On Public Eduation, Bush and Gore

["Dr. Leo Casey" <LeoCasey@AOL.COM>]

This is one radical democrat who was politically active throughout the late
1960s and 1970s, and accepted, at that time, all of the arguments reiterated
here on the need to establish a truly radical, truly working class, truly
(fill in the desired word) alternative to the two party system. It was a
chimera then, which contributed to the defeat of the powerful social
movements of the day; what exactly will it be today, when nothing remotely on
the scope of those movements exists, and progressive social forces have been
on the defensive for decades?

For my own part, I am now determined to be part of, in Michael Harrington's
felicitous phrase, the "left wing of the possible." When I leave this life, I
want to have made some meaningful contribution to making this world a better
place for those follow me. If that makes me a reformist, a revisionist or
some other form of heretic from the one true faith, so be it. Such a
meaningful contribution begins with making a very hard-nosed, very realistic
assessment of what is taking place in education, and coming to grips with the
fact that the future of a system of universal public education very much
hangs in the balance. If we ignore that fact, and pretend that it does not
exist or is not real, we risk being the witnesses to a crushing historic
defeat of immense proportions, a defeat that would take generations and
generations of struggle to undo. The establishment of a universal public
education system in the late 19th century was, in no small part, one of the
great accomplishments of the American labor movement; if we lose that, we
have retreated beyond the days of Social Darwinism.

Now one can argue what strategy (or combination of strategies) is the best
way to defend public education. But it is simply willful blindness, IMHO, to
suggest that an allegedly flawed strategy to defend public education is the
cause of its potential demise. Public education is in danger because (1)
changes in the economy and the polity have made the form it took throughout
the 20th century -- factory model schools governed by centralized
bureaucracies -- increasingly atavistic; and (2) in response to the
foregoing, a major right wing offensive has been organized to privatize
public education. To attribute this situation to the primary defenders of
public education (the teacher unions/and the late Al Shanker) is political
calculus of a sort that defies the laws of logic. To cast aside the political
force -- pro-public education Democrats -- which stands in the way of the
marketeers, because they are flawed and imperfect, all in favor of some
flawless and perfect alternative which exists only in our political
imaginations, is political suicide. If the first time the left embarks on
such adventures is tragedy, and the second time farce, what exactly is the
third and fourth and fifth time? How many times do we need to travel down
this road before we get the message?

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers

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