[act-ma] THURS 6/4: Education is a Right, Defend Public Education! June 4, 7:00p

[Julie Keefe]

*******No Layoffs in BPS! No Fee Hikes at UMass!*******


Education is a Right! 
The Socialist Case 
for Defending Public Education

Thursday June 4th, 7:00pm
Haymarket People's Fund
42 Seaverns Street, Jamaica Plain
(Take the Orange Line to Green Street station)

       Politicians and the corporate media claim, straight-faced, that although hundreds of billions of tax dollars are available for military occupations and corporate bailouts, budget cuts to public education are an inevitable part of the "shared sacrifice" that all of us on "Main Street" must make. They say that failing schools are the fault of teachers unions, families and neighborhoods that don't value education, and students who don't taken advantage of the opportunities given to them.  They point to corporate partnerships, "market" solutions, more testing, and merit pay for teachers as answers. But Corporate America's interest in education is not philathropic but strategic.  They want our public money that is designated for public education flowing into corporate coffers, just as Enron capitalized on the deregulation and privatization of energy, HMO's on the privatization of healthcare, and Halliburton and Blackwater have used the privatization
 and subcontracting of the military to bilk taxpayers and boost profits.
      
     They want to make us pay for their crisis and Wall Street has identified
education as “the next big growth industry” where they can find any remaining wealth to transfer away from people into to profits.  According to one analyst,
“education today has the growth potential that health investments did twenty
years ago.” Jeffrey AF Romm, president of Knowledge Quest LLC, writes, "The
education industry represents a $740 billion dollar market, second only to
healthcare as a percentage of gross domestic product.” Michael Milken, the former
junk bond king, who spent two years in federal prison, has already invested $500
million into education-related companies.  



"Students are consumers and should pay the full
cost of their service, and borrow at market-set bank rates."

--World Bank 1998 report on Education Reform, identifying the education market globally as a having $2 Trillion potential 

 
"Public education... has not outlived its usefulness to
this country, but unless it embraces the emerging education marketplace, its
power and significance will rapidly diminish as people choose superior free
market options... It's time for education to roll up its sleeves and play
hardball on capitalism's new frontier." 
-- John McLaughlin, editor, Education Industry Report

"From an investment perspective, this [education]
crisis has created an enormous opportunity and powerful momentum for those
companies with solutions to our educational problems"

-- Montgomery Securities (an American
investment banking firm, author of The Emerging Investment Opportunity
in Education)

“The
education industry represents, in our
opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public
control that have either voluntarily opened or  have “been forced” to open up to private enterprise. Indeed, the education industry represents the largest market
opportunity since health-care services were privatized during the
1970’s. >From the point of view of private profit, The K–12 market is the 'Big
Enchilada'”

-- Montgomery Securities (an American
investment banking firm, author of The Emerging Investment Opportunity
in Education)

“At present, almost all the elite Americans,
with corporate chiefs and fashionable economists in the lead are utterly
convinced that they have discovered the winning formula for economic success –
the only formula – good for every country, rich or poor, good for all
individuals willing and able to heed the message, and of course, good for elite
Americans: PRIVATIZATION + DEREGULATION + GLOBALIZATION = TURBO-CAPITALISM =
PROSPERITY”. 

--Thomas Frank, One Market, Under God 


"Of course, we are the public sector. So there are certain financial
transactions that we are not allowed to make with the private sector.
That is when the universities come in - they are that nexus where those partnerships can come together" 

--A representative from the federal Economic
Development Administration at the Grand Inauguration of the "Venture Development Center" at Umass Boston last month.  
   "In
a sense, what's going on now in our school system is exactly what went on in East Germany 
in automobile production. When you have a collective, single, monopolistic
producer, inevitably that producer produces a very poor product.... With no
competition, some people do very well, but most people do badly. The same thing
is true of our current school system; it's a socialist system, the largest
socialist entity in the United States , other than perhaps the military. As
a result, like all socialist systems, it produces a low-quality product.... And
it benefits a small group of people; in this case, primarily the unions, at the
expense of a large group of people." 

--Milton Friedman, whose last project before his death was to push for the full privatization of New Orleans public schools in the wake of the "opportunity" created by Hurricane Katrina


The idea that the so-called “free market” can
solve social problems is a fraud.  Unregulated Free market capitalism has created this economic crisis and now the people at the top want us to pay for it! 

While Mayor Menino and the School Committee are saying that cuts to our public education are necessary due to
the economic crisis - layoffs, school closings and school consolidations, fee hikes in higher ed, and the introduction of more charter schools are just the latest measures
in an attack on public schools that began well before the recession.  
Education
is a right, and that is not up for negotiation.  Especially in the wealthiest country in the world—which is currently
“investing” in two occupations simultaneously— education from early childhood to
post-doctoral study can and should be guaranteed for all.  You’re invited to a meeting to discuss what
is behind the attack on public education, and how to defend it.
 
 We need to talk about how a struggle for
quality education for all, involving teachers, unions, families and students,
is part of a fight for a better world.

Childcare
is available—please contact us in advance.
For
more information, email isoboston at yahoo. com or call 617-648-0561
Sponsored by the International Socialist Organization

publishers of www.socialistworker.org
   
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