Public Education is a Right

On March 4, perhaps a million people across the country demonstrated in support of quality public education as a right. Those who protested no doubt speak for millions of others who are saying, implicitly or explicitly, that education is a human right that must be guaranteed by the government. The money is there– we have to demand that the government spend it on the people’s needs, not lining the pockets of the rich.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 36 states have cut education or proposed such cuts. Some 46 percent of all state general fund expenditures are devoted to elementary, secondary, and higher education. Nearly all states are legally required to balance their general fund budgets, and the state governments claim the economic crisis is “forcing” them to cut education and a lot of other public needs. Public universities and local school districts are taking or contemplating drastic actions in response to the cuts.

There is plenty of money to solve the “budget crisis.” Billions of dollars of state and federal money nationwide are being squandered to line the pockets of the wealthy through tax loopholes and giveaways. The top one percent of families owns 34 percent of the country’s net worth, while the bottom 40 percent of families owns two tenths of one percent. Billions more are being spent on prisons. From 1987 to 1995, state government expenditures on prisons increased by 30 percent while spending on higher education fell by 18 percent. California is spending 10 percent of its general fund on prisons and 7 percent on higher education.

Added to this, the corporations that control this country don’t want to spend money educating workers they don’t need. Labor-replacing electronic technology is permanently eliminating millions of jobs, and creating a new class of people who are permanently unemployed or underemployed. As soon as electronics came on the scene, we began to see the decline of public education. For the corporations, education is part of the cost of production, and they’re not going to do anything to add to the cost of production. From their perspective it’s a waste of money to educate most working class children – their labor is no longer needed. So this is a problem of the system itself; the attack on public education is the corporate agenda and not simply an agenda of this or that politician.

Another problem from the corporate viewpoint is that an educated worker who is permanently unemployed is a threat to the system. That person is going to be making demands on the system that the system can’t meet, and they’re going to be envisioning a different kind of America–one without corporate rule.

Education is a human right that must be guaranteed to all. All our lives we have been told that a good education is all about getting a good job. Now a robot-driven system doesn’t offer jobs at all to millions of people. So we need a greater vision for the purpose of an education. Instead of defining education as something that serves a corporation, let’s re–define the purpose as the fullest development of every individual’s human potential. Fixing education cannot mean defending the status quo. Governments at all levels must be forced to fund education that really can provide every individual with a productive future.

Education must be a public right guaranteed by government. The first step is to tax the wealthy and the corporations to end the “budget crisis.“ And to guarantee the right to free, quality public education for everyone, all the way through college, the next big step is to nationalize education. This would ensure public control of the system, and ensure that every school was properly funded. Of course this means that we, the people, need to get control of the government. We are in a war with the corporations to build a society that is truly of, by and for the people.