Re: [Marxism] Re: The hijab controversy

["Marvin Gandall" <marvgandall@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jose, I agree with your analysis of the evolution of the public
system -- especially your point about the democratic form rather than
essence of modern school boards, and the need to try and reimpose
popular control over them.

But, really, your other post arguing that public support for religious
education is somehow progressive because it gives you the option of
being able to send your kids to a Quaker school in Georgia was a bit
disingenuous, no? If the choice were between the progressive and
essentially secular education served up by the Friends and the public
school system, we wouldn't really be having this discussion, would we?
As you well know, the religious school system overwhelmingly comprises
the network of orthodox Catholic, evangelical, Jewish, and Moslem
institutions which, in varying degrees, promote obscurantist religious
concepts and reactionary social values. So public funds which are
desperately needed by the public system shouldn't be diverted to
religious schools -- which seems to me the central issue.
----------------------------------------
Jose Perez:

I think we should remember that Marx was writing in 1875.

(snip)

I don't think that has anything much to do with the situation in
imperialist countries *today* and certain not in the United States.

(snip)

This doesn't mean, of course, that struggles by working people and
especially the nationally oppressed for locally elected school
authorities, or electoral procedures giving them greater leverage over
the local board, should be shunned.

(snip)

Marvin Gandall writes:
>>It seems apparent from the quote cited above by Jose that Marx
distinguished between the Prussian and other embryonic European school
systems, which were run from the top down by state bureaucrats, and the
American system, where control over the curriculum and other matters was
vested in publicly-elected school boards. In neither case, however, does
Marx oppose the principle of public control over funding, teaching
qualifications, and the organization of the school system, which, he
notes, is "a very different thing from appointing the state as the
educator of the people".<<


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