Education
“Getting a job” vs “Finding a career”
Most of us who do not have a college degree know the job market as ‘where can I get a job?’ It is not a choice the worker makes, it is a choice the employer makes by posting an opening. Most people seeking employment at this level of education are desperate for money and ‘a job is a job’, which will help pay the bills. They are much less selective in their prospects. Those with college degrees and better education as a whole are more apt to look at long-term goals and plan their career. They are much more likely to have the luxury of looking for the right position, of waiting for the end goal. I know doctors spend many years in education in order to get a job which pays a premium. So, they work really hard for years, and then they are ‘rewarded’ with often obscene salaries and pharma kick-backs. They will make up for the cost of that school (if they had to take out loans) quickly, and have comfortable homes in affluent neighborhoods. When asked about their salaries, it is not uncommon to hear about all of the sacrifices they made – years and years of school and internships… but, are they working any harder than the person who has to hold down 2 full-time jobs to pay the bills so their children can eat? They are making huge sacrifices for their families. Unfortunately, there is no point 10 years down the road when they become rich from their sacrifices. ‘Toil until you die’ is the motto they must live by, the life they are forced into by education oppression.
I know there are lots of generalizations in my opening but I think they apply, generally. There are always exceptions and the exceptional.
EducationWeek’s David L. Kirp points this out in a 2011 article, still relevant today.
“It’s a truism that America’s capacity to compete in the global economy and to govern itself wisely is in the hands of our youths. Yet while we say that we love kids—insert the phrase “for the children” into any policy pitch, the pollsters report, and popular support rises 10 percentage points—as a nation we fall desperately short.”
“[The US spends] a third less than the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average on young children, …and the average educational achievement of an American youngster is the seventh-worst.”
“…during much of the 20th century, the United States had a 35-year lead, compared with other industrialized nations, in expanding higher education. But this historic advantage has evaporated since 1970, as other countries have sprinted past us in education.”
40 years of capitalism pushing the working class to, well, just shut up and work! Education is power, and the powerless make much more docile employees.
On top of the constant assault on our education system in general, education budgets are tied to the wealth of you and your neighbors. Another way to look at this is ‘good luck getting out of your already oppressed neighborhood’ or ‘you don’t need a better education to work in my factory!’
The rich get richer and the poor…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class_education
“The schools in the lower income districts are characterized by overcrowding and lack of resources. This is because the funding of American public schools comes mostly from their district's property taxes. Residential segregation occurs when people segregate themselves based on class and race. This leaves schools in the low income school districts with little because those who are capable of paying higher property taxes move to districts where there are higher taxes and schools are receiving more. For example, in New York City, where efforts are being made to level the playing field, students in the wealthiest school districts are given almost twice as much as students in the poorest district, an annual amount of $13,974 compared to $7,457.”
The battle for more school funding is a noble fight. I have seen bumper stickers most of my life with catchy slogans about school funding, especially as compares with our military budget. Since the ruling class has no need of better educated workers (and in fact NEEDS uneducated workers) the fight for school funding, teacher salaries, and better textbooks.
The Brookings Institution 2015 study states:
“As expected, the association between education and a high family income has tightened over time.”
Article: The dangerous separation of the American upper middle class
USNews & World Report: https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2019-02-26/white-students-get-more-k-12-funding-than-students-of-color-report
“White Students Get More K-12 Funding Than Students of Color: Report
Education funding formulas that have long been aimed at bridging economic inequities have done little to address race-based disparities, a new report concludes.”
Another article, from The Atlantic, begins:
“HARTFORD, Conn.—This is one of the wealthiest states in the union. But thousands of children here attend schools that are among the worst in the country. While students in higher-income towns such as Greenwich and Darien have easy access to guidance counselors, school psychologists, personal laptops, and up-to-date textbooks, those in high-poverty areas like Bridgeport and New Britain don’t. Such districts tend to have more students in need of extra help, and yet they have fewer guidance counselors, tutors, and psychologists; lower-paid teachers; more dilapidated facilities; and bigger class sizes than wealthier districts, according to an ongoing lawsuit. Greenwich spends $6,000 more per pupil per year than Bridgeport does, according to the State Department of Education.”
Further on in the article are additional jewels.
