The employers know that self-confidence among superexploited sections of the working class means people standing up for their rights, organizing unions, and taking political action in their own interests. It breaks down carefully cultivated prejudices and fears perpetuated in class society and heads toward united action by broad masses of workers and farmers.

This is what is behind the initial testing of the waters to push back bilingual education in New York, rightist attacks against immigrant workers in Long Island, president William Clinton's federal legislation targeting immigrants, and Reform Party presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan's campaign to "emphasize the English language and start trying to pull this country back together."

And Buchanan has a point. What the superwealthy ruling capitalist class "put together" as foundation stones of the most powerful imperialist power the world has ever seen included Jim Crow segregation, terror against Mexican immigrants, the oppression of the Chicano people, and the second-class status of women. This setup has been coming apart for some time. The working class in the United States has become stronger over the past decades as the civil rights movement, struggles for women's equality, and battles for Puerto Rican rights and Chicano liberation broke down divisions among working people.

These massive struggles sought to change racist and discriminatory practices in government institutions and public facilities that perpetuated and reinforced national oppression, such as in the schools, courts, hospitals, public transportation, and even rest rooms. National minorities whose first language is not English fought for the right to bilingual programs that teach all basic subjects in their primary language with teachers who are bilingual and who respect the culture and heritage of the students, and administrative staffs that are responsive to the needs of oppressed nationalities and national minorities.

Millions of people who are drawn into the working class in the United States from around the world face big social obstacles in trying to learn English and function on an equal basis in this capitalist society. In fact, the employers prefer workers to only learn words in English necessary for them to be productive workers. This helps keep sections of the working class isolated and unable to communicate with others.

Despite long hours on the job and arduous labor, it is not uncommon to find garment workers, meat packers, janitors, and others spending hard-earned money to attend English classes in order to break down these barriers and increase the possibilities for common struggle. They also want their children to both get a good education and to be proficient in English, for which bilingual education is a prerequisite.

These are reasons why thousands of people will find the pamphlet, The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform under Capitalism by Jack Barnes, an valuable tool in this struggle. It helps pose questions such as why the defense of bilingual education is a social issue for the entire working class. Rather than accepting the government's framework of narrowing bilingual education to a few years in the school system, we must fight for the right to bilingual education for all, for open classes with qualified teaching of English, for bilingual service exams and bilingual ballots; for the right to personnel in public facilities like hospitals and libraries who speak languages other than English; and the right to be able to conduct legal proceedings in those languages as well. These are fundamental democratic rights.

The pamphlet helps reject pressures in capitalist society for working people to try to find individual solutions, and points to the possibilities to fight for a society where there "would be continual education. There would be a continual connection between work and education, between work and creativity, between work and works of art. Work would not be organized around competition to sell the labor power of our muscle and brains for eight hours a day to one of the highest bidders. And the greatest reward from work would be increased human solidarity, the pleasure and celebration that come from what we have accomplished together. That is why the working class has such a stake in getting rid of the notion that education is a children's question instead of a social question." That is also why the Democratic administration in Washington, New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his task force on bilingual education, the rightist thugs in Long Island, and Patrick Buchanan drive in the opposite direction.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home