One of the readers of this blog is worried that teachers and their unions are teaching Marxism in their classrooms.
I often quote readers, because there are so many who have important things to say and stories to tell. But in this case, I am going to quote myself, a very odd thing to do on one’s blog.
The reader posted a video of two teachers in Los Angeles who were promoting Marxist views. One wore a t-shirt that said “Tax the rich.”
I replied as follows:
You know, there are teachers who are Marxists but I have never actually met one (no, I did meet one once).
I have met many thousands of teachers and they are no different from you and me.
They love kids, they love to teach, they love their country.
They are the salt of the earth.
Our society couldn’t grow and prosper without them.
I am amazed at how they are able to handle a classroom of 25 five-year-olds or 35 teenagers.
I have heard teenagers say the vilest things to their teachers, and they take it and keep teaching.
I think you are too smart to fall for this wacko claim that our teachers are teaching Marxism.
That is unfair, untrue, and damages the good names of millions of dedicated, hard working teachers who are doing God’s work.
Diane
P.S. I believe in taxing the rich, and I am not a Marxist! The degree of income inequality in this country is more extreme than at anytime since the 1920s. This is not good for America. Squalor is not good for America. Crushing the middle class is not good for America. People who are billionaires and multi-millionaires should pay a larger share of their income than people who are middle-class. That’s what i think, and I am not a Marxist.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The idea of taxing the rich is not Marxist. In its extreme form, Marxism would never allow individuals to get rich in the first place.
And calling someone who advocates taxing the rich Marxist means one believes that both Bill Gates Senior and Warren Buffett are Marxists, since both have advocated strongly for higher taxes on the rich.
Maybe if we taught more about Marxism in schools, your reader would know what it meant.
Fair point! But in a country where people believe Obama (you know, the president who extended tax cuts to the rich) is a socialist…well, it isn’t surprising, is it?
This is a classic example of propaganda – coming from the criminal class – and meets ignorance. First, American ignorance and anti-intellectualism managed – without even knowing what the words mean – to scare us all by saying ‘Marxism’. A reader on this blog already used it in order to discredit union’s leaders and like many others, was clearly clueless of what Marxism is. Even Dr Ravitch fell into the trap by trying to prove that she is not in fact a Marxist.
Propaganda, McCarthyism and ignorance convinced Americans that there is no need to look into what Marxism or Socialism or Communism are at all. Severe lack of curiosity leads people to believe that if you’re not one of us, or even dare to criticize the corporate system then you are part of ‘them’ , and they are evil and dangerous or just Marxists.
With only a milligram of curiosity – which is too much to ask from Americans – one can discover what Marxism really stand for and what is our system is standing for, just to get perspective.
The Communist manifesto – also known as the devil’s manifesto in the US – on one hand criticizes corporatism for creating greater gap between poor – majority of population – and the rich, pushing people into poverty and disparity on international level, creating bubbles that burst every now and then and create more economic disparity and more wealth to the top: “On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of
productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.” Last sentence was referring to deregulation.
It also claims that corporatism turns everything, including family and personal relations into a commodity. All of which we have seen happening for the past thirty years in an accelerated rate.
The manifesto therefore stands for women rights, child rights, livable wages for all, and other dangerous evil ideas like democracy:”We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.”
The most evil idea the manifesto express is: ” Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production”.
On the other end we can examine what is our system stands for: Hate and cruelty to the needy: “”Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.” Ronald Reagan, or George Bush blocking health insurance from poor children as told by the NYT: “President Bush vetoed the children’s health insurance bill today, as he had promised to do”. A country where 25% of children are poor or and hungry, 50 millions are without healthcare, and about one and a half million lose their homes every year mostly due to medical bills. A country where life expectancy is the lowest in the industrial world – a bit less then Cuba . Cruelty towards the sick was manifested when Ron Paul is cheered for suggesting that a comma patient should be left to die. Or other candidate wanted to electrocute Mexican immigrants.
I didn’t even got to the heart of corporatism – free bailouts and compensation to to earners who once again crushed the economy, endless war and war profiteering,
Or pushing millions into hunger thanks to food speculations as pointed by a UN report:
Click to access 20102309_briefing_note_02_en_ok.pdf
Next time you want to vilify someone perhaps just call them Regenerate, or Clintonite or just capitalist.
Thank You!!
Just a correction here. In my school district kindergarten class sizes are at 35 and middle and high school math, science, social studies, foreign language and other core courses are at 42 to 50 students. Yes, our teachers are incredible and superhuman to be able to deal with this. I’m working on my latest OpEd for our local paper and discussing this “new normal” paradigm. It is said that people don’t protest out of destitution, but when government services don’t meet expectations. The “new normal” helps to quell protest.
Where on earth do you teach? I am shocked that you have classes that huge. In NYC, high school classes are capped at 34 — already quite large.
While I don’t doubt you have strong teachers in your district, it’s hard to believe any teaching force is superhuman enough to handle so many kids in one room. That’s outrageous.
I don’t teach. I am the parent of 4 children, ages 11 to 17, in the Poway Unified School District. We have approx. 34,000 students and 37 schools and are located in San Diego County, covering the City of Poway, the City of San Diego and unincorporated parts of San Diego County.
California is 51st in class sizes. Because our funding has it’s origins in “revenue limits”, set back in the ’70’s when we were considered a “low wealth district, i.e. low tax base”, our per pupil funding is a couple hundred dollars below the state average and is around $5000.
My 12th grader was in an AP English Literature class that started out with 47 students. The teacher knew she could not adequately teach a class that size, with all the writing assignments. So, she created a pressure cooker environment for the first 2 weeks in order to get 5 students to drop. She was agonized over it.
I wrote about another class in this OpEd:
http://www.pomeradonews.com/2012/01/11/viewpoint-time-to-support-fully-funded-public-education/
Well we fund multiple illegal wars of aggression, mainly killing innocent children, women and elderly in other countries and destroying the countries’ infrastructures. Why would we want to fund education in our own??
Those who do not see the connection between those two concepts either haven’t been exposed to the connection or choose to ignore it.
As Mr. Teachbad would say, I’m a “difficult” teacher.
And the key to fighting ed deform is having a critical mass of difficult teachers!