Aotearoa/NZ: Education ‘Reforms’ pave way for privatisation Pt 2

Part Two: Secondary Teachers’ Struggles

What is the crisis in education? It’s the crisis that the bosses don’t want to pay with their taxes that are a drain on their profits, because they don’t need universal, compulsory, state funded education to produce enough workers, when it is cheaper to resort to funding cuts, user pays, performance pay for teachers, and to get the private sector to run schools.  The trend towards privatisation began with Labour’s Tomorrow’s Schools in the 1980’s and National’s bulk funding during the 1990’s.  It has been given new life by the current National/Act Government which wants to introduce performance pay for teachers and to turn our schools into Public Private Partnerships.

In the last issue we looked at cuts in publicly funded early childhood and adult education, and at how National Standards at primary schools could lead to league tables and increasing inequality between schools. We wrote about the struggle of the New Zealand Educational Institute, Te Riu Roa, (NZEI) the primary and early childhood teachers’ and support staff’s union, to stop National Standards.

This time it is the secondary teachers in the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) who are on the front lines of defending public education; demanding decent pay for teachers, and safe quality learning and teaching conditions. 

With the appointment of Rodney Hide from the Act Party as Associate Minister of Education the need for a fight back to save public education is stronger than ever. In the long run, this can only be achieved by abolishing the capitalist system altogether. Capitalism will always try to exploit human creativity to maximise private profits rather than meeting social needs, especially so in times of crisis such as today. Education is no exception.

Secondary Teachers Strike for Public Education

After months of unsuccessful struggle for improved wages and conditions, 95% of the members of the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), the secondary teachers’ union, voted in favour of a strike.  On 15^th September, PPTA teachers went on a one day strike for a 4% salary increase, reduced class sizes, a safe school environment, better teacher recruitment and retention, and an end to claw backs from the Ministry of Education.

Teachers rallied in centres across the country. 1,000 teachers in Wellington marched to Parliament, and 2,500 teachers in Auckland rallied in Albert Part then marched down to Queen St., grinding it to a halt on their way to Queen Elizabeth Square.  The one-day strike was the first in eight years for the Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) and it affected about 280,000 students from more than 450 secondary and intermediate schools.

The PPTA asked Boards of Trustees to donate their missed day’s pay to the Canterbury Earthquake The government is offering teachers only a 1.5% salary increase.  PPTA President Kate Gainsford said that remuneration alone would not solve the pressure put on teachers by growing classes and a bigger workload under the NCEA system.  Teachers, who are required to redesign new standards, have described their current workload as “insane”.

New Zealand teachers are among the lowest paid in the OECD, yet John Key is “disappointed” that they are not prepared to accept the “real word” of public sector low pay and cuts in order to help pay for the capitalist crisis and fund its privatisation agenda. This includes an education staffing budget cut of $95 million over four years in the 2009 budget, at the same time as increasing spending on private schools by $36 million.

The PPTA points out on its website that teachers cannot carry out the personalised learning programmes required by the NCEA with huge class sizes. Most classrooms are designed for twenty five students, yet most year nine and year ten classes exceed that number. In some classrooms students even have to sit on the window sill. Schools are being forced to fund extra teachers out of their operations grants in order to try to bring class sizes down. Around 10% of teachers are hired directly by the boards.

The PPTA points out that large sized classes are better suited the factory method of education.  This is not supposed to be modern education practice. High class sizes create enormous stress for teachers and students, reducing teacher retention and student engagement. They are a health and safety risk, risking increased violence and disruption at school, and even impacting upon problems such as teen pregnancies and suicides. 

 

The PPTA has said enough is enough on class size, time for the government to step up. 

Academic John Hattie stunned teachers in 2007 when he suggested that class sizes were not a significant factor in learning. He said instead that the main factor was the relationship between the student and teacher. This may well be so, but how is a student to develop such a relationship in a huge class. The PPTA is adamant that the prevalence of over-size classes in our secondary schools is at odds with the needs of both students and teachers in today’s classrooms. The biggest truths are not hard to grasp. The fewer students a teacher has to deal with at once, the more likely he or she is to reach all of them. Research both nationally and internationally proves that the smaller the class size the better the students’ attendance, the longer they stay in school, the more likely they leave with qualifications, and earn more in later life. In short, they become more interested in learning and engaging constructively in the world.

However the Minister of Education Anne Tolley is not listening and Bill English says the PPTA is wasting its time as the minister has no money to give them , indicating that National is not interested in investing in education during their capitalist crisis no matter what the long term costs to society of refusing to do so.

The government seems incredulous that secondary teachers, unlike nurses, junior doctors, policemen, civil servants, have not buckled under and agreed to pay for the capitalist crisis with substandard wages and conditions.

Mrs Tolley attended the PPTA national conference on 28 September. On the TV3 News, she looked worried and asked the teachers to return to negotiations but she didn’t offer anything and refused to rule out a lock out if the dispute continues.

The PPTA has emphasised that safety and learning conditions are equally as important as remuneration but the government has made no offers to reduce class sizes. On the contrary-it’s planning to lift the current limit on class sizes. The PPTA originally said that they were in for the long haul with more strikes planned. However they have since pulled back from full day strikes and only plan to do eight partial strikes where they refuse to teach students at certain levels, and do not attend teacher only days, or meetings after 5pm.

