With the recent news that the California UC system has to cut $500 million from its general budget, they came up with the solution to turn away qualified students. This strategy is disheartening in a country where intellectual labor is not just the norm, but also our economic reality. The United States is nearing its 40th birthday of deindustrialization, making a college education and comprehensive skills a must. With the presence of Prop 209 in California, annual increases in tuition fees over the past decade, and now cuts in admissions due to the budget deficit, a Black or Brown student with a 3.5 GPA possibly won't be able to attend schools like UC Berkeley.
The 50 year master plan for the UC system was created to make college accessible by minimizing tuition for in-state residents and guaranteeing admission for eligible applicants, but when the UC President is instituting cutting admission and accepting out of state applicants to capitalize higher tuition rates, California's public university system is on the path towrds privatization. Funding will now be equivalent to 1998 levels when it educated 73,600 fewer students, thus 350,000 students may be turned away this following year.
Increases in tuition alone have forced students of color who have been admitted to forgo the college of their choice but now they won’t even experience the joy of being accepted. Yet, UC's football and basketball teams will remain Black and Brown with low GPAs, rarely graduating, but generating millions of dollars a year for their schools. Educational merit is nothing when capital is everything. How UC's are content with this exploitation of the body over the mind is beyond comprehension. With the debates regarding the financial state of education in this country, Geoffrey Canada type achievement models, public schools versus charter, and the achievement gap between ethnicities, one thing remains certain; any given society cannot promote the importance of education without the initial investment.
Beyond the cuts, the U.S. has continually negated public education for all its citizens. Whether it be during slavery, the Industrial Revolution, Jim Crow segregation, Chinese segregation in 1885, or the myriad of tax loops and budget cuts that undermine the maintenance of adequate schools we experience today, the U.S. continues to move at a pace antithetical to the needs of its citizens. The propensity to cut education due to deficit or lack of property taxes has replaced the overt racial discrimination of the past even though it still has racial consequences. From the state to the federal level, the inability to effectively plan ahead and deter the economy from dictating the quality of education most come to an end. The reluctance to create policy cemented in the belief that all citizens can be guaranteed a substantive education and enforcing it with unwavering aplomb must be viewed as a continuation of historical oppression. Systems of oppression rarely dissolve, rather they are masked through various subterfuges reluctant to produce and promote equality and equity; blaming the injustice on "de facto" circumstances rather than the historical neglect of people's rights and needs.
I chose the title “Stagnation or Damnation?” after the racist Senator, Harry F. Byrd, who instituted “Massive Resistance” (1956) as a reaction to Brown v. Board of Education. Massive Resistance allowed public institutions in Virginia to willingly segregate against federal law. Harry Byrd's hatred was proactive, it was overt and easy to delineate as the impediment to progress but times have changed and education's adversaries are now masked. Two realities now remain: stagnation or damnation? Is ineptitude to blame or an acquiescence towards inequality and inequity? What students experience now from those in power is Massive Damnation. Excuse the draconian overtone and its implications but access to education is country club in nature; homogenous and elitist. Educational segregation has rarely been remedied and with the current economic downturn, demanding resources seems bleak. Thus, the students caught in the margins inch closer and closer to the edge of social oblivion. Frantz Fanon's, "Wretched of the Earth," was initially titled, "The Damned of the Earth." Originally written in French, the publisher of English translation opted to change the adjective in the title. I always wondered why and only could only come up with one answer; one can be blamed for being wretched. One can be blamed if they are wretched or deficient but never damned. For someone to be damned, a force willingly controls their reality and mobility. It is hard to come to grips with damnation because someone has to take responsibility for it. America thrives on blaming anyone, any group, any race, any religion, or any class. There is a political party or a candidate or a union to blame education's plight on, thus providing time to stagnate. Fanon wanted the reader to know that imperialism and colonialism is a damned state. He wanted the world to know that Africa was damned by Europe. Language that speaks to the true nature of an injustice must be used in order to eradicate it, not diluted language, i.e. wretched.
With that said, what is the cause of the current state of education: stagnation or damnation?
With that said, what is the cause of the current state of education: stagnation or damnation?
