Us or them? Goals for public education

An increasingly corporatized school system wishes to crush students with learning challenges because they are not expected to fulfill the mission being set: that students during the course of their educations should be trained to become willing and obedient servants of large corporations and of wealthy individuals upon graduation. But, is this what the people of the United States want to be? If not, we must begin evaluating what public education means to our families, our children and our overall society. We must ask: what is the purpose of public education? What are the life, moral and academic lessons we want imparted to our children during the course of their public school educations?

Are schools molding our children’s minds well? Are they teaching them truths and the working skills that society will value when they’ve completed secondary school? Is public education giving our children the tools for knowing how to take good care of their bodies, the earth and to collaborate with others to create meaningful social systems and healthy communities? Are they being taught in school to know and appreciate the historical contributions of all people to the evolution of society, not just the contributions of the dominant faction? Note: For more on this topic, see the Amistad Act created by the New Jersey legislature.

The issue of school spending is another topic begging to be addressed. School budgets are 3-500% what municipal budgets are. That is: school systems spend 3 to 5 times the amount of money needed to run an entire municipality. Yet, voter turn-out at school board elections remains low and residents infrequently attend school board meetings, ask questions about school spending and academics, or voice their opinions about these matters. One country-wide study found that voter turn-out for a schoolboard election in Austin, TX was only 2.5 percent and that the Austin families most in need of educational attention don’t push the board to make changes that will benefit their children. But affiliations with high-performing schools often means that board members don’t know what’s happening in lower performing schools and with their students. A google search on the term voter turnout low in schoolboard elections nation wide produces page after page of articles, whitepapers and discussions on low voter turnout across the country.

You might also notice how many chambers of commerce are commenting on and discussing this issue – and wonder why that might be. Privatization has become a big business concern, with large corporations and their employees reaping tremendous financial and social benefits from school privatization. Knowing this, corporate interest makes perfect sense.

Which segues naturally into yet another question we should be asking ourselves: how much influence and profit in our schools are we willing to give to companies and individuals who are either 1) physically located outside of our communities; or 2) come to live within their boundaries but avoid having their children engage with ours because privatized local schools and private school vouchers makes private-school-type educations for their children pretty close to free. This is true for those students able to get the hard-to-secure charter school seats or whose parents can manage the cost and logistics of shuttling them back and forth to out of town schools.

The time has arrived to set clear goals for our children’s education and make certain that the shaping of their young minds is imbued with good morals, community values and historical truths. The value of banning privatization on any level should be critically analyzed, but at the very least, in any conversation about food served to our children during the school day, the consideration for how any corporate entity can profit by providing this service should never become part of the conversation.

Resources
School Privatization & Choice:
A Sociopolitical Analysis

The role of school site councils

Citizens for Public School Education

New Jersey Coalition on Privatization asserts that privatizing government services will harm state in the long run.
newjerseynewsroom.com/state/group-organizes-to-fight-nj-privatization-efforts
nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/nj_coalition_privatizing_gover.html
Members include
CWA Local 1081
Food & Water Watch
IFPTE Local 194
Latino Action Network
Peoples Organization for Progress
Pinelands Preservation Alliance
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Progressive Democrats of NJ
Newark Water Group
New Black Panther Party
New Jersey Friends of Clearwater
New Jersey Sierra Club
New Jersey Labor Against the War
New Jersey State Industrial Union Council
New Jersey Tenants Organization
Utility Workers of Union of America
1199 SEIU UHWE NJ

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