At the time of writing the PPTA has called off industrial action for the rest of the week from October 13^th, because on the 12^th the Government promised to make an offer that would be “worth their while”. However, after a day of negotiations the PPTA President said that this claim was “astonishing”. Nevertheless, negotiations continue this week with the PPTA planning to re-commence industrial action next week if no satisfactory agreement is reached.  

The PPTA has strong positions on many broad issues, including opposition to national standards, Public Private Partnerships, and the 90 Day Act. The one day strike is a great start, but stronger sustained action is almost certainly needed if the teachers’ demands are to be met, The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement says that the leadership of the PPTA is looking for negotiated settlement with the Government, and are in danger of compromising too much. They believe that teachers may need to take direct action. They talk about the need for solidarity with members of other unions and community networks, whereas we would say that the old demand for One Education Union, under the control of the rank and file, is the logical demand to raise.  

Media Criminalise Teachers

During this period of teacher activism, the media responded with enthusiasm to the Ministers attempts to ‘criminalise’ teachers. The Sunday Star Times wrote a number of frantic articles on “criminal teachers” reaching its peak with the front page story:  “Criminals in our classrooms” “the story the Teachers Council did not want told” followed on page two by: “Minister wants to know why criminals are still teaching”, and: “Experts should monitor teachers, says Professor”.

Instead of rejecting this as an attempt by the Minister to discredit the teachers’ campaign, the Teachers’ Council went on the defensive, sending an email around to all registered teachers, explaining that the proportion of teachers with criminal convictions was tiny.   

This media assault on the Teachers’ Council is ironic considering that in July we heard that the Teachers’ Council had de-registered a pre-school teacher as an “unfit role model” who had not declared earnings while on a benefit, and training to be an ECE teacher.  The defendant said “I didn’t defraud/steal out of greed, I was doing it to survive and provide for my daughter. I am sorry.” 

Here we have a single parent who had made a supreme effort to overcome social discrimination, to qualify and practice as a teacher and to support her child; and the Teachers’ Council ruined her chance for life to do this, even though she posed no danger to children whatsoever. Despite its willingness to issue such harsh and unjust decisions, the Teachers’ Council is under enormous pressure from the media to de-register more teachers.

The Teachers’ Council is in a dual role, being appointed by the Government yet supposedly representing teachers. It recently made itself unpopular by issuing a huge hike in teacher registration fees. Kate Gainsford sees the Teachers’ Council as a potential ally of teachers, and notes that it opposed performance pay and new government plans for the initial education of teachers.  She says: “The question is how to move the council away from being an arm of the government into a genuinely teacher-led body.” 

The fight to defend free, compulsory, universal, public education from Early Childhood to Adult Education is only just beginning. The NACTs attempts to privatise education and cut state spending as a drain on bosses’ profits will meet stiff resistance as the unions and wider working class mobilises to fight for their basic right to a fully funded public education! Watch this space!

Aotearoa/NZ: Education ‘Reforms’ pave way for privatisation

 

The NACT Government has introduced a large number of education cuts, alongside moves towards privatisation, National Standards, and targeted cash injections to support its assessment focused agenda. To justify this, it has created a “crisis” which does not exist. The NZEI teachers’ union is strongly opposed to National Standards and has conducted protests and campaigns but stopped short of striking or an outright refusal, instead calling for a trial. The education cuts are part of an assault on the welfare state including health, benefits and social services, designed to make the working class pay for the international capitalist crisis, and to make private providers rich at our expense. Assessments of students and teachers paves the way for rewarding the well performing schools and teachers at the expense of the failing schools opening the way for the privatisation of education. These attacks on public provision of universal, compulsory education funded by taxation has to be resisted by mobilising teachers unions alongside parents and students.

Early Childhood Education 

The cuts to Early Childhood Education, where instead of 100 % funding for qualified teachers, there is now only 80%, is an absolutely shameful and short sighted attack upon the most vulnerable members of society. 
 
 The cuts affect 2,000 centres caring for 93,000 children. $285 million will be cut over the next four years. Centres are losing between $20,000 to $80,000 per year, and are faced with the choice of either cutting staff or raising fees. The majority are raising fees by up to $40 per week. These cuts will hurt low income families the most, especially the one in four families living in poverty, most of whom are beneficiaries.  There is no way these families of can afford a fee increase, so they will be forced to withdraw their children. More than a quarter of affected centres are planning to leave the 20 free hours per week scheme and half are considering reducing staff to student ratios. 


Early childhood education (ECE) is the foundation of all other learning and numerous studies have shown how it is linked to higher achievement and quality of life for an entire lifetime. However it is a very long time before any profits can be made out of children attending ECE. In fact capitalists have an interest in shifting the costs of ECE to ‘user pays’. This may be why it is already the Cinderella of the teaching profession with centres operating already on stretched budgets.  While the NZEI has achieved pay parity for kindergarten and primary teachers this does not necessarily apply to private centres, and non -qualified staff, like teaching assistants in primary schools, are paid poverty wages scarcely above the minimum wage.

