>I assume that means he approves of union busting but is too shy to say it.
I don't know what Jose Perez would reply to this point. For my part, I think public employee unions often need to be opposed when they identify their interests with those of the state rather than with those of the people.
Does anyone automatically support say, prison guard unions? Given the compulsory nature of education, it is sometimes tempting to me to equate teachers' unions with guards' unions, particularly when the public schools in the inner cities seem so often to be merely preperatory institutions for the prison system. That doesn't need to mean "busting" the unions but it sure doesn't mean assuming that they are to be automatically priviliged by those on the left when they disagree with the populations they are trying to control.
K. Mickey
Again, I'll serve as a relay.
Jose Perez expanded on his original post and I copy that below, which responds to some of Doug's other points. K.M.
From: jgperez at freepcmail.com (Jose G. Perez)
I do not AT ALL support the specific voucher plans being put forward by varied and sundry right wingers. The speeches about "school choice" and empowering parents sound nice, but when you look at the details, you see the real aim is quite different.
However, the Black community's majority support for vouchers is just a new form of the struggle by this vanguard of American working people for the right to an education, and an equal education. It contains elements of three previous aspects of this struggle, a) desegregation b) parent/community control and c) adequate funding.
Socialists or "the Left" need to understand Black and Hispanic supports for "vouchers." We should identify the progressive reasons why the general "voucher idea" elicits strong support, and come up with "our own" voucher proposals that highlight and give fullest expression to this progressive content, and at the same time frustrate the reactionary schemes behind the bourgeois voucher proposals.
I believe the proposal that does this is 100% vouchers for 100% of the children. In other words, all money for the education of all children would be provided by the state. There is a certain amount of fine print that would accompany this. For example, schools have to accept vouchers as full payment, the admission system has to be fair and non-discriminatory given the nature of the given school, that costs associated with strictly religious instruction cannot be met from voucher funds and will have to be raised privately by the school/denomination involved, that special provisions and funding will be necessary for children with special needs, etc..
One objection will be that the state will be subsidizing the education of super-rich kids. But this is already the case. Bill Gates can send his child to the local public school if he wants to. Under the socialist proposal, he would likewise be able to send the child to any "voucher" school using the voucher. He would not, however, be able to use the voucher to cover a partial payment to elite bourgeois academies that charge three times as much as good local private schools.
The slippery slope schema you raise, when you think about it, necessarily implies that the bourgeoisie has now come to the conclusion, or will do so shortly, that the level of education of the U.S. working class is excessive and a waste of money. If that is the case, we will face a fight on funding, whether the funding be for vouchers or for traditional school districts. I think all evidence points to the bourgeoisie being genuinely concerned that, if anything, the mean educational level may be inadequate going forward. The problem they have is that the level of repression they need kids to internalize, especially among those likely to become the most oppressed layers of the working class, is not conducive to or compatible with imparting a "good" education, even by bourgeois standards.
The voucher proposals by capitalist politicians seek to facilitate a higher level of education for a minority of those up until now subjected to these inner city pre-prison institutions, both with an eye to the needs of the labor force of the future, as well as to guarantee the continuance of typical inner city education for the majority of inner city kinds by buying off the minority of families that complain, or at least giving them a hope of escape.
Coming from the Black community, the demand for vouchers represents something completely different.
It is, first and foremost, a continuation to the struggle for desegregation, for the right of poor Black kids to go to the same fine schools rich white kids go to. And giving American demographics, breaking the link between where you live and what school district/individual school are imposed on you is the only possible way for desegregation to advance. Taking the money destined for the education of an individual child an "assigning" it to that child rather than a pre-existing state education monopoly in his or her area seems a logical way to do it.
Second, it is a continuation of the drive for "community control" or "parent control" of education. It is aimed against what comes across to parents as the state's one-size-fits-all school system, although in reality as I have pointed out the state operates different KINDS of systems depending on the student population. ALL of them, of course, are bourgeois educations and contain elements of regimentation, subjugation and so on, but the central aim of the typical inner city school is to crush the spirit, imagination of and natural rebelliousness of these kids. It is a qualitatively different approach than those of suburban schools, by and large.
The essential problem of ghetto schools is, simply, what they're trying to do, HOW they educate children. Thus they cannot be countered with "more" resources or "better trained" teachers, lower student-teacher ratios or all these other liberal nostrums. But to the degree there is underfunding --but most especially, to the degree the bourgeoisie has ALREADY succeeded in "privatizing" the cost of educating children of relatively privileged and often extremely self-sacrificing families-- the demand for vouchers that cover the full cost of an education at the top tier of private schools in a given area is a step forward for the struggle by working people that society as a whole assume the cost of educating future generations. And it does so without giving the executive committee of the enemy class --the state-- an absolute, direct monopoly over the education of working class children.
A final positive side to vouchers is that it will allow individuals, associations or communities so inclined to develop their own schools. In Atlanta, for example, it is already true that a whole series of private schools are run by left-leaning people, including several founded in the late 60s and early 70s as "counter cultural" institutions. There are, similarly, a whole number of schools that seek to produce little Newt Gingriches. But schools will spring up, for example, to cater to Hispanic parents convinced that what's in the best interest of their children is rapid immersion into English rather than "bilingual education," and vice versa, rather than making these sorts of issues a source of endless manipulation by bourgeois politicians of all stripes seeking to divide the working class. Some may seek to reproduce here the "American School" phenomenon from abroad, i.e., seek to impart a fully bilingual, bicultural education vis a vis Mexico, Chile or whatever. There would undoubtedly be thousands of schools incorporating black pride, black nationalism, as central themes, and so on.
While, of course, none of this in any way guarantees a socialist revolution, the more cultured and educated the working class as a whole is, the more quickly it will rebel against wage slavery and the easier it will be to organize society on a new basis.
Jose