Letters ... September 21, 2022t

Gutter racist school dismisses child for mutism
I am writing as a New York City school teacher on the eugenics and class warfare against students at my school. I teach a summer program that acts as admissions to our city’s “elite” public high schools. The program is only for students who are low income, non-English speakers, and/or live in the city’s shelter system. The Big Fascists (see glossary, page 6) use summer programs like this to produce the illusion that “elite” public schools are inclusive, diverse, and meant for working class students. I am here to attest to the fact that this is a lie! The school system uses the petty language and gesture of inclusion to continue genocidal practices aimed at our most vulnerable students.

I saw first-hand the bosses pushing out special education students and other students who do not conform to capitalist “productivity,” “meritocracy,” and “excellence.” In particular, I developed a close relationship with a student ‘E’ who was thrown out by my school for being selectively mute. E stopped speaking to anyone but his mother as a result of a traumatizing pandemic year. Because he did not speak, I would write notes to E in order to communicate with him. I also routinely kept in contact with E’s mother who did not speak English and struggled to advocate for her son in school.

My school administration was not just entirely unhelpful to E, but actively worked to kick E out of school as soon as they learned that a student with disabilities was in my classroom. The justifications for kicking E out of school consisted of pure eugenics with one administrator shouting that “special needs students do not belong at our school.” Other administrators used patronizing liberal language to insist that E would be better served at any school but ours. No one attempted to accommodate or find resources to support E in his learning. If I were not able to translate, there was not even a translator around to speak with E’s mother.
Sadly, I failed in the end and was unable to reverse the decision to kick E out of school. But in the struggle, I learned a valuable lesson: teachers and students must come together to fight back against Big Fascists hypocrites. The Big Fascists use “inclusive” programs and language as cover for their crimes against children and our class—they are never to be trusted.
******