Some have argued that a grandmother type of figure can care for the young just as well as a qualified teacher. However surveys have shown that the presence of an educated qualified teacher or carer with their wider vocabulary, theoretical knowledge and practical skills, enriches the learning environment of children at all ages, and enhances their development and learning.

 Whilst quality ECE from age three onwards produces excellent results, some studies have indicated that the attachment needs of babies up to age two or three are better met by consistent committed care by a known adult.  Achieving this would need more funding not less, for example by reducing adult to child ratios considerably at centres, increasing funds for professional home based care, extending paid parental leave, increasing the domestic purposes benefit, and increasing funding to parent co-operatives such as play centres. The low pay or no pay of workers at this level, and up through the education sector, are an example of the non-valuing of women’s work in general, particularly caring and mothering work, which has generally been done for free, despite the high skill and commitment level that it demands.

A society with a genuine commitment to equality in education would begin at pre-school level, with free early childhood education for all, and more funding for Kohanga Reo’s and centres for Pacifica children.  Instead ECE funding cuts may be forcing some of these centres to close. Cutting costs at the pre-school level, where much future crime could be prevented, goes hand in hand with increased spending on prisons, which like schools, are to be run as public private partnerships, where massive public spending will end up as private profit. It is therefore hypocritical for the NACTs to claim they have the interests of children at heart!

University and Adult Education

Restrictions on university entrance are reversing a trend which has seen large numbers of New Zealanders gaining tertiary education. Unemployed and beneficiaries were amongst those benefitting from university education. Even so, some groups still have low university attendance, such as Pacific Island students.  There are few Pacific language early childhood education centres available, and Pacific Island students are channelled into non-academic NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) exams at secondary schools so the schools can achieve higher pass rates.

5% of university funding is now linked to performance, and National has warned that this is just the start. John Key has made grumbling noises about the poor investment that interest free loans make; and the government restricts loans to those with a good pass rate.

The cutting of the Training Incentive Allowance has stopped many single parents from being able to get qualifications which would take them out of poverty and into professional occupations. Others have gone to extreme lengths to try to study under starvation conditions.
National does not really want beneficiaries to have higher education. Instead it prefers them to do short cheap training courses so that they can quickly be put on the labour market offering their skills to employers for low pay.

The cuts to Adult Community Education have meant the loss of a very cheap cost effective service to immigrants for English as a second language classes, literacy classes, and other classes which enrich people’s lives and provide social cohesion. The PPTA, to whom many of the teachers belonged, campaigned against this.

National Standards

The Government is determined to impose National Standards on primary schools despite almost universal resistance from teachers, academics, and international evidence. To justify this, National would have us believe that education is in crisis, rather than their capitalist system, and that national standards are needed to ‘pull up the tail’ of those failing in the current system. That is, to close underperforming schools or force them into private hands where the focus will be to train cheap, compliant wage-workers!

 In fact, New Zealand does not have a crisis in education, and is doing very well by international standards.  As John Hattie put it in recent radio discussion with Charmaine Pountney and Gordon Dryden: “Where is the problem we are solving?” Where there is a problem, the reason is poverty which affects about twenty to twenty five percent of students.

Notwithstanding more funding being allocated to lower decile schools (in low SES working class areas), these schools have far too little funding; and sometimes lack cultural relevance.

According to Charmaine Pountney, former principal of Auckland Girls’ Grammar School, what is lacking is a commitment to equality.  The Child Poverty Action Group has explained at length how poverty affects children’s ability to learn, from lack of food, books, clothing, ability to pay for uniforms, school trips and cultural activities etc. An immediate answer would be to raise benefits and wages; re-introduce a universal child benefit, and provide more education resources where they are needed.

The NACTs answer to this manufactured crisis is ‘National Standards’. This involves requiring every child from age six, every year, to sit tests which measure’s the child’s literacy and numeracy against a “standard” which is deliberately set higher than the current national average, and higher than is needed for the child to succeed perfectly well at NCEA later on. This is a bit like deliberately setting benefits below the level of needs, which the government has been doing since 1991. Just as a beneficiary cannot live on benefits that are deliberately set too low, so a child cannot possibly succeed in a test where the pass mark is deliberately set above their developmental level.

This scandalous and cruel assault upon young children’s self esteem, where children are labelled as failures from age six,  is deemed by National to be the way to “bring up the tail” of the children who are currently performing below the average.  In fact, results of similar national testing overseas, and a whole barrage of educational experts and teachers in New Zealand, show that they do not improve learning at all.

Academics John Hattie,  Martin Thrupp, Terry Crooks, Lester Flockton, wrote an open letter to Education Minister Anne Tolley, asking her not to introduce National Standards.  They are not against assessments, but point out that we already have these. They talk about the international failures of these kinds of tests, the dangers of publicising results (eg having been used as league tables overseas) and the impoverishment of the culture of teaching and learning. They point out that some of our most remarkable adults have had unremarkable school achievements. They are even willing to work with Anne Tolley to devise better national tests which focus upon a child’s progress.

Charmaine Pountney said in the radio discussion, that class hegemony was maintained by national standards which will be fine those already achieving well but make no difference to students in lower decile schools. She said that that the tests wrongly focus on “outcomes not incomes”, and “output not input”.

