Friday, October 13, 2017

European Communist Initiative: "Education should be a right, not a privilege-commodity for the few"


The European Communist Initiative, which rallies 29 communist and workers' parties in its ranks, highlights the major issue of education which concerns school and university students, parents and teachers, the peoples as a whole. Education should be a right, not a privilege-commodity for the few.

In reality, it has been demonstrated that the education system under capitalism does not provide real education and is very expensive. It reflects and reinforces the dominant ideology of the society on which it is based.

The mission of the education system under capitalism is to ideologically prepare the workers of tomorrow so that they are assimilated into the exploitative system at a young age, so that they adapt to the needs of the profitability of themonopolies.In capitalist society education systems are critical tools in the maintenance of a class based societyin the interests of the ruling capitalist class designed to perpetuate exploitation. 

The reactionary reforms being promoted by the EU and the bourgeois governments reinforce the penetration and intervention of businesses into all levels of education, state spending is being reduced, the commercialization of education is flourishing and the content and results of research are controlled by these forces.

The anti-scientific and even obscurantist theories about nature and society, such as the attempt to discredit and conceal the theory of evaluation, to reproduce unequal relations between men and women. that dominate the education system, the fragmented knowledge and "skills", impede the development of critical thinking and scientific understanding.

The experience that has been accumulated underscores the fact that a plan is under way which aims to co-opt and convert the children of the working class and popular strata into supporters of the EU and NATO through designated programs and funding for lessons, projects, trips that propagandize the “values” of capital and its organizations.

In every country the working class and the families of the popular strata and their children are paying for the grave consequences of the anti-people political line of the bourgeois governments. The lack of teachers and infrastructure continues and is intensifying.

The education system in capitalism has a deeply class character and aims to produce obedient workers who will not challenge the exploitative system. The poison of anti-communism is utilized in many school books. Socialism and the history of the communist movement are distorted and slandered, as are the history and struggles of the labour-people's movement. There is a devious and ahistorical attempt to equate communism with the monster of fascism. This year we honour the 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution which brought to the fore a superior organization of society, socialism, which abolished the exploitation of humankind.

The radical eradication of the terrible legacy of illiteracy, the safeguarding of high-level exclusively public and free education for all, the development of educational theory and practice and the elimination of unemployment are amongst the great achievements of socialism. Problems that are related to educational infrastructure, the provision of meals, student accommodation etc, which remain unsolved under capitalism, were resolved by socialism.

The European Communist Initiative emphasizes the need to strengthen the struggle against the reactionary changes that are being promoted by the imperialist centres and the bourgeois governments, against the chronic underfunding of education, the falsification of history, the promotion of anti-scientific theories in schools.

We call on school, university and college students, their parents and teachers, the labour-peoples movement to fight alongside the communists to intensify the struggle for the right of children to real education in line with the requirements of our time, so that education becomes a means to improve the life of humanity and not a tool to perpetuate capitalist exploitation and the profitability of the bourgeois class.