Compromising with Capitalism: the wrong message on public education at the wrong time
One cannot help but admiring the work of President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Lay, of the Orange Coast College ’94 . If you do not know who he is, he has been a tireless champion for community colleges and education over the decades. What is unfortunate is his inadequate analysis of economic and political crisis facing public education and his deficit of theoretical imagination. Without a firm understanding of what is transpiring under the rapidly changing material conditions of neo-liberalism or late stage capitalism, one cannot put theory and practice together to formulate any sensible ‘praxis’ for the struggles that we face and those that lie ahead. This is particularly true for public education. Scott misses the point.
After a nauseating look at Glenn Beck’s 12 step program for America, hosted by FOX, I turned my attention to the pressing problems confronting public education, especially our community colleges here in California. I have concluded that the vast misunderstanding of the material conditions of every day life on the part of “good hearted liberals’ is feeding the Glenn Beck’s of the world and their demented audiences. Why? For Scott’s and other good hearted liberal solutions to the crisis we face is to manage it, not to change it, and in doing so accommodation, appeasement and capitulation are harbored strategies that can only lead us further down the road to totalitarianism and privatization – full Monty capitalism.
Take a look at the recent note I received from Scott Lay regarding the economic collapse of California:
“Over the last six months and likely looking ahead for at least a year, our colleges will be significantly reducing course offerings. Even if we succeed in getting the governor’s proposal for 2.21% enrollment growth makes it through the Legislature’s budget process, which will be quite difficult, it will simply undo about two-thirds of the workload reduction required of our colleges, which are also already serving over 50,000 unfunded full-time students. Further, there is a significant possibility that deeper budget cuts to our enrollment and categorical programs will occur if the governor’s request for nearly $8 billion in federal funds does not materialize. So, the question is, how should we reduce courses and programs to minimize harm to students that need us the most? (Scott Lay President and Chief Executive Officer Orange Coast College ’94, February 19, 2010 scottlay@ccleague.org).”
I hope readers can see how paralyzing, how incorrect and how despairing the question at issue is phrased by Lay. The question posed by Lay shows the bankruptcy of the capitulation posture of American liberalism. The question at issue is not: how we can reduce further; not how we can continue to devastate the public realm in face of right wing attacks on public education and deny our children an education. Nor is it to ask how we can eliminate programs for students. The question at issue is how to build mass, working people based organizations that can stand up to the corporatocracy run by the politically paid representatives of corporate America so that we can budget for a public education for all students!
Lay assumes we are at the end of history; that capitalism is a-historical, that there can be no authentic struggle to oppose its devastating consequences; that to capitulate and ‘mate’ with the beast is the best we can do and in so doing Lay is modeling resignation and hopelessness, along with cut-throat policies for our children. Yet the resignation and despair doesn’t end there. Lay goes on to mention:
“We have seen the Legislature try to target specific courses, such as physical education, and we will see more such proposals. Frankly, that’s the easy way for state-level policy makers to think about this ongoing misalignment between our current historic level of student demand and available state funding. Of course, we will continue to oppose the forced reduction of any particular part of the curriculum. The most important thing for our college communities is to recognize it’s not the course or program that is being offered, but who is being served by the course or program. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in lifelong learning and it saddens me that our state and its taxpayers are unable to fund it at this time (ibid).”
If Lay is a big believer in lifelong learning then why hasn’t he learned? Why does he begin to do an end run around what it is going to take to protect public education from the privatization policies in place now that the ruling class and their minions have stolen the taxpayer largess from California and replaced it with a privatized, reservation-only autocracy? If life-long learning is the fundamental goal then why settle for second best? A class based system of education based on neo-liberal policies?
It is not that taxpayers are not able to fund public education; it is that their public taxpayer monies are diverted and stolen by privatization. We pay the costs for the roads the corporations use; we pay for the cost of their sewer systems. We, the working class of this crumbling system, pay for the costs of the water corporations use; we pay for the infrastructure that industry utilizes to privatize profits and yet in return we are asked to accept the ortz? No, Scott, this is a no-show. The answer is not to sit at the table with these rogues; it is to fight for another table — public programs for our children and this means learning not to separate the fight for public education from economics itself and requires a political understanding of who rules America and why. It signifies that we understand how the economic system of capitalism benefits a few at the expense of the many.
A room with a view
If we accept Lay’s hand wringing and prescription for what is failing public education we lose; we get a room in the hotel economy with a ‘view’. Already over 2,000 private proprietary colleges are taking up the ‘seats’ Lay says we cannot provide our students and saddling them with massive debt (see dissidentvoice.org The impropriety of it all). A failing public sector is what the privatizers are relying on to both make their argument as to why public institutions do not work and also, to assure that when they can compete as the ‘new providers’ they win. Lay’s remedy plays right into their hands.
He goes on to conclude:
“But, any reasonable person that weighs the moral considerations will conclude that ensuring a slot for this year’s record high school graduation class and our unemployed family, friends and neighbors is the most compelling priority at this time. We are going to say “no” to a lot of people. That’s the unfortunate decision that has been made. The question is who do we say “no” to? (ibid).”
We say ‘no’ to no one, Mr. Lay and we say ‘yes’ to struggles for public education that have taken place over hundreds of years. The issue is not who we cut, it is how to stop cuts. The issue is not who we deny, it is about how to prevent denying those that would not allow us public education.
Is the plan now to cut the humanities and a liberal arts education?
Don’t be surprised. With the tone, the lather, the underlying assumptions all lost on Lay we can smell capitulation around the bend. for the clarion call seems clear: There is nothing we can do. Let us work with what we have. It ’s scarcity thinking in a society of overabundance for an elite few and as such offers not only little hope, but the wrist pinning shadow of tomorrow.
