http://blackagendareport.com/content/torturing-detroits-kids-racist-fun-and-profit
Wednesday, February 23, 2011 Black Agenda Report
Torturing Detroit's Kids for Racist Fun and Profit A Black Agenda Radio commentary
by Glen Ford
Corporate America and its servants in the Democratic and Republican
parties care nothing for the education of Black, inner city school
children, and the proof is in Detroit, for all to see. The State of
Michigan, controlled, like every other state in the country, by
business interests, has ordered Detroit to close down half of its
public schools, and increase class sizes to 60 students. That's double
the number that any respectable educator considers suitable for
classroom work, and tantamount to a declaration that Detroit's public
school students will not be provided an education. In a modern society,
this is the equivalent of declaring Detroit - an overwhelmingly Black
metropolis - a failed state.
This racist outrage is blamed on a $327 million school budget deficit,
just as when the public schools were decimated twice before in recent
years, eliminating 79 schools and reducing enrollment to about 84,000
students. Many of those public schools were then sold to private
charter school companies. With every assault on public education,
charter schools multiplied. Now 54,000 Detroit students attend charter
schools, and even before the current crisis, the corporate enemies of
public education were gleefully predicting that charters would overtake
public school enrollment by around 2015 - which would make Detroit the
second major American city in which charters outnumber public schools.
All That's Left
The other city is New Orleans, where 70 percent of the students attend
charter schools, the highest proportion in the nation. New Orleans and
Detroit have something else in common: They have lost more population
than any other U.S. cities. And if that is not by design, then why are
so many rich white people so happy about it?
The rulers of America have decided that predominantly Black cities are
to become relics of the nation's past. In New Orleans, they had a
hurricane to help them with their ethnic cleansing, but elsewhere,
public policies must be crafted that make the cities uninhabitable for
much of the existing Black population. Sometimes gentrification does
the trick, but one needs lots of affluent white people to push Black
folks out of town, and it takes time. But Detroit is to be emptied out
in a hurry, by doubling classroom size and utterly ruining the public
schools. Then, the education entrepreneurs and hedge fund managers and
billionaires can build the kind of charter school system they want,
with the kind of children they want, and without the teachers unions,
which they definitely do not want.
The privatizers always claim that they have only the interests of the
kids at heart. But if that were the case, they would never even
consider doubling classroom size to 60 students, and keeping it that
way for at least the next four years - during which time very few
students would learn anything. After four years of deliberate torture
of children, lots of those kids and their parents will be gone - which
is an important object of this cruel exercise. And, if the privatizers
have their way, the teachers unions will be busted. Then, who will be
left to demand, as Detroit's teachers have repeatedly done, that
classrooms be small enough for students to have at least a chance to
learn?
© 2011 Black Agenda Report
Glen Ford
Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
Glen.Ford at BlackAgendaReport.com.