“In every state, though, inequity between wealthier and poorer districts continues to exist. That’s often because education is paid for with the amount of money available in a district, which doesn’t necessarily equal the amount of money required to adequately teach students.”
And
“Lower spending can irreparably damage a child’s future, especially for kids from poor families. A 20 percent increase in per-pupil spending a year for poor children can lead to an additional year of completed education, 25 percent higher earnings, and a 20-percentage-point reduction in the incidence of poverty in adulthood, according to a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.”
Really an interesting article, and this is just a small sample of the information available there.
And Forbes weighs in with a 2019 article America's School Funding Struggle: How We're Robbing Our Future By Under-Investing In Our Children
“Growing inequalities are rooted in the way American schools are funded, primarily through local property taxes that produce significant disparities. Although states try to offset inequalities, they rarely succeed in eliminating these funding gaps. The top-spending states spend about three times what the lowest-spending states allocate to education and, in many states, the wealthiest districts spend two to three times what the poorest districts can spend per pupil.”
We see the stark difference (inequality) of educational funding from NPR in their 2016 article Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem.
"$9,794 is how much money the Chicago Ridge School District in Illinois spent per child in 2013 (the number has been adjusted by Education Week to account for regional cost differences). It's well below that year's national average of $11,841.
Ridge's two elementary campuses and one middle school sit along Chicago's southern edge. Roughly two-thirds of its students come from low-income families, and a third are learning English as a second language."
"[L]ess than an hour north, in Chicago's affluent suburbs, nestled into a warren of corporate offices: Rondout School, the only campus in Rondout District 72.
It has 22 teachers and 145 students, and spent $28,639 on each one of them."
We will never improve education by oppressing those teaching our children.
Teacher salaries continue to decline, as pointed out by the National Center for Educational Statistics.
“…the [adjusted for inflation] average salary for full-time public school teachers was lower in 2017–18 than in 1999–2000 ($59,100 vs. $59,700)…“
And there is the article The Data Tells All: Teacher Salaries Have Been Declining For Years from EdSurge.
“That’s a really bad situation to be in, being asked to pay more as your pay is actually declining,” says Dr. Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.”
So how do teacher salaries compare to those of other college graduate?
“For economist Allegretto, these trends in pay declines are troubling, particularly when she compares the salaries educators make to that of other college grads. Her research, based on data from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, indicates that while educator pay has declined about $30 a week, the pay for graduates in other professions has increased approximately $124 a week. This difference in pay is what Allegretto calls the ‘teacher pay gap.’”
US News and World Report informs us with Sharp Nationwide Enrollment Drop in Teacher Prep Programs Cause for Alarm.
“Since 2010, enrollment in teacher preparation programs nationwide has declined by more than one-third, according to a new analysis.“
“In Oklahoma, college and university programs designed to prepare educators for the classroom saw an 80% drop in enrollment since 2010 – just one of nine states where enrollment has nose-dived by more than half.”
2016 article in the Washington Post expands on this with the 2016 article Think teachers aren’t paid enough? It’s worse than you think.
“The relative wage gap for female teachers went from a premium in 1960 to a large and growing wage penalty in the 2000s. Female teachers earned 14.7 percent more in weekly wages than comparable female workers in 1960. In 2015, we estimate a ‑13.9 percent wage gap for female teachers.”
I don’t need sources or fancy graphs to illustrate how much separation of the top 1% of ‘wage earners’* has taken place in the past 40 years. That doesn’t mean I will not provide one (or more):
From www.cbpp.org/…
“[B]eginning in the 1970s, income disparities began to widen, with income growing much faster at the top of the ladder than in the middle or bottom.”
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ also brings some handy visuals. This one in particular shows how productivity is NOT linked to higher wages. Trickle-down should be abbreviated to Trick. Smoke and mirrors. What the business owner reaps from your work does NOT mean you are reaping the rewards.
“Workers produced much more, but typical workers' pay lagged far behind. Disconnect between productivity and typical worker's compensation, 1948–2013”
Benefits? What do you think we are made of, money?!?
“Employers are cutting health care for young workers, both college and high school graduates. Share of employed recent high school and college graduates with health insurance provided by their own employer, 1989–2012”
A final thought is the school to prison pipeline (really cheap labor for capitalist ruling-class to line their pockets with). The ACLU has an infographic to sum it up for us:
One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education... The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
I believe capitalism is a war on education for the working class. How about you?