According to John Hattie only 50% of infants who would have passed PAT tests (Progressive Achievement Tests), would pass National Standards, and only 35% of year 8 students would. The tests are thus unfair, and “out of kilter with existing assessment tools”. Children who are well on track to pass NCEA (National Certificate of Education) at secondary schools and well within current norms, are deemed ‘failing’, and said to be below the National Standard which is deemed to be ‘aspirational’.

This is disputed by teachers who say it is grossly unfair to judge today’s students by tomorrow’s standards (Education Aotearoa p 20-21). Jan Tinetti, Principal of Merivale School in the Bay of Plenty which has a 98% Maori roll, describes the standards as Eurocentric and “almost middle class.”. “They miss a lot of what is aspirational for my kids...they miss the cultural richness.” (Education Aotearoa. p 19)

National Standards run counter to learning through play which is vital for younger children in particular, and discourage creativity, imagination, or other subjects, while the focus is simply on passing tests in literacy and numeracy. Parental support for National Standards is dropping after the first test results have come out.

An article in the Independent  entitled “My little Boy’s Class Struggle”- also on the NZEI website- describes the difficulties faced by a 6 year old child who left behind a nurturing, warm, creative classroom environment in Ireland, to face a classroom focused almost entirely on passing tests in Australia. There was no more fun, no more cuddles, no more school plays.
Children in Australia face increasing pressures with a big national test at age eleven, and miss out on the arts.

Teachers and Unions Resistance against National Testing

In New Zealand the primary teachers’ union, the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI ) strongly opposes National Standards, and is conducting a campaign against it. It has a facebook page NZEI-Te-Riu-Roa.

 Some teachers are trying to protect their students from the tests because of the hurt they can cause. Professional development has been inadequate and therefore abandoned, or refused because of opposition to national standards. Principals are refusing to waste school’s budgets on training courses on it. Most teachers are either not implementing or struggling with the process (Education Aotearoa, Winter 2010, 20-21)

Recent surveys (have indicated that more than a quarter of teachers do not understand the tests, and that around 40% do not feel prepared for them.

NZEI organised a bus trip from Kaitaia from the Bluff to protest the National Standards, with rallies in all the major centers, and a petition which they took to parliament. They have issued thousands of postcards, and have set up   websites and facebook pages. They have also set up a group called “Project Orange” for community supporters to join to oppose the standards.

Teachers and principals (who are both in the same union although the principals are also in a Principals Federation) are united against national standards, with school boards (technically their employers) reluctantly behind the principals, but the School Trustees Association has  been telephoning teachers with warnings about their resistance to the standards. Anne Tolley, backed by the media, has tried to portray teachers as failing in their duties by publically criticising the standards; and generally portraying them as hostile and disobedient. Teachers have responded that they are not bound by the confidentiality of public servants, but by their professional duties as teachers.

But the NZEI is not calling for an out and out refusal of the standards, but only for a trial of them. Nor have they called for stop work meetings or strike action over the issue. A strike would be illegal, which is the excuse used by union officials not to take action. NZEI is also engaged in wage negotiations as their collective contract comes up for renewal.

The Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) say National Standards could have ”disastrous effects upon students and teachers”, and could lead to league tables that wrongly label schools as failures. They say it would be “most unwise” to ignore the international evidence against them.

However the PPTA is not very supportive of the NZEI. PPTA members are opposed to pay parity with primary teachers and resent primary teachers achieving pay increases on the PPTA’s coat tails, as they see it. This disunity weakens both unions, which as public sector unions with high union membership, could have some impact.

Teachers in Australia voted to boycott the then Minister of Education Julia Gillard’s league tables being published on the website “My School” which forced her to take them down.

In the UK, national testing happens at age six and age eleven. Lessons are increasingly structured, with every single reading lesson requiring an assessment.  Teachers unions have refused to implement the tests in 2011.

There are important lessons here. The education unions must unite in an all out opposition to the cuts in education and to National Standards as deliberate moves to attack the foundations of publicly funded, secular, universal and compulsory education. Strike action by the combined teachers unions supported by other unions would send a clear message that they are prepared to put their professional standards and the rights of children to the test in a showdown with this NACT government.

Ultimately to realise our education needs, along with all our other needs to food shelter, health as well as meaningful work and social equality, we need a program to end capitalism and plan for a socialist society.

(to be continued)

US: Balance sheet on March 4th Student Protests and What Next

 
The protests of March 4^th were bigger than the September protests last year. The militancy of the mass occupations last November was a step forward from the September protests. It was a step in a direction of seriously shutting down the universities. Yet the biggest achievement so far was what the students did in Santa Cruz, where with great militancy and determination they completely shut down the university. They were, it appears the only campus where a determined strike committee was formed in a conscious effort to shut the university down.

The Highway occupation in Oakland involved more people as direct actions than the occupation of Wheeler Hall at University of California Berkeley. The level of militancy was high but the situation was not right to draw the thousands who supported the Wheeler occupiers into action. Those who supported the Wheeler occupation would have done the same but were corralled by the rallies to off campus sites.

In general things turned out to be roughly as we expected them to be. A lot of anger, a lot of frustration: and what is more important a lot of militancy and willingness to go beyond the limited goals of the organizers.

