capitalist system and build communism. Only when workers rule the world can we create an educational system that teaches our youth what they need to run the world in their own class interest.