Privatizing war and education

[Hannah Bell]

IF WE took the trillions of dollars wasted on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and spent it on education, we could work miracles... We could revolutionize childhood in this country. All of that should go without saying. I'd like to talk today about a deeper connection between the wars abroad and the current war on public education.

Invariably, if you walk through Harlem and come across a beautiful new school building or a lavishly renovated wing of an otherwise crumbling school building, chances are you're looking at a charter school. Charter schools, which have access to public funds but are privately managed, have become something of a cause célèbre on Wall Street...But studies repeatedly show that charter schools are not out-performing public schools, so we're left with the distinct impression that the real "cause" here is privatization.

And this is where the sinister parallels with the war machine begin.

Go back to the drumbeat for war in Iraq. You will remember that the press slavishly followed the Bush administration's claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie, but the press swallowed it whole and repeated it everywhere.

Similarly, you would be hard-pressed to find a major media outlet that hasn't broadcast the false claim that charter schools perform, on average, better than public schools. Whether it's the drumbeat to war or the drumbeat to privatization, the corporate media are more interested in serving power than checking it.

We saw imperial arrogance lead our government to believe that it had a right to reorganize someone else's country...Likewise, we will one day regret placing our children's education in the hands of private contractors. Is it really so shocking that, provided a steady stream of public dollars, the unfettered ability to seek out ways to make a buck, and less oversight and accountability, scandals will bloom?

We've already seen them: the outsized CEO salaries, the bouncing out more experienced (and consequently, more expensive) teachers, the dubious pedagogical methods and worst of all, dropping from their rolls children who are challenging to educate, children who need too many services (and are therefore, harmful to the bottom line) or whose test scores aren't rising fast enough.

Less oversight and more ways to chase a profit. This very approach led to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan, disaster in the selling of home mortgages, and consequently, disaster for the entire national economy. But we are supposed to believe it will do wonders for education...

If you get past all the hype, the war on education is motivated by the same imperative driving the wars abroad. Whether it's a humble village in Afghanistan, or my classroom in Harlem, the entire world is to be reshaped in the interest of power and profit. The same heady mixture of arrogance, ignorance and corruption follows suit...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/11/10/privatizing-war-and-education

[Starry Messenger]

1. Probably all the same companies too, when you reach back far enough

k&r

[midnight]

2. It seems foolish to extend any cost to be paid by tax payers, and the profits

to be pocketed by private industries. What a mess....

[Waiting For Everyman]

3. Privatizing is always a rip-off

because there is NO oversight, and NO LIMIT to the profit-padding in the middle. (Anything is cheaper without profit added onto it.) Privatizing is just another accepted myth (like trickle down), but it's a really stupid idea.

It's also a way to perpetuate ANOTHER myth... of reducing the size of government. The number of government employees goes down but the cost goes up obviously, to pay for the contracted employees.

It's another shell-game fraud, like all RW ideas.