Private Schools Are A Throwback to The Fuedal Age

Education is for the masses

By Phyllis Scherrer, SEP candidate for US vice president

As the Socialist Equality Party candidate for vice president of the United States, I denounce the recently announced plans to convert all the public schools in Muskegon Heights and Highland Park, Michigan into for profit charters. These actions represent a new and unprecedented attack on the right to public education. They are part of a nation-wide campaign by the ruling class to undermine public schools, spearheaded by the Obama administration.

In Muskegon Heights, a state appointed Emergency Manager has used the district’s ongoing budget crisis as a rationale for turning the public schools over to a for-profit charter operator. All teachers and staff have been fired and must reapply for their jobs.

In Highland Park, the Emergency Manager in charge of the public schools has also proposed turning the entire district over to a charter operator. All the district’s teachers will likewise have to reapply for their jobs with whatever company is finally selected.

Michigan is at the center of attacks carried out across the United States. The promotion of charter schools is aimed at both attacking the wages and benefits of teachers, and further reducing the quality of education available to the vast majority of working class youth.

In Detroit, scores of public schools have been closed and many turned into charters. The wages and benefits of teachers have been gutted. The state already has almost one-quarter of the charter schools operating in the country, with the vast majority being for-profit. A new law passed by the Michigan legislature exempts charter schools from collective bargaining agreements in their respective districts.

In Washington DC the chancellor of the public schools has announced that the district may close as many as three dozen public schools and replace them with charters.

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Capitialism's War on Education

 

Putting the public under corporate control

By Charles Sullivan

There is a widespread notion among neoconservatives, neoliberals, and civil libertarians that government is the enemy of the people. Many people believe that government is incapable of serving the public, that it is incapable of doing good.

This attitude owes more to propaganda than truth. After all, government grudgingly provided social security, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, and it restrained corporate power.

This came as a response to social unrest fostered by social agitators, but it was not enough. Government that serves the needs of the people rather than corporate interests is good government.

The problem isn’t big government. It's the merging of corporations and big business with government and the philosophical system that engenders it: the market fundamentalism spawned by rapacious capitalism.

When corporations, which are motivated by profit rather than regard for the public welfare, merge with government, people are removed from the equation and they are replaced by capital.

Thus money is equated with free speech and corporations are given the rights of human beings without the social and moral responsibility of citizenship. This is what capitalism does. Free markets are not an expression of democracy; they are a manifestation of corporate fascism and belligerence.

Ideally, from a purely capitalist perspective, corporations socialize costs and privatize profits. We saw this policy in action with the public bailout of banks deemed too big to fail. There will be more bailouts, many more, to come. And there will be millions more foreclosures that leave people living in the streets.

Earlier in American history capitalism produced fabulous wealth for a few at the expense of the many through the institution of chattel slavery.

Ever since the emancipation of the slaves, multinational corporations and the captains of industry have sought to recapture those glorious days of prosperity when plantations dotted southern landscapes and the crack of bull whips and screams of agony filled the air.

To the capitalist ear, that was the sound of fortunes being made via free labor, socialized cost, and privatized profit. The high priests of capital on Wall Street are pining for a return to the plantation.