The Supreme Court ruling declaring constitutional the use of public funds to pay for religious and other private schools is an attack on both public education and the separation of church and state. It reinforces the reactionary notion promoted under capitalism that education--just like health care, child care, and pensions--is an individual, not a social question. It aims to reinforce the drive by the wealthy ruling class to make workers and farmers bear an ever greater share of the burden of the capitalist economic crisis on their backs.

Both the Supreme Court and President George Bush play on the declining state of public schools in which resegregation, overcrowding, dilapidated buildings, and lack of books and other basic supplies are commonplace. Proponents of vouchers cynically compare the ruling with the historic 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, claiming that the latest measure helps working families, especially Blacks and other oppressed nationalities find a way to true educational opportunity.

The ruling cuts across the separation of church and state--a conquest registered in the Bill of Rights--by allowing public funds to be given to private institutions that teach religious doctrine. Even the idea that vouchers give working families a "choice" is undercut by the facts about the makeup of private schools in Cleveland’s voucher program: 82 percent are religious. And aside from religious schools, dissenting Supreme Court justices point out, the $2,500 cap on tuition assistance provided in Cleveland doesn’t begin to touch what it costs to send a student to a private school.

Vouchers, charter schools, and public schools operated by for-profit corporations gain a hearing among layers of the working class because of the condition of public education, although many working people reject these schemes. Some have been swayed into thinking that through individual actions, their child can rise above the lot.

But as in our struggles against concession demands by the employers, protests against police brutality, struggles to oppose limitations in health care and pension plans, and other battles, working people do not have to accept the wretched framework of the capitalist politicians. We have our own class interests and can organize to fight for them.

On the battle around education, workers have an important tool that can help answer this argument and explain the role of education under capitalism. That is the pamphlet The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism.

This pamphlet approaches the question from a working-class point of view and as a social question, as "the fight for the transformation of learning into a universal and lifetime activity." It presents education as part of preparing workers and farmers "for the greatest of all battles in the years ahead--the battle to throw off the self-image the rulers teach us, and to recognize that we are capable of taking power and organizing society, as we collectively educate ourselves and learn the exploiters in the process."

As the pamphlet explains, the capitalist class does not need workers to be educated. They need them to be obedient; to work hard, long hours for less pay; not to be critical; to lose any desire over time to broaden their scope and become citizens of the world. This is what "education" under capitalism is supposed to teach.

Militant readers can use The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning on the job to initiate discussion on this issue. Students will find it equally valuable in discussions with others.

Class-conscious workers should expose the truth about the Supreme Court’s attack on public education, its blow against the separation of church and state, and the fraud of individual "school choice" measures as a solution to the crisis in public schools.
 
 
Related articles:
School voucher ruling an attack on public education  
 
 
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