The good thing about March 4^th is that the protests went beyond California and extended to other areas of the US. The best known university beyond California is Hunter in New York City where protesting students were confronting nasty cops, and the students claim that they also confronted the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) that was working with the police to stop the militancy of the students (http://takethecity.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/a-response-to-the-lies-of-march-4th/ ). 

The student protests are catching fire around the world with many statements of solidarity coming from students and workers' organizations around the world. Despite the participation of many individual teachers and other workers this was a youth and student action, the unions were not as involved as they were last year; none had organized actual strikes. The union leaderships kept the workers to a large degree participating in pickets before and after working hours.

East Bay and Oakland

In the immediate Bay Area it was mainly marches and rallies. Real effective strike actions were prevented from happening by the reformist organizers and the Left. From UC Berkeley (UCB) busses took about 800 students to a futile rally with Democratic Party speakers and day of lobbying in Sacramento to convince the class enemy to give more money for education. The main left organization that divert strikers to Sacramento and into the hands of the Democratic Party was Revolutionary Workers Group/Speak Out Now) whose politics are not that different the ISO's politics. Our group concentrated its efforts in Richmond and the East Bay. 
In Richmond we organized before March 4^th a March on Chevron, the oil company with a refinery that ruins the health of thousands of workers and youth mostly black and Latino in Richmond. In the successful march in which young students from the middle school spoke, the united front raised the demand to expropriate Chevron under the democratic control of the workers and the working class community. The East Bay Outreach committee rejected this slogan as too radical. That was not the opinion of the police. The Richmond cops took no chance and they sent a strong contingent of cops to stop the multi-racial youth and the geriatric marchers from entering "private" property, i.e. Chevron!

The East Bay Committee played a critical role in the Bay Area. It is controlled by reformists and organizations with reformist orientation such as the Socialist Party, Solidarity (Usec) and Advance the Struggle who were against real strikes and occupations. Our constant struggle in this committee was against their reformist demands such as "tax the rich" which they modified (under our pressure) to "make the rich pay" after months of debates with our organization. But the main different was our insistence that we need to organize real strikes and occupations in UCB and Laney versus the reformists insistence on a day of marches and rallies. We know for sure that the East Bay Outreach Committee discouraged the students from UCB and Laney from doing occupations of buildings so that such occupations would not interfere with their planned rally in downtown Oakland. So while many students in UCB and Laney were in militant morning picket lines, everybody knew that 2-3 hours morning strike is not a serious strike and obviously the universities in the East Bay were not shut down. 

Yet despite the acrimony between HWRS and the majority in the Oakland Outreach Committee, we think that they did an excellent job for what they planned to do: to have a strong working class rally in Oakland that combined strong contingents of working class people and youth from the high schools mixed with the marchers from UCB. It was indeed a good rally well organized and very democratic in which the principle of no platform for bourgeois politicians from the Democratic party s was upheld.

For good reasons some of the youth were frustrated because they wanted more than a rally. They wanted to disrupt the system and try to shut it down. So a number of them went to the freeway 880 and they shut it down for an hour or so before they were chased out by the cops with a number of arrests and one serious injury (from falling off an elevated road). We, of course, salute the youth and defend them unconditionally against any attempt by the state to prosecute them. The subsequent discussions revealed that many onlookers stuck in traffic cheered the activists who included university students, high school students and union teachers. But we clearly understand that spontaneous actions at the last minute cannot be as effective as statewide planned disruption of the capitalist system, even though they were done in frustration over the lack of effective actions by the East Bay Outreach Committee. To shut down the system effectively we need seriously planned massive picket lines which means scabs are not allowed to cross them, massive buildings occupations and actions by students and workers which includes actions such as on 880.

San Francisco

In San Francisco the situation was somewhat similar to the East Bay. In this area the dominant left organizations are the ISO and Socialist Organizer (Lambertists). Both organizations oppose militant actions to shut down the universities. San Francisco State University (SFSU) is the most radical university in the immediate Bay Area. While the Left stopped the students from organizing an effective strike and occupations, the students tried to stop scabs and were very militant on the picket lines as they attempted to really shut down the university. We need to bear in mind that in both UCB and SFSU have many entrances and that only well organized mass picketing or occupations can shut down these universities. 

The frustration about the lack of a well organized strike, and the emphasis on marches and rallies was expressed by the student leader Anastasia Gomes who told the SF Chronicle that the students should have stayed and defended the strike instead of marching to San Francisco civic center. But the union bureaucrats with Alan Benjamin from Socialist Organizer made sure that the strike turned into a long march from the SFSU and other SF colleges to the rally orchestrated by the labor bureaucracy. While there were more than 5000 people at the rally the speakers mostly offered the usual standard reformist solutions by the Labor Council in San Francisco with the views of the union bureaucracy as advocated by Benjamin and company. 
Indeed Socialist Organizer and other reformist organizations wanted to turn the March 4^th protests into a campaign for the Democrats. They tell the masses that what we need is to get a proposition to overturn the 2/3 majority in the legislature to adopt a budget, so that the budget can pass by the simple majority of the Democrats. Sure, we support democratic reforms. But the massive attacks on workers and students have nothing to do with the problem of 2/3 majority. In fact the Democrats, including the liberal Democrats voted for the current budget that unleashed these massive attacks through budget cuts.

