On Jonathan Kozol's "Manifesto"

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

Kozol was an early inspiration for me and thousands of others, even though 
he quit as a teacher very early on.

His, Death at An Early Age, and The Night is Dark and I am Far from Home, 
are wonderful angry classics, as is some of his mostly suppressed work on 
the revolution in Cuba. I liked his early criticism of free schools, which 
was supportive, yet sharp. He has worked very hard, produced a great body 
of work, swimming against the stream of what is called education reform, 
but is really social reaction.

Since on one hand the issues we face today are very complex and we all have 
been wrong from time to time, and on the other hand, despite the massive 
worker/immigrant rights outpouring on Mayday, passivity best describes most 
of the US working class, I will support with all I can muster nearly anyone 
who is taking risks and fighting back against the big tests, for school 
integration, against regimentation of the curriculum, and the racist wars 
that serve as their foundation--whether I agree with  their tactics or not.

However, I think Kozol is likely to lead people into a cul-de-sac, a dead 
end, if we are to take the last 25 years of his work as a guide.

Savage Inequalities  followed a path that Lincoln Steffens had traced about 
60 years before Kozol in the book Shame of the Cities.

Steffens was interested in the corruption of US cities. He pointed to one 
form of corruption after another, city officials looting the treasury in a 
variety of ways, and concluded that what was clearly a pattern was a fluke, 
could be reformed.

Kozol went around the US much later and pointed out that schooling is 
segregated, racist to the core, and he even signaled that there is an 
economic basis to all that (without, as I remember it, using the term 
"capitalism").

He did a fine job, in popular terms, describing the horrors that are daily 
life in many urban schools. Then he suggested that inequality could be 
voted away, as if people could vote away the fundamental Master/Slave 
relationship that is the heart of capitalism. Later on, Kozol got religion, 
and most recently he mostly reiterated what he said in Savage Inequalities.

He has lost the edge of his earlier days, if his speeches that I attended 
are any indication. He portrays himself as a "simple-minded guy" (who is a 
Rhodes scholar from Harvard) and he wants the US, "to not be two societies, 
to be the good democracy we can be." He wants "teachers to protest the 
(high-stakes) tests, but do not make your principals miserable."

He wants capitalist schools without capitalism.

That, in my eyes, is a real mistake. Over time, it becomes misleadership. I 
believe the plan behind Kozol is "Vote Democratic," or , at the very least, 
"vote in mass."

The Masters will never adopt the ethics of the Slaves. Never. Not without a 
bitter fight. That fight has to be a real fight and some principals will 
need to be made more than miserable.

Voting will not solve the problems we face. Worse things could be done than 
casting a ballot, but voting should be at the bottom of the activist list.

Why? The answer lies in a practical answer to what appears to be a 
philosophical questions: Why have government?  Why have schools? Who are 
"we" and what is our relationship with others in this world? That is a 
question usually absent in social studies classes; the US government or 
something like it is assumed to be the highest form of human development.

However, in my eyes, Marx, Engels and many others answered that question 
more than one hundred years ago, and Kozol (and Steffens) would do well to 
learn from them (see the quote from Engels pasted below).

Our society is a capitalist society. The best description of our government 
is: capitalist government. Capitalism requires inequality and, over time, 
it systematically creates greater and greater inequality. In order to 
preserve the system that demands inequality, government arises to protect 
the powerful and maintain domination. That is why government exists, all 
government. Behind the carrots of smiling politicians and glib school 
superintendents lies the force and violence of the capitalist state, the 
military and the cops. Don't come to school and we will arrest you. In the 
US, government is not a neutral body.

Government is a weapon of the rich. That is true of every aspect of 
government: schools, cops, the military, politicians and the political 
processes , the laws, the courts, and I will toss in the press as well.

Schools in capitalist society are capitalist schools although, as on any 
job, people fight back, resist. We resist on fairly common grounds with 
industrial workers. We fight about class size and hours of work (the 
speed-up and stretch out), we fight for supplies, for better wages and 
working conditions. We fight for freedom, too, just like all workers fight 
for freedom. However, our fight for freedom is a little different as, at 
least in the case of some of us, we fight for the freedom to make our 
product (kids) free.

Why have school? Capitalist schools serve a variety of functions.

Schools are huge markets (think of the salaries, the costs of busses, the 
architects for the buildings, the land, the textbooks, etc). As markets, 
the processes of capital always intervene, pitting people against people in 
a struggle for profits, jobs, and status, power. The market requires 
inequality, as we can see now.