Going forward, Lay states:
“Looking at the audience for our classes and programs require a course-by-course analysis, and the leadership of faculty and staff on campus. Are 80% of the students in a particular class taking only 1 or 2 units? If so, they are most likely not on the transfer, basic skills improvement or career-technical education track that is both the Legislature’s priority and most needed to get California’s economic engine roaring. It may be time to suspend that course section, possibly moving it to community education (fee-supported), until the budget situation improves and this historic demand and need for higher education subsides. Most of our colleges are already going through this process, and I would love to hear what your experience has been (ibid).”
The experience is simple, Sott. Kids can’t get an education, there are no seats available and not enough frequent flyer points in the casino economy. So they are denied ‘slots’. They then turn around and easily fall into the hands of private predatory colleges like the Phoenix University or Kaplan College, DeVry Institute and the like. Students are then saddled with massive debt and tethered to inauthentic learning while you work to “keep the status quo” — a corporatized education plan that promises little more than a plantation for training, not a home for the mind and education. To give up more and more pbulic education based on “room with a view” politics in Henry Jame’s “hotel civilization” is simply indadequate for students, teachers and society.
But there is more bad news, for Lay muses:
“What are the biggest challenges? What can be done at the state level to ease these difficult choices? Finally on this topic, we cannot forget this year’s largest high school graduating class. Many of our colleges have outstanding partnerships with local high schools that ease the transition and ensure enrollment priority for students graduating and moving to community college. However, beyond that, the enrollment processes of our institutions can be quite unfriendly to the new student, including many high school students. They are often at the end of the line for courses, and are offered units that provide little or no meaningful contribution to their academic goals (ibid).
And this is where we see the image of the plans that those like Lay might subscribe to. You can get scent of the future compromise. Get rid of liberal arts education and humanities. After all, as Bill Gates argues, what does it have to do with making a living? In Utah the argument is no more high school but this too is the Gate’s plan: read Tough Choices for Tough Times and you can see the Gate’s schematic for McEducation.
Well, Scott, we send our children to school not just to learn how to make a living but to learn how to live and the argument for a liberal arts education is historical and justified by overwhelming evidence. No society can survive with education being replaced by training while the ruling class slashes and burns economies and people suffer from historical amnesia and an inability to communicate and debate.
What Lay seems to imply are the following questions: why should one take messy history classes or philosophy classes when they are majoring in law enforcement or pursuing a Home Land Security Degree? Why should they be exposed to art and music when the priority is getting them ready to compete with China? Now does Lay say this? No, of course not, few do. But with the massive cuts in music, art and a liberal arts education throughout this nation we know where his compromise lies. T o talk about morals and then subtly hint at perhaps eliminating moral and civic education is treason to progressives’ notions of education. Again, does Lay say this — no not at all. But it can be inferred. For what else would he cut?
The heavy breathing in debates over colleges and education now is preparing students for the ‘new global order’ so where does Socrates fit in? Or Plato? Or W.E.B. Dubois, or philosophy in general? Where does the history of working people fit into this new labyrinth? It doesn’t. In fact, Lay seems to imply that ‘making students’ take classes in such matters:
“can lead students to dropping out and delaying their higher education, which statistically increases their chance of never succeeding in college. This year’s high school class will be competing for slots at community colleges with redirected UC and CSU students who have a greater aptitude for navigating the college process. It is incumbent on our colleges to take whatever steps to ensure that the new high school graduates have a slot and an accessible schedule of courses that enables them a full-time load (ibid).”
Always competition alwys ‘slots’. This is all it seems that these liberals know now. How do we deal with competition, they ask? What about collaboration and assuring equal opportunity, doesn’t this ever come up? Forget it, the right to the pursuit of life, happiness, freedom and self actualization is a competitive process in the minds of those seeped in capitalist theory and political wrangling.
Lay goes on:
“Yes, our colleges are overenrolled and further budget cuts may be coming, but through smart scheduling and advance preparation, we absolutely can and must accommodate these students (ibid).”
You won’t accommodate them under this thinking, Scott, not with the bankrupt folding hand you are now offering the next generation and the rest of us. The answer is clear, the history vivid: struggle, fight for public education for all, as we should be fighting for public health for all. If we listen to Lay we will not only serve less and less students, but we will serve them less and less at the same time. It is the same with health care. Liberals seem to wish to forsake the public realm in their hurry to make a pact with the private devil. The consequences are debates on who cannot have access, not debates on universal access. It is pitiful. We need a progressive movement to protect public education and assure universal access, not more compromising in the spirit of cordiality politicians and pundits like Lay.
This thinking is wrongheaded; it is counterproductive and needs to be authenticated as what it is: compromise with the ruling class, the hallmark of all liberalism. In doing so this thinking sets the bar lower for the eventual privatization of everything and the loss of public education. Settle for less, get nothing Scott. This is what history tells us.
What we need is a spinal tap so that we can stand up without rigor mortis to the ruling class that orchestrates our lives and denies us public health, public education, public parks, public campgrounds, public participation, public disclosure and public transparency. We are weary and tired of holding up the private sector. We need representatives that will not wed themselves to the material conditions that find us impoverished in all most every way, but politicians and representatives who know how to fight.
Sure, one might need to read The Allegory of the Cave by Plato (or even watch Glenn Beck on Fox) to see how all of this works metaphorically. But if it is not ‘salient’ to a career as a prison guard, a law enforcement official, a surveillance monitor, or a low paid service ‘associate’ then no one will ever know about it will they Scott; for we will have purged the liberal arts and humanities from the directory of the community of ideas to accomplish competitive success under capitalist relations.
This is precisely the message we don’t need. This is not the message we wish to send on March 4th. The message should be: Stand up for public education, don’t remove seats from classrooms, add them. We don’t want a room with a view, we want the whole hotel!
