Chicago: They Are Destroying Public Schools, and Preparing to Turn Our Youth Into Mindless Robots & Killing Machines
Updated July 5, 2017, first posted April 10, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Update July 5, 2017: Since we first posted this article, the city of Chicago at the end of May officially approved the outrageous proposal by Mayor Emanuel—requiring that high school students have proof of acceptance into college or vocational school, have a job, or enlist in the military before they can graduate. This is on top of a situation in this city where more than 1,000 teachers and school staff were laid off last year and the chance of male Black high school freshman eventually getting a college degree is only six percent, while the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-old Black men is at 43 percent.
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Editors’ note: From Day One in this country, when enslaved Black people were killed for learning how to read, up to today, when students in predominantly Black and Latino schools are treated as if they are in prison and subjected to terrible mis-education, and young Black people are discriminated against every step of the way if they pursue an education—this system has worked to keep the people it most oppresses in the deepest ignorance.
Now, in Chicago in particular, this is poised to take a whole leap. The Trump regime plans to funnel Black and Latino youth into Christian fundamentalist charter schools. They intend to mold these students into mindless, religiously fanatic robots. This article shows how the Democratic mayor, Rahm Emanuel, is greasing the skids for this.
In Chicago, one big way youths are told they’re worth nothing over and over is through their experience in the schools. In the cruelest of jokes, young people are told that getting an education is the only path out of grinding poverty, yet the educational system is a bitter insult in spite of the best efforts of many teachers.
After closing down 50 schools just three years ago—it is now very possible that Chicago public schools will also end the current school year almost three whole weeks early due to “lack of funds” to keep schools open.
For students, this is devastating in terms of their education. In Chicago, it literally means more likelihood of getting shot, or sitting indoors while the sun is shining to keep safe. For teachers, it means a 10 percent cut in pay as well. For everyone―parents, teachers, students—it means scrambling, since closures may be decided just days ahead of time.
As if all this weren’t happening, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a proposal that in order to graduate from high school, students will have to meet a huge new requirement—a plan for what they are doing after high school. If the Chicago Board of Education approves Emanuel’s proposal, starting with next year’s sophomores, in order to graduate, students will need proof of a college or vocational school acceptance letter, a job offer, or enlistment papers for the military! So, it’s not enough to just complete school—now you have to have proof of where you’re gonna be, or else—and if you can’t get a job offer, in a city where unemployment for Black teenagers remains sky-high, and you can’t afford to go to college, then you don’t even get the diploma that you earned. Unless, that is, you agree to go fight and kill for the country and system that put you in this situation in the first place!!
The U.S. military already preys like vultures on inner city students. Branches of the U.S. military literally run entire public schools in Chicago, as well as major ROTC programs and surprise recruitment assemblies. The recruiters lie like pimps... listening to them, you would think the military was the biggest college assistance program in the country. You would have no idea that you are being enlisted to be part of the U.S. killing machine, massacring other oppressed people in countries across the globe.
Now Rahm Emanuel wants to shovel students into the military; that is the option that many students will be forced to choose in order to graduate from high school under his new plan! Trump should thank him for his service.
Currently, fewer than one in four CPS students will graduate from a four-year college. Among young Black men, a little over half will graduate from high school at all. This is a school system where 200-plus students had a sit in at their high school to demand that the one librarian not be laid off and to demand that their school’s library be kept open in 2016. And it was one of the few schools with a library! What kind of educational system is it where students have to fight just to have a library? At a single high school in the wealthy North Shore suburbs, there are 10 librarians.
A system which offers millions and millions of youths no future—that alone is reason enough to sweep this system from the face of the earth!
After the revolution, the educational system will be one where students actually want to go to school!!! It will really enable students to learn about the world and to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity. It will play a critical role in breaking down the oppressive relations in society in the world as a whole.
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