L.A. Unified School District cancels bulk of summer school programs
Los Angeles Unified School District announced Thursday it is canceling the bulk of its summer school programs, the latest in a statewide wave of cutbacks expected to leave hundreds of thousands of students struggling for classes.
The reductions, which will force many parents to scramble for child care, are the most tangible effect of the multibillion-dollar state financial cuts to education. Community colleges also have announced summer program cancellations. – LA TIMES
Commentary by JAI: The lessening of the value of labor-power finds it complement in the depreciation of the worker’s skills (i.e. labor’s ability to add value during the production process. Similarly, when it comes to value-realization (i.e. the sale of the produced items), the workers’ ability to purchase the products of its own labor is diminished. A virtual virtueless spiral ensues.
The value of labor-power, as the value of any and all commodities, is itself the sum total of the values of the goods and labor that go off into its making. A large portion of that value is added to the worker-to-be during the education process. The diminishment of the school year, ‘pupil-free days’ and now the cancelling of summer school indicates the depth of the capitalist crisis. System-wide, labor is that which the capitalists cannot do without.
Labor is the only source of new value (surplus-value) though competition compels the individual capitalists to cut its own labor-force. This is the fundamental contradiction of capitalism. And this shrinking of the time and resources and personnel allocated by the system towards the education of its replacement labor force is but a parallel in the education factory of what takes place in the industrial factories.
There is absolutely no reason (save capitalism) that schools should cut back on education. There is no reason that factories ought close (save temporarily when they have (and could) produce what they are needed to produce). There is no reason for the insanity of wars, homelessness, poverty and famine save that these things exist eith because someone can make money off of them or ‘there is no money in them’. These are the evils of production-for-profit. These are the stigmata of capitalism.
Now! More so than ever. It is socialism or barbarism.