Today, wildcat teacher strikes are popping up across the nation; particularly in states with the most consistently underfunded schools. These schools have lost even the most basic and essential tools for learning and the legislature is still cutting teacher pay, benefits, and budgets. Austerity in public education seems to be the new rule, particularly in the most vulnerable, low-income counties, but not exclusively. Teacher pay has stagnated nationwide and now there is a growing teacher shortage crisis as class sizes grow and bureaucratic testing standards strip any joy out of curriculum writing.
Most Americans understand this is happening. Most Americans, regardless of their politics, love their public school or they at least love the public school model. It is a model we know works when it’s given the proper tools to succeed. Which prompts most Americans to wonder why they aren’t given those tools. The answer is simple.
Capitalism hates your public school.
The public school model as we know works (just look at how our adequately funded and supported school districts compare globally) is one completely devoid of a profit motive. To a political economy that requires constant, unsustainable growth, models with no profit motive are seen as investment opportunities. This is why our nation’s politicians and powerful business leaders have waged a secret war against public education since the early 1990’s.
Anyone can go read about the expansion of for-profit charter schools, the application of corporate methodology to the classroom, slimy educational technology deals, the trojan horse Teach for America, and the proliferation of standardized test supply companies. But nothing comes close to the importance of Class Action, a tight, little booklet published as a joint venture between Jacobin Magazine and the Chicago Teachers Union.
What makes Class Action so important is its willingness to lay the blame entirely on capitalist forces. Doing so is necessary because, as Class Action also demonstrates, the only strategy that can effectively save our schools is one that resists efforts to inject a profit motive into the model. Although it’s short, it’s packed with the context and history of school corporatization as well as winning strategies for resistance as exercised by the CTU in their 2012 strikes.
Americans need to know that the seemingly benign “solutions” pushed by business opportunists are part of the overarching strategy of breaking the public school model. Class Action is a good read for fostering this awareness, but it also offers strategic insights on building coalitions of parents, teachers, and community leaders.
The best news is that you don’t have to be a card-carrying socialist to read this book, it won’t burn your hands.
