En Passant

The last few decades have seen governments wage war on our universities writes Declan Murphy in Socialist Alternative. We need a different path – one in which education is a right and where learning is valued as a social good.

To roll back the attacks on higher education we need more than a defensive campaign Cat Rose argues in Socialist Alternative. Cat is the Queer Officer in the National Union of Students, and an activist in the NSW Cross-Campus Education Action Network. She is a student at UNSW.

Funding the defence killing machine; attacking workers and the poor – these are Labor’s real values; these are Labor’s priorities.

Finally, after two years of campaigning and a series of record-breaking strikes, the Australian Education Union and the Victorian Government have struck a deal. There’s some good news, and plenty of bad writes AEU delegate Manolya Moustafa in Socialist Alternative. So bad in fact that AEU members should vote against accepting this agreement.

Our message to Gillard should be “Too little, too late. Now tax the miners to fund public education.” And to our own union leaders, “Stop being sucks for Labor. They’ve screwed us yet again.

One billion of the Gonski funding will go to rich private schools. Presumably more tennis courts at Grammar are a higher priority for Labor than adequate lecture theatres at University. If students and staff can fight for free education in other countries we can fight back against the latest higher education atrocity that Labor is unleashing against its own base. Tax the rich to make higher education free.

The Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research, Chris Bowen MP, and the Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett MP, have announced an ambitious plan to improve the quality of Parliamentarians.

Everyone recognises we are tired of the crooks, duds, time servers, megalomaniacs and lazy bastards who make up our parliamentary class. We demand and expect more and this Labor government is at the forefront of delivering on its promises to increase the quality of parliamentarians through its National Plan for Improvement of Politicians.

Here is a transcript of an interview with the Ministers explaining the government’s approach. In the interests of literacy a few words have been changed.

This year’s Marxism 2013 conference in Melbourne over the Easter weekend is organising a School of Rebellion for young people and children to participate in. Jorge Jorquera in Socialist Alternative explains the concept.

The School of Rebellion isn’t about testing and ‘achievement’ but about learning and agency. It’s not a school, like every other, where education is bound to commerce and productivity but rather one where knowledge and learning are connected to justice and authentic democracy.

Universities are profit centres and to get ahead you have to play the game. Write publishable rubbish. Pass poor students. Get quick and dirty grants. Be a sycophant to power.

Don’t whatever you do join the union and fight for the idea of education as a public good, or for a living wage for students and improved wages and conditions and less stress for staff or for adequate funding and support for Universities and education more generally.

Years later when you have made it up the greasy pole of academia the fact that you are now a manipulative, bullying, deceitful, dictatorial and socially useless person but a well remunerated adjunct of business and profit will have been a small price to pay for your success.

If we want quality public education we need to fight for it. The biggest factor that can improve the situation is whether or not teachers, learning support officers, teachers’ aides and school support staff are prepared to strike to push back the neoliberal agenda of both major parties.