Defending Public Education

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From the Daily Californian:

By Jeff Schauer

Special to the Daily Cal

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Category: Opinion > Op-Eds

March 4 is a day for the promotion of public education in California.

There is a march at the state capitol planned for 11 a.m., a rally in Oakland at 1 p.m. and many reasons to be at either location.

Any teacher knows that education isn't something that comes cheaply. You can't cut corners in what is one of the most labor-intensive but necessary and ambitious endeavors out there. Technology can aid but can never displace the need for a low teacher to student ratio. Bureaucracy, though an issue, is a minor one, and focusing on cutting costs plays into the hands of Republicans who are drooling at the prospect of hacking into the state's budget. We must fund K-12 and higher education properly, and this means tax hikes at some stage, which in turn mean the repeal of Proposition 13.

Corporations have been blackmailing the public, threatening to leave the state if we raise taxes to fund education. We can call their bluff: other states will be taking similar action to sustain their own education systems; there is already considerable infrastructure in place that would make the threatened pull-out impractical; finally, it is in the interests of businesses to have a skilled, educated workforce. But pragmatic counter-arguments aside, we should not cave into threats against education's ability to do moral good. The skills and lessons that education provides, and the central ideal of a properly-funded public education system--that children and students from all backgrounds learn on an equal footing and are treated the same-are the best antidotes to the inequalities of geography, class, race and opportunity that plague us. This is why access to the University of California, badly threatened by a view that sees the sky as the limit where fee hikes are concerned, is so important to defend.

I have spent 19 years in California's public education system (six at the University of California), and feel as though I have been incredibly well-served by the experience. But now the students with whom I work at Cal and in Berkeley's school district are facing formidable hurdles: the familiar specters of inequality that come from a chronically-underfunded system on the one hand; but also looming threats from a growing and powerful minority in our legislature and state who argue that public education is expendable, that the public good doesn't matter, and that the idea of equality is irrelevant. March 4 provides an opportunity to go on the record saying that we don't buy any of those ideas.

The campus community will interminably debate whether UC leadership or legislators in Sacramento are the real villains. My own view is that the ultimate solutions to the university's problems lie in state politics in general and in Proposition 13 in particular (and, if this is about public education broadly conceived, that is all the more reason to target Sacramento).

That doesn't mean that we can't also hold UC President Mark Yudof and the regents' feet to the fire. The important thing to realize, though, is that we have run out of reasons to delay taking collective action: what hangs in the balance on Thursday is more than an absence from lecture or missing a teaching day. Berkeley should live up to its ideals and speak with one voice on March 4, whether that be in Oakland or at the capitol.

Will Students and Workers Save the Universities? Giving Thanks for the Disobedient

A piece by Marc Bousquet from Brainstorm:

Yesterday [November 18] the University of California Regents walked into a room packed with gasoline and nonchalantly lit their cigars -- handing down tuition increases that will hike 2010 rates 44 percent over 2008, turning higher ed into a gated community for the offspring of California's "Real Housewives" class. Their bet is the usual bet made by the comfortable: Someone else will get scorched.

Why wouldn't they feel safe? We live in an upside-down world where bankers -- not the capitalists, just their paid lackeys -- get bonuses larger than the deficits of entire states, and the money pimps at The Wall Street Journal are saying, yeah, take it, citizens, take it, ha-ha! And say thank you, too!

The misery of tens of millions in every sector of the public -- in education, health, income security, could be swept away if we forced more bankers and executives to live like teachers and nurses for a year or two.

California Is Burning

That pent-up misery is volatile, though, and starting to flow around the feet of the bankers. More and more of us are waking up to one thought: It's the capitalism, stupid!

For over a year now, students, faculty, and parents across the globe have been turning out by the hundreds of thousands to protest American-style "reforms." You know: junk curricula, volunteer teaching, the return of indentured servitude, corporate domination of research, ruthless administrator control. The New York Times serving up Stanley Fish ("Do your job, punk!") as the face of higher ed.

Today, American students, staff, and faculty are protesting American-style education. Led by staff strikes and student occupations, a pillar of fire is racing across the California desert toward the huge air-conditioned mausoleums of the trustee class.

No question, it's not yet an inferno.

But last month's occupations featuring a few dozen are now occupations of a few hundred: 500 students have set up barricades at UC Santa Cruz; hundreds more marched chanting through hallways at San Francisco State, taking over an administrative building.

At least a thousand students and faculty will face off against riot police and join staff picketing the Regents in Los Angeles.

Yesterday 14 students were arrested for chanting and singing "We Shall Overcome" during the regents' theater piece ("we're having a meeting here and trying to pretend that the outcome is in doubt!")

At 6 a.m. this morning, two or three dozen students stormed UCLA's Campbell Hall, chaining the doors.

Give Thanks for the Disobedient

This has actually been a season of swift victories for faculty and students -- wherever we've seen truly organized and militant faculty, as with AAUP-Oakland in Michigan in October, or grad students, as at Illinois this week, the administration has quickly caved.

Of course the administrators caved -- the real power is where it's always been, with the mass of us, if we can just keep ourselves together long enough to say "no" in one breath.

The California situation is bigger and more complex.

And the faculty with the loudest voices, those in the tenure stream at the UC campuses, aren't unionized: Most of them and many of their students have little experience with solidarity with other education groups, much less other labor sectors.

They're doing their best, but they can't help themselves. So far it seems they want to save their idea of Berkeley and other public research universities -- and just don't care all that much about Cal State-Fullerton, third-grade teachers in Modesto, or the nontenurable faculty they work with every day.

Because, honestly, if they did care about other educators and workers, they'd have been out in the streets long ago! And not too many of them are in the streets right now.

The biggest problem with this California movement is that the folks who are actually in the streets -- staff, especially, but grad students, contingent faculty, and undergraduates -- are letting the tenured do the talking for them.

I mean, these are decent folks doing the talking. Don't get me wrong. Still, why not shut up and hand the mike to the militant, articulate, intellectual staff, for a change?

As higher ed becomes a mass experience -- as more and more workers in all sectors become highly educated, whether they learn in schools or on the job -- it is harder and harder to pretend that higher ed is just about the reproduction of the Bush family's privilege. Today, higher ed is a field of working-class struggle, and one of the reasons it's still hard to see that is the hierarchical, undemocratic tendency represented by handing the mike to Judith Butler. Again, no offense to Butler and other mike holders. (After all, I'm holding one right now, aren't I?)

This could be a moment where the tenured might -- just might -- have unexpected humility thrust on them and achieve enough overnight wisdom to subordinate their Stanley-Fish-sized egos and take leadership from pipefitters, nurses, and food-service workers.

We'll see.

In the meanwhile, I'll be giving thanks for the disobedient, those chaining themselves to doors and shutting down the absurdity of business-as-usual while thugs in suits hand over our future to yet another movie actor.

Zero Tolerance for Peaceful Protest at Southwestern College

From Inside Higher Ed:

On Thursday, several hundred students at Southwestern College, a community college outside of San Diego, held a peaceful protest over budget cuts that are leading to the cancellation of more than 400 additional course sections next semester. On Friday, the students got a sign that someone was paying attention to the protest, but they didn't get the response they wanted: Four faculty members were immediately suspended and barred from the campus or using the campus e-mail system. . . .