FIGHT FOR FREE EDUCATION BEGINS

by Maybe u should mobilise for a No to Nice Vote Fri Sep 20, 2002 16:40

Education for Sale.

"There is a major risk that the WTO's initiatives will clash head-on
with the principles upheld by all those who value a quality public
education system."
Education International.

     
`The University of Nike' was crudely spray painted over the entrance
to a university in France, a sign next to it pointed to the `Bill
Gates' building. In Berlin a mass occupation of a University is
violently evicted by riot police, hundreds are arrested. The
disruption of a senate meeting in Italy and mass rallies in Spain.
Across Europe the streets were swamped by manifestations of student
anger against increasing cuts in education, in a week long series of
action against not just a European but a globalised assault on
education, all culminating in the mass demonstrations that greeted
the leaders of the EU as they gathered in Brussels at the end of
December.  The General Agreement On Services In Trade, emerging from
the World Trade Organization has been made a dirty word because of a
global movement against social injustice that challenges not only
specific aspects of the system but the increasingly the whole system
itself.  Seattle, Prague, Genoa and Brussels, scenes of anger
continue to flash across TV screens as a movement derided as `middle
class youths attempting to recreate the sixties' refuses to burn it
self out and forges ever-closer links with a wider cross section of
society and workers.  Links forged because of the common threat of
issues like GATS.

Education is just one aspect of our social fabric under threat from
GATS, this agreement of the global elite is a threat to democracy and
the ability of governments to regulate and create standards, protect
labour rights, and safety and environmental standards, pressurizing
governments to surrender public services to a private sector where
the sole concern is the creaming off of profit with scant regard for
the needs of the public.  But how exactly does GATS threaten
education?  What impact can it have on the daily lives of students
and workers engaged in education?
     
GATS, adopted at the end of the Uruguay Round of World Trade
discussions in 1994, is a key component in the increasing trend
towards the globalization of economics, as the clasp of
multinationals tightens around the globe. Neo-liberalism-the
annihilation of all `barriers to trade' between countries, and the
exorcism of even the mildest forms of government interference in the
market place. Neo-liberalism is a continuation of the disastrous
economic agendas of the 1970's and 1980's, the bastardized offspring
of monetarism and thatcherism.  Controls on imports, which protect
native industries should be dropped, taxes on income and corporate
profit disbanded to remove the burden on business, facilitating
economic growth, attracting foreign investment, enabling poorer
countries to fulfill excessive debt repayments to the IMF and World
Bank.  The argument is that this will lead to a `trickle down'
effect, as the increased profits gleaned by companies leads to job
creation and eventually some of the wealth will trickle down, making
everyone better off.  But who has economic globalization really
benefited?  The companies, and the companies alone.

Flemming Larsen, the European Director of the IMF admitted in a
debate on Neo-Liberalism that `Many of the poorest nations have in
fact being regressing during the last couple of decades.  I fear the
gap between the rich and poor will continue to grow.'  In their agit
prop video for `Sleep Now in the Fire' Rage Against The Machine
satirized the franchised game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,
with the contestants facing questions on inequality, juxtaposed with
scenes of Seattle.  The answers were almost absurd, absurd but true. 
In the United States, that bastion of neo-liberalism, the benefits of
economic growth have been even more disproportionately divided than
in the past.  Since the first wave of the neo-liberal assault in the
1970's, 60% of American families have seen no increase in their real
incomes.  45 million go with out health insurance, one in eight are
subsisting below the poverty line, the minimum wage is worth 22
percent less than in 1968.  In 1980, the bosses of large companies
were getting 42 times as much money as their average factory worker;
by 1998 they were getting 419 times as much.  In Ireland, a supposed
neo-liberal success story, the chasm between rich and poor continues
to gape even wider as the politicians espoused a Celtic Tiger
invisible to any but the rich.  

