La Voz de los Trabajadores / Workers’ Voice presents…

Education in Capitalism: How Education has Been Transformed with the Financial crisis

Location: HEARST ANNEX  B0005 , UC Berkeley

When: Thursday, Sept 19th  6pm-8pm

Since 2009, we have heard every semester of new attacks against the public status of the University of California and the whole public education system: continuous fee hikes, increased student debt, cuts to wages, cuts to classes and departments, ⅔ cuts to the pension system, curtailed enrollment, and now… the project of Online Education is being discussed without the input of faculty and students, and there is a threat to close the largest community college of the state (CC of San Francisco has around 90,000 students) at the end of this year.

What is really going on? Is all this necessary? How can we defend and expand public education?

All these austerity measures and the continued privatization of our university are presented as the only way out to this crisis. Is that true? We think the reasons behind this program to privatize and cut our education are often hidden because they are flawed. We think there can be another way out to the crisis unless we organize and fight back.

But we know that fighting these latest rounds of cuts won’t be enough. The state of education was dismal even before the crisis. While fighting, we need to ask ourselves: what is the role of education under capitalism? what is the logic and purpose of the neo-liberal/privatization turn started in the 1990’s?

Come to our forum on education in capitalism organized by La Voz de los Trabajadores/Workers’ Voice (a socialist organization) to discuss these important questions, learn more about the nature and purpose of education under a capitalist system from a Marxist point of view, and discuss the organizations we need to build to organize our political fight as students and workers for a truly progressive education system and a better, more just society to replace the capitalist one.