Schools are huge tax-funded day care centers (with the tax system aimed 
away from the rich, we can see how the government, the capitalist 
government, taxes poor and working people to subsidize what should be 
company-paid day care).

Schools warehouse kids, keeping them out of the labor market, which is 
largely what the California community college system does.

School do skills training (reading, writing, math) in inequitable ways 
(segregated by race and class, then segregated by the substance of the 
curricula and teaching methods) and ideological training (nationalism, 
racism, sexism, the myth of US democracy, etc).

But above all, schools fashion hope, real or false. A society that can 
offer no hope to its youth will face upheavals, like France in 1968 
demonstrated. A society that can dangle false hope to youth can hang on for 
awhile, as we see today. Many kids, though, know there is little real hope 
for them. They can look forward to lousy jobs or the military, fighting the 
enemies of their enemies, but they do not know why things are as they are, 
and their teachers often do not either. Kozol is no longer helping on that 
question.

Their is an unbroken spiral of a line from capitalism to imperialism to war 
to racism to segregation to curricular regimentation to high-stakes testing 
to the role of school to the nature of government and, finally, to social 
change. To try to split out any one part of that and ignore it, obscure it, 
is, I think, misleading. It has deadly results, ie, thousands of US kids 
serving in Iraq really never heard of imperialism. That is no mistake.

Teachers are relatively privileged people, among the last in the US with 
regular wages, some job protections, and health benefits. So far, elites in 
the US have succeeded in creating a teaching force that is mostly made up 
of missionaries for capitalism (and I think that analogy is exactly on point).

However, capital always seeks to diminish everyone it touches, even those 
who think they are riding it. In the case of teachers, the goal of the boss 
is very similar to the goals Henry Ford had in his plants in the 1920's 
(and still today): to replace the mind of the worker with the mind of the 
boss, right down to every movement the worker (teacher) makes.

The next step in that relationship is to convince the worker that there is 
no boss/worker relationship, the old Master/Slave allegory is no longer 
valid. If that goal is achieved, then subservience is freedom.

Even those workers who appear to win within capitalism (skilled tradesmen 
in the US up to, say 1990) lose in the short term (tying their humanity to 
the accumulation of possessions when, in most cases, the more we have the 
less we are)and the long run as well (skilled tradesmen--and they are 
almost all white men become obsolete because capitalism is as fickle to its 
allies as the US is---remember those US allies in Vietnam).

School workers will endure the same fate, unless we fight back--with 
wisdom. That means, at bottom, making those connections about capitalism 
noted above.

The reason that some working people in the US are able to live much better 
than most of the workers in the world is because US imperialism was fairly 
successful in the last century (by staying out of most of WWI, profiting 
from arms sales, etc, staying out of the European wars in WWII until the 
end, defeating the state-capitalist system in the USSR, but then losing in 
Vietnam, and never recovering). Since Vietnam,  as US imperialism grew 
weaker economically, politically, morally, and militarily, there has been 
less and less available to the ruling classes to turn over to labor leaders 
and some workers in the form of bribes, to betray the rest of the working 
classes of the world.

There is a direct line from the fruits of imperialism (won through war, 
looting raw materials, forcing cheap labor, brutally opening markets) and 
the relatively high wages that, for example, NEA's labor leaders earn, some 
at $400,000-plus a year. That is a bribe from imperialism, and those union 
bosses know it.

Teachers, however, usually do not know they are being bribed by the fruits 
of imperialism to offer children to the processes of capitalism, but that 
is what is happening, and they need to be told in ways that will show them 
that, over time, they will lose, which is a fact.

We do not need to build a get out the vote movement to rescue capitalist 
schooling. We do not need to urge people to choose a somebody else to act 
for them, to alienate the solution of social problems, which is what voting 
is about. And surely we do not need to get people to pick, again, which 
millionaire will oppress them best, as is the case in almost every election.

We need to rescue education from the ruling classes, reason from un-reason, 
freedom from oppression. This is a practical social question that is 
finally a pedagogical problem: What is it that people need to learn, and 
how do we need to come to learn it, in order to create the transformation 
that allows a future world to be reasonably caring, free through human 
connectedness rather than separation, equitable, and democratic? Since all 
learning combines theory and practice, it is a problem of doing and 
thinking---what school should be.

I think a key element of this is to show people that we make our own 
histories, but not in conditions we choose. We are responsible for our 
actions. We are what we do. History judges us against an ethic that did not 
fall from the sky, but an ethic that can be torn from the past: 
internationalism, reason, anti-racism, opposition to personality cults, 
anti-sexism, equality inside democracy, working class solidarity (it is 
wrong to exploit people, selfishness is bad), for freedom in 
production--and reproduction. It is an ethic that tests us, not at the 
gates of heaven, but in our lives, because when working people behave 
otherwise, we lose. We lose morally, and practically. An articulated ethic 
can be used to measure leadership.

