Feb 16 - Glasgow, - A socialist programme to defend education
A socialist program to defend education
The right to public education in the United States is under attack. In Detroit, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb recently announced the closure of 45 more schools. Half the schools that existed in 2005 will be shut down by the end of the year. It is the same story in district after district throughout Michigan: schools being shut down, teachers pay attacked, services privatized, and staff laid off. Higher education is also being cut, including the elimination of the Michigan Promise Scholarship.
The same policies are being rolled out throughout the country. Barack Obama, with his “Race to the Top” program, is expanding the attack on education initiated by Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” act. The Obama plan makes federal funding for school districts conditional on closing public schools in favor of charter schools and paying teachers based on student test scores -- measures that will lead to larger class sizes, lower pay for teachers, and the effective denial of public education for working-class students.
Education cuts are part of a wider assault on all the social programs and gains won by working people over decades. The goal is to make workers and youth pay for the economic crisis and the multibillion-dollar bailout of the banks. The claim is always that there is “no money” for basic necessities, even as the wealthy grow richer than ever and hundreds of billions are expended on war.
The International Students for Social Equality is calling this meeting to discuss a new program for the defense of public education, one that begins from the need to transform society to meet social need, not private profit.
The International Students for Social Equality is holding a series of meetings in the UK to advance a socialist programme in opposition to the cuts in higher and further education announced by the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The government has announced education cuts totalling £900 million. This is only the tip of an iceberg. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says the cuts may reach £2.5 billion. Leaders of the Russell Group of 20 leading universities have stated that at least 30 universities could disappear and the rest faced possible meltdown. The cuts would send at least 14,000 academics to the dole queue.
A record 477,277 students took up a university place this autumn, a 5.6 percent rise on last year. But an additional 139,520 students failed to win a place. Savage cuts are already being implemented at universities and colleges throughout the UK. The government has initiated a review that is expected to recommend that annual tuition fees be allowed to increase to between £5,000 and £7,000 a year from the current level of £3,225.
Education cuts are part of a wider, systematic assault on all the social programmes and gains won by the working class over decades designed to make them pay for the raging economic crisis and the multibillion bailouts handed over to the bankers and the super-rich.
They can only be opposed through a mass political mobilisation of students in alliance with broader sections of working people. Students wishing to discuss this should attend ISSE meetings on your campus.