Special issue of Monthly Review on Education

A Special issue of Monthly Review on Education just out

This special issue of MR, “Education Under Fire: The U.S. Corporate Assault on Students, Teachers and Schools,” was edited with the help of education professors, Bill Ayers and Rick Ayers, who provided the inspiration and organization, solicited manuscripts, and wrote the introduction to the issue. Two additional articles not included in the print version of the magazine: “Privatizing the Public Space: Historical Perspectives at the End of Public Education” by William H. Watkins, and “Inclusive Education, High Stakes Testing, and Capitalist Schooling” by Mara Sapon-Shevin, will appear on our Web page, http://monthlyreview.org, as part of this issue. While another article, “Khalil Gibran International Academy: A Story of Capitulation by Public Officials to Bigotry and Racism and the Campaign of Resistance that Followed,” by Debbie Almontaser and Donna Nevel, also part of this special issue, will appear in print in the September MR.

For MR this [special issue] represents only a starting point and we hope to continue to address the education question in future issues—not only in relation to the United States but also globally. Except for the crucial, concluding essay on Cuban education, provided by Ricardo Alarcón (President of Cuba’s National Assembly of Peoples’ Power), which points to what can be achieved in the realm of education once the barriers represented by capitalist society are removed, all of the articles in this special issue are concerned with the changing context of schooling in the United States. This is not meant, however, to ignore the rest of the world, but to constitute a warning of what may be in the offing for much of the global population—since the United States is the fountainhead of neoliberal policy. Indeed, the fact that the privatization of public education in the United States already has a global counterpart was forcibly impressed on MR editor, John Bellamy Foster, during a recent trip to Brazil. His article for this issue, “Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital,” is based on his opening presentation to the Fifth Brazilian Conference on Education and Marxism in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, April 11, 2011. This conference was attended by 1,200 education students, school teachers, and education professors all concerned with promoting critical education from a Marxist perspective—and all of whom were undoubtedly inspired by the example of Brazil’s world-famous philosopher of pedagogy, Paulo Freire. Young teachers, teachers in training, and education researchers crowded around John following his talk, each insisting that a similar corporate-led assault on the schools to what he had described was arising in Brazil, seeded by private foundations. A resistance movement was developing among radical teachers to combat this. It is clear from this, that education is under fire within much of global capitalist society. Rather than a revolution of pedagogy from below along Freire’s lines, as part of a general transformation of society, what we are seeing is the exact opposite—the marketization and privatization of education from above. Yet, the global struggle in this area is only just beginning and remains undetermined. The final outcome will depend to a considerable degree on the actions we take now.

* Education Under Fire: Introduction, Bill Ayers and Rick Ayers * 1. Education and Capitalism, * Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital, John Bellamy Foster * Education: The Great Obsession, Grace Lee Boggs * Another Education Is Happening, Julia Pointer Putnam * 2. Lessons from the New Corporate Schooling, * Testing, Privatization, and the Future of Public Schooling, An Assessor * Militarism and Education Normal, Erica R. Meiners and Therese Quinn * Reflections on the Racial Web of Discipline, Crystal T. Laura * The Culture of Poverty Reloaded, Monique Redeaux * Inclusive Education, High Stakes Testing and Capitalist Schooling, Mara Sapon-Shevin * 3. Fight-Back: Education’s Radical Future, * Freedom’s Struggle and Freedom Schools, Charles Cobb, Jr. * Neoliberal Education Restructuring, Pauline Lipman * Subverting the Master(’s) Syllabus, Patrick Camangian * Cuba: Education and Revolution, Ricardo Alarcón De Quesada * Khalil Gibran International Academy, Debbie Almontaser and Donna Nevel

http://monthlyreview.org/2011/07/01/july-august-20...