Santa Cruz

Without a doubt the most successful actions took place in UC Santa Cruz. This was the only place where the students shut down the university completely. Santa Cruz is known historically to host the most radical students and the students showed again that this reputation is not for nothing. They organized and came prepared to shut down the university. They were equipped properly to stop scabs and any traffic of students or cars into the university. The cops and the school administration could not stop the students. The administration had to concede defeat and closed the campus down for the day. We can all admire and learn from the determination and the collective action of the students. A strike is the basic tool of the students and the workers. It only works if it is organized well. It is the basic organ of class war, and to win we need to understand the power we are fighting against and tactically organize the strike accordingly. The Santa Cruz students have, however, an important advantage over many universities. There are only two roads by which students, workers and traffic can get into the university. The students shut them down tight and that was enough. Despite the logistical advantage, the students showed us that a determined strike committee enforcing its own discipline and centralization could mobilize a solid strike!

What is next

The movement is clearly at a cross road. It cannot continue as a protest movement for ever. The main argument of the majority of reformists and centrists is that the state has the money and the problem is that the capitalist state is greedy and the politicians want to give the money to Wall Street. From this logic it follows that protest movements like in the 1960's are sufficient, since all we need is to put pressure on the capitalist politicians to give the money to human needs instead of giving trillions of dollars to the bankers and their wars. This is a incorrect and a misleading understanding of American capitalism today.

American capitalism is in a steep decline as expressed by a world crisis that will not be replaced any time soon by an extended or robust period of boom. It is true that the capitalist system always has its priorities and it always favors the bankers and their wars. But the money that goes to the bankers and war is not American money, since the US has the biggest debts in its history as the US is losing its competiveness to countries like China. Chinese imperialism is on a rise. It (and other powers like Japan) finance Wall Street debts to reign in the recession in hope of preventing it from turning into a full blown depression. Because of the rising relentless competition between the imperialist powers American imperialism must inflict an historical defeat on the American working class to gain back its superiority and to maintain profitability. The US has lost its manufacturing base without which it cannot remain the top dog, particularly since its main rival (China) has the advantage from the super-exploitation of its own labor that the US national production does not have.

To compete in this race to stay the top imperialist dog the ruling class must enforce brutal attacks on the students and workers. This is why HWRS keeps on telling the activists that to defeat the attacks we must have an indefinite general strike by students, teachers and state workers who absorbed the worst attacks (15% cut in salary and benefits and it is going to get worse). This is the objective reality and it requires a massive response against the attacks by the bosses and their state. Yet we must recognize a major factor. To organize such a strike the union bureaucracy must be ousted and replaced by democratic rank-and-file bodies and delegates of state workers, teachers, the oppressed and students' bodies. Only such coordinated bodies can organize a sustained general strike. Without this a sustained or even one day general strike is not possible.

But the great response of anger and determination shows that we can shut down the universities if the reformists and the Left are removed from standing in the students' way. To shut down the universities we need, of course, the workers' and faculties' support. If there is no official union approval the rank-and-file must organize their own strike committees with the students. We know that the workers will not cross a firm picket lines even if their union does not call a strike.

We have the forces to shut down the universities and keep them shut indefinitely until the basic demands are met. But first we need to agree that this is what we want. Our forces must be united. That means no busses to Sacramento that will weaken the strike and divert it into a rally to pressure the Democrats -- a totally defeatist strategy. It also means A STRIKE IS A STRIKE IN WHICH THE UNIVERSITIES ARE SHUT DOWN. We cannot shut them down if we divert thousands of students to marches and rallies outside the universities. Doing it means that we will not have the forces to shut them down: eventually most students will realize that the movement is only channeling their anger into protests; they will become demoralized and the movement will decline. High school students should be mobilized to either strike and occupy their own schools or join the strikes at the local colleges which they hope some day to attend. In the event that solid strikes can not be mobilized at all the schools contingents should converge on the campuses that the state wide strike committee designates as priorities. 

SO UNITY WITH THE DETERMINATION TO SHUT THEM DOWN IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT FOR A FUTURE SUCCESS. It will have to be centralized and de-centralized. What do we mean? We need elected bodies of delegates from each university, union, and high school to coordinate the state-wide strike and ensure that it is done right. By de-centralized we mean that we need local creativity. In a real militant and powerful strike each university needs to take the local conditions into consideration. For example, we saw that in Santa Cruz there are only two entrances. So blocking them with massive pickets may be enough. But in places like UCB and SFSU there are many entrances and areas through which scabs can walk in. So shutting the universities down depends on how much mass picketing the students will have. It may be necessary to use a creative combination of picketing and occupations of key buildings that guarantee that classes are not functioning. 

We must bear in mind that many students and workers went to work and to classes because they did not see that March 4^th was about a serious strike to shut down the universities until the demands are met. When it becomes clear that this is what we are seriously doing, many of the hesitators and the cynics will join us. And finally, HWRS insist that only an indefinite strike could force concessions from the ruling class. Those who say that we cannot pull together are giving up in advance. If we remain a small minority on this, we tell the students and workers: Don't believe the reformists and the Left. One day of action at a time will lead eventually to a defeat. The ruling class uses it as safety valve to release anger. But if we remain a minority we are willing to go through a "test". If the majority wants to build for just another day of actions, lets make this day a test of our strength by shutting them down for real.