I believe we need to show people where power is. Alinsky said, "power goes 
to two poles: those who have money, and those who have people." That is 
mostly true.

In order to decipher where power is located for working people, in any 
society, we need to look for its "choke points," the places where change 
could be reasonably be expected to originate, and where change might extend 
centrifugally. It is important that people learn how to do  this kind of 
analysis themselves, on their own, so the process of discovering that is 
significant.

However, it appears to me that in the US now, there are four choke points: 
schools, the military, prisons, and to a limited extent the health care 
system. I am not Cassandra, gifted with prophecy but cursed because nobody 
believed her, but I think these are good guesses.

Students whose hope is daily eradicated, soldiers sent to die by witless 
officers in service to the rich, prisoners in US gulag jails, and those who 
have no hope because the health care system is in ruins, are likely to 
fight back---especially people of color and immigrants. In most cases, 
people fight back because they must fight back. Entire cities, like 
Detroit, are so destroyed that the people who live in them have little to 
lost but to fight back.Teachers are very well positioned to play a 
historical role in those fights, although I am quite sure many will not. I 
will bet my house that most, by far most, professors will not. These people 
are of little matter.

Power has a geography. School workers' power is based in and near 
schools---not in distant ballot boxes. School workers' power lies in our 
solidarity with each other, with kids, and parents; against the interests 
of wealth. Power at work is demonstrated by the ability to control the work 
place,specifically to be able to open and close it. That can only happen 
when we take responsibility for ourselves and our colleagues' actions.

School workers create value collectively, in a relationship with each 
other, with kids, with parents, and communities. In order to gain power 
over the value we create, to rescue education from the ruling classes, we 
need to act collectively, on the job and in communities. We need to build 
close personal, trusting, ties in our school communities, which can take 
time, but can also be speeded by collective, sometimes sudden, action. The 
best way to do this is to walk door to door in school communities and talk 
to people, hand out a leaflet, share some coffee, etc.

The choke points of school are, now, the Big Tests, immigration and 
attendance sweeps, cops and the military in schools, issues about books and 
supplies, class size, free health care and food, and the unjust tax system. 
Racism infests every one of those issues. It is clear any movement to 
oppose oppressive schooling must be integrated, often led by the people at 
the shortest end of the stick--since they usually best understand the 
stick. Margaret Haley, who founded the AFT and helped build the NEA, fought 
about most of these issues more than 75 years ago, and often won---so these 
fights are winnable.

We can shut down the big tests. I think that is the main thing school 
worker-activists should focus on. Shut down the tests and couple that with 
the kinds of Freedom Schooling that the civil rights movement showed us are 
possible. Even if we cannot conduct freedom schooling, we can shut down the 
tests with boycotts (as we did in Michigan) and do the best we can with 
Freedom Schooling.

The method of that Freedom Schooling should be critical and purposeful, 
seeking to show people how to do analyses of the processes of capitalism 
and how to get beyond it (see related links below).

We need to show masses of people that we can understand and change the 
world through mass, collective, direct action---and reflecting on what we 
and others have done.

I do not believe the union leadership will be helpful in this struggle. 
They want us to think of the union as a vending machine. We pay money and 
it acts for us. As long as we think like that, they win. The same is true 
of politicians. Nobody is going to save us but us.

I doubt Kozol will get beyond voting and, maybe, some pretty restricted 
demonstrating, but because he has earned considerable respect for his 
struggles over the years, I hope I am wrong, and may work with his group to 
find out and to struggle for sharper positions.

However, very few groups anywhere in the world have been willing to make 
the links of capitalism, imperialism, war, racism, and unjust schooling. 
The Rouge Forum has done that. Substance does it. Who else? Justice, after 
all, requires organization. The other side is organized, and ruthless.

The Rouge Forum has moved along with fits and starts. We are not doing 
nearly enough. We have about 4400 people on our email list. We have had big 
conferences and little ones, good conferences and not so good ones. We shut 
down the Michigan tests but did only very limited work with Freedom 
Schooling, and were self critical openly about all of it. We were 
instrumental, but not key, in the school walkouts against the war in 
California, Michigan, Florida, and New York. We play a pivotal role in a 
couple professional organizations, causing the passage of anti-war motions, 
etc. We once had a role in NEA, but mostly lost interest as NEA rushed to 
irrelevance. That may have been a mistake.We are working to initiate 
regional conferences, and I am interested in working with people on this 
list to have one in Northern, and Southern California, or maybe one 
conference at a central location, like lovely downtown Fresno.