HWRS think that we need few powerful demands for a broad united front that will draw hundreds of thousands students and workers who will be willing to participate in a general strike until the demands are met. We need demands that can unite the many students and workers who are determined to shut the schools down until the demands are met. We all agree on basic powerful demands. They can be adopted as we suggest or iin the way the delegates of students and workers resolve to make them.
 
Down the regents the watchdogs of the capitalist state! 
Open the universities to the working class! 
For open admission and free tuition! 
Student, faculty, staff, parent, and working class community control over the entire public education system, from preK-12 through graduate school and adult education! 
No layoffs and furloughs in the universities and the state! 
Rehire all laid off staff and faculty! 
Restore the budget cuts in the state! 
Stop all layoffs of state workers and all the attacks on the unions and the oppressed! 
Down with Race to the Top and privatization schemes! 
Make Education, Full Employment and Health Care basic rights!

HWRS believes that demands like these can unite and energize the movement. It should always be made clear, however, that even these basic demands cannot be won by electoral or legislative means. In fact, even an indefinite strike in the universities can only fully win its demands when it becomes the launching pad for a general strike by all workers in the state. What we need is to mobilize a massive general strike in which faculty, staff and students unite to occupy the schools, and then create democratic general assemblies under whose authority the institutions are reopened and administered. Such a demonstration of the power of direct action would serve as a catalyst for government workers in the strangled social service programs, and private sector workers in failing industries, to do the same. When workers and students come together to forge organs of direct democracy and to challenge the bosses' control of our institutions and economy, the government of the bankers and speculators is exposed as both vulnerable and unnecessary. Only a revitalized and democratic workers movement linked to the students, the oppressed, and the unemployed can build the democratic rank and file organizations necessary to oust the capitalist system and form a workers' government.


Dave Dov Winter HWRS


http://www.humanistsforrevolutionarysocialism.org/

USA: Fighting the Cuts in Education

FROM ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TO THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL:

ONLY WORKERS’ ACTIONS CAN SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION!



For control of our public universities by faculty, staff, and students; abolish the Board of Regents!

For parent-teacher-staff control of public schools; down with school boards and state trustees!

Stop the Democratic Party/CTA drive to privatize through charter schools!

For mass actions by students, parents, teachers, and workers,

up to a prolonged general strike, to defeat all attacks on public education and public workers!



Richmond, California, located in the West Contra Costa Unified School District and sitting in the shadow of Chevron, is Ground Zero in the attack on public education. Chevron draws down $14 billion in annual profits and enjoys tax breaks via Proposition 13 and the corporate tax deals cut in Sacramento to pass the budget this year. All the while, schools are bulldozed; teachers and staff are fired; classes are overcrowded; and public education in California has become the laughing stock of the educated world. Youth in this district are more likely to go to prison or war than to get a good education and a decent job. Even now few can afford the University of California. Yet they plan to increase fees to over $10,000!

The swells and overstuffed suits on the Board of Regents, the school boards, the legislative and executive bodies (from the State Capitol to the White House), and their paymasters on Wall Street, led by JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs etc., blather endlessly about their commitment to cutting costs. Meanwhile, their wealth and profits soar, in contrast to homeless encampments which bloom outside our cities. WHO WILL STAND UP TO THIS INJUSTICE? WHO WILL FIGHT FOR OUR KIDS EDUCATION?

Despite the clamor of the media pundits, who last week celebrated a jump in the Dow, the current crisis shows no let up for the working class, the unemployed, or our students. CEOs and public administrators see only one way to balance their books, via wholesale attacks on the living standards of working people. One in seven people internationally live in poverty. 40 million in the US join the 2 billion worldwide surviving in poverty, alongside a billion who live on less than $1.00 a day. We are now told to expect a jobless “recovery” while the economy shreds a quarter million jobs monthly, and the stock market skyrockets as profits return to the financial capitalists. The bailout is working – but only for Wall Street – and at our expense!

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and their ilk have hoarded billions to pay obscene bonuses to their best thieves this Christmas. The treacherous leaders in the union bureaucracies, the union supported politicians, and the reformists posing as socialists only give cover to these accepting furloughs, lower wages, cuts in pensions, and increased health care costs, and to stand by as immigrants are scapegoated and deported. While Wall Street and the military receive billions of dollars from Washington, we are told: “Don’t fight back; you can’t win, because there is no money for education and social services.”

Most of all, we are told: “This is simply a crisis of the financial sector, caused by foolish people who let themselves get talked into mortgages they couldn’t afford.” They don’t want us to see the big picture. The truth is that the entire edifice of the capitalist economic system is rotten to the core. The present economic crisis is not a matter of bad mortgages transformed by Wall Street machinations into “toxic assets.” Rather, it is a classic crisis of overproduction, caused by inter-imperialist rivalry lowering workers’ standard of living in order to boost profits, until the workers can no longer afford to buy the goods they produce. This inherent structural weakness in capitalism means that for the bosses and their profits to survive, Wall Street needs you to take the hit – you, your kids, your grandkids, and your descendants ad infinitum!

Instead of explaining this truth, the fake socialists join the chorus of liberals and progressives who create the illusion that simply putting pressure on Obama will stop the cuts and save our education. One fake socialist group, the LIT-FI, creates and perpetuates illusions in capitalism’s ability to deliver by calling for an elected Board of Regents instead of fighting for student/worker/teaching faculty control of the university system.. Their faith in reform is made apparent in a banner headline in their press, La VOZ de los Trabajadores, asking: “OBAMA ARE YOU LISTENING? WE’RE FIGHTING BACK!” As if, this “bought and paid for,” pretty boy of Wall Street, whose job it is to impose the cuts, will turn his back on big capital and put the interests of the working class first.

What fake socialists, liberals, and progressives won’t say is that for us to win quality education, affordable health care, jobs for all, a clean environment, and an end to war, capitalism must die. We must replace this entire system – the economic foundation, the political structures, and the armed power of the state – with workers’ democratic self-management, all the way from the points of production and distribution to the highest levels of decision making and enforcement. What we need is a Workers’ Government run by workers’ power.


Rallies, teach-ins, forums, and one-day work stoppages alone will not end the attack on education. To win, we need prolonged general strike action across the state against the rule of the capitalists, in all the workplaces in both the public and private sectors, in the schools the universities and in the streets. We must fight for transitional demands that can break the grip of the capitalist media and world view on the masses of workers. Our program must include:

1) No layoffs, furloughs, or speed-ups; no fee increases or cuts in programs or classes in the schools or in higher education; no cuts in social services and benefits for the poor, seniors, children, or the disabled.

2) Abolish the Regents! No to fake democratization of the Regents through general election! Down with the drive to privatize public education! Only a university system democratically administered by teaching faculty, staff, students, and the working class community can provide education that serves the interest of the working class, not the corporate elite. FOR STUDENT, FACULTY, STAFF, AND WORKERS’ COMMUNITY CONTROL of the UC, Cal State, and Community College systems and all public schools! Down with the political appointees, elected officials, and state-imposed trustees who strangle our colleges and school districts!

3) FOR OPEN ADMISSIONS! FOR AN END TO FEES (NO TUITION)! STIPENDS BASED ON NEED! From pre-school to graduate school, provide free, high quality education and enough classes for everyone. The existing system is not designed to educate the working class. From grade school though university, it tracks students by socioeconomic class, separating the privileged from those destined for low paying dead end jobs, the military, or prison. In a socialist economy the highest education achievable by an individual would be valued and promoted. But in this era of capitalist decay, higher education and socioeconomic advancement are no longer valued by the denizens of Wall Street and their corporate shills on the UC Board of Regents. DOWN WITH ARNIE DUNCAN’S CHARTER SHOOL DRIVE!

4) JOBS FOR ALL! From an individual’s entry into the working world until retirement, everyone must be guaranteed the opportunity to perform meaningful creative work that serves humanity and pays enough to support a family. To end unemployment and the squeeze on workers’ wages, we demand a sliding scale of wages and working hours: 30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay! Share available work! Reclaim advances in productivity from the expropriators!

5) When banks and corporations plead poverty in the face of workers’ reasonable demands for jobs, fair pay, and full benefits, we must fight for the nationalization of failing enterprises under democratic workers’ control, without compensation to the stockholders!

6) ABOLISH CALIFORNIA’S INDUSTRIAL PRISON SYSTEM! The decline in spending on education since the passage of Proposition 13 is closely correlated with the rise of the prison population in California. Each prisoner is a consequence of this system’s failures in education and employment! The system is the crime; the prisoners are only the symptom. Abolish the capitalist system and the symptom will disappear. Prisoners cost $47,000 a year and incarcerated youth cost a quarter million dollars a year – while our public schools operate on $7,000 per student!

7) FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE from cradle to grave. The only thing preventing universal, free, high quality health care is the profit system, which extracts profit from every illness or death. For our families to have health care, the profit system must be driven out of medicine!

8) Stop the two-tier system of contracting out permanent positions.. Offer contract workers permanent union university employment, offer integration into CALPERS with credits for time served. Organize the unorganized!

9) Drive Military & CIA/NSA recruiters out of the universities! Down with all intellectual work that serves the exploitative and military ends of the imperialists. Down with Lawrence Livermore, home of US nuclear weapon research! Rather we need a university that teaches the critique of political economy and the theoretical contributions of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky—not the deceptive system of exploitation and wars! Education withers during imperialist war drives! Defeat US, NATO and Allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan!

10) For a fighting Workers’ Party. To achieve the above demands, workers and students must break with the Democratic and all capitalist parties (Greens, Republicans, American Independent, and Libertarian) and build a Workers’ Party based in the trade unions, alongside unorganized workers, the unemployed, and their allies in the communities of color and the LGBT community. Only a Fighting Workers’ Party committed to defeating capitalism by revolutionary means and founding a workers’ government can establish a rational socialist plan to win these demands.

HUMANIST WORKERS FOR REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM

Working with the FLTI to refound the Fourth International

www.HumanistsForRevolutionarySocialism.org

e-mail: hw4rs@yahoo.com

October 2009 Labor Donated