I have to close by saying that there is urgency in my analysis.

Fascism is emerging all around us. US imperialism is in rapid decline. The 
vaunted US military is being fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan 
by an opposition that has no rational ideology, no truly sane leaders (no 
Hi Chi Minh nor General Giap), no supply lines, no outside state support, 
no internal regions to produce arms and munitions.

The Russians (who have nukes, a military, and emerging nationalism of their 
own), the Chinese, the Europeans, can easily see the debacle that is the US 
military, and they all desperately need the Caspian, Middle-eastern, 
Venezuelan oil fields, not merely to fuel their economies, but to fuel 
their militaries (key to their economies). There is no solution to the oil 
problem by conserving energy, because oil is, above all, a military tool, 
vital to rule, social control

Every one of these other powers can see  the US has lost in Afghanistan and 
Iraq, already. The US military is already stretched far too thin. It has to 
be tempting to competing powers to test the US might. Moreover, the US is 
incessantly provoking them, especially the USSR, which the US is 
surrounding, claiming what was Soviet territory is now US-interest territory.

There are also wild card players out there that could set things off very 
fast: Pakistan, India, North Korea, even G. W. Bush. It is hard to foresee 
exactly how this will all play out, but unless working class action is 
taken within the heartland of the most aggressive imperial power, the US, 
it is reasonable to say that the immediate future looks severe.

The US economy teeters on bankruptcy, dependent on virtual loans from China.

The "civil liberties"  and the social safety net that were won in 1930's 
street battles by the US industrial working class are vanishing because the 
industrial working class has been dis-empowered,  there is little 
resistance from them or their unions, and because there is much less left 
over in the imperial pot to share. So, the bosses cut back in every social 
arena (massive auto layoffs, 2.2 million in jail, etc) both because they 
must, and because there is little fight-back now.

Moreover, people in the US are under constant surveillance, already.

I do not think we have an unlimited amount of time to act.

In the long run, capitalism cannot solve its own problems of the endless 
battles for markets, cheap labor, raw materials; cannot even solve the 
problems of immigration since it must have cheap workers inside the 
imperial nations, but cannot stand to keep them inside when they complain 
about being cheap labor. Capital, however, thrives on crises and death 
(cigarette production is a good example). Capital does not care who is 
riding it, who thinks they are winning from year to year. Capital is fickle 
and will leave one nation for another---whoever exploits best.

In the long run, it only makes sense to believe that the Masters will not 
forever rule the slaves, the few dominate the many. All it takes to get 
beyond capital is a massive change of mind, and some very militant action. 
That, though, is also a lot.

In the short run, though, things can get very, very ugly.  Time is short.

Again, I have been wrong before, and am interested in how others see this. 
There are too few of us doing the posts here.

best r

www.rougeforum.org


 Engels from Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State:
        ?The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society 
from without; just as little is it "the reality of the ethical idea," "the 
image and reality of reason," as Hegel maintains (Grunlinken der 
Philosophie des Rechts, § 257 and § 360). Rather, it is a product of 
society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this 
society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, 
that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to 
dispel. But in order that these antagonisms and classes with conflicting 
economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless 
struggle, it became necessary to have a power seemingly standing above 
society that would alleviate the conflict, and keep it within the bounds of 
"order" ; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above 
it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.?

Ollman on What Capitalists Are Hiding 
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/OllmanCapitalistsHide.htm

Gateways to Understanding 
Marx   http://www.pipeline.com/%7Ergibson/gateways.htm

Analytical Thinking http://www.pipeline.com/%7Ergibson/scedialectical4.htm

Questions about the Master/Slave Allegory 
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/masterslave.htm

What is Fascism? http://www.pipeline.com/%7Ergibson/fascism.html

More stuff on my www page http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/gibson.htm

For materials on Freedom Schools, see Kathy Emery's www page


At 11:31 AM 7/5/2006 -0700, you wrote:
> Dear resisters,
> Rog Lucido of EPATA (CalCARE affiliate) in Fresno, circulated the message
> below from Jonthan Kozol.
>
> Rich, Susan, Pete, Kathy, George and others--  do you think Kozol's group
> will get to the crux of the matter or end up watered down?  I ask in light
> of Rich's recent analysis of NEA.
>
> Do you know if Monty and Bob at Fairtest are in on this, as it's based in
> Cambridge??
>
> Marilyn