GATS demands a cessation of the provision of public services by
government and advocates their seizure by Transnational
Corporations.  The EU commission has described GATS as `first and
foremost an instrument for the benefit of business'. In a discussion
on GATS, David Kearns the US chair of Xerox described how `businesses
will have to set the agenda…a complete restructure driven by
competition and market discipline, unfamiliar grounds for educators.'
Business Lobbyists use the disturbing argument that `schools will
respond better to paying customers like any other business'.  The US
business lobby is highly critical of the `culture of laziness which
continues in the European education system…where students take
liberties to pursue subjects not directly related to industry. 
Instead they are pursuing subjects which have no practical
application'.   Instead they want an education system intricately
linked to the market and profit.  Where courses reflect the need of
business and any remaining semblances of personnel development is
jettisoned.

The private provision of education is a highly lucrative market, with
a global turnover of $3 trillion annually.  In Ireland we have seen
the rapid expansion of private education providers and the increased
prominence of the exam cramming factories that cater for secondary
exam students.  A by product of an education system where the
creation of college places is under-funded prompting the need for
their strict rationing of existing places through the points system. 
For big business the corporate takeover of education is an extremely
lucrative opportunity. 

A barrier to trade in education is `the existence of government
monopolies and high subsidization of local institutions.'  This means
that the third level maintenance grant is discriminatory, forcing
government to end subsidization of public sector or extend the grant
to private schools equally.  Looking at the government's snide
rejection of even the slightest genuine increase in the grant, over
the past number of years can you really see them extending it to
private education?  Nah, didn't think so.

The WTO secretariat maintains that opponents of GATS are infected
with a needless paranoia and apprehension, he claims that the GATS
agreement safeguards public services in Article 1, section 3 B and
C.  However, section B defines that the privatization of `services
includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the
exercise of governmental authority'.   So, does this mean that all
the essential government provided public services are protected or
just those that allow it to exercise its authority and function like
the military and the police?  Section C elaborates on the excepted
services even further. `A service supplied in the exercise of
government authority means any service which is supplied neither on a
commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service
suppliers'.  The contradiction between these two statements
unmistakably betrays the agenda behind GATS.  GATS safeguards the
police forces and militaries that protect the status quo and the
economic interests of multinationals at home and abroad, while
allowing for the slaughter of public services like education.  It
means the privatization of education where there is even just one
private school.  Where ever the profit margin of a company is
affected by a government provided service, the Storm troopers of the
WTO will be out to impose the new world order of rampant capitalism.

Ireland is represented in the GATS dialogues by the EU commission.  
Once a service industry is added to a particular
governments `schedule of specific commitments' for surrender to
privatization it has a three year window to withdraw it, if it uses
this right it must pay `any necessary compensatory adjustment' to
other member states representing the interests of their corporate
lobby who are put out of place by the sudden removal of a market.  If
one member believes another state is in violation of the GATS
agreement, the claim is brought to a settlement body.  A secretive
tribunal of bureaucrats, meeting in closed session and already has
proven unfavorable to environmental, health and other legal actions
focusing on issues of social justice.  The winning country has the
right to enforce the ruling through economic sanction.  Article IV on
domestic regulations demands that they `do not constitute unnecessary
barriers to trade in services'.  A dangerous eradication of
democracy, bulldozing the way for the secretive tribunals of the WTO
to storm over decisions democratically taken at a localized level and
paving the way for multinationals top run riot in pursuit of profit. 
An agreement that will `hugely expand the authority of the WTO to
interfere in the exercise of governmental authority. It would mean
transferring the delicate responsibility for balancing the public
interest with commercial considerations from elected government
representatives to appointed tribunals or WTO panels.'

The WTO acknowledges that the implementation of GATS will lead
to `cream skimming' in service provision, using the example of health
care to describe how `private clinics may well be able to attract
qualified staff from public hospitals without…offering the same range
of services to the same population groups.'  As the consumer watchdog
Public Services International aptly paraphrases it `the elite will be
able to access private transnational corporation controlled care; the
rest will have to make do with the shrinking public system.' 
Something that will exacerbate social inequality.

The pressures exerted by GATS for a more mobile work force which can
mould itself to the chaos of the free market brings with it a
degradation of standards and training.  The privatization of
education brings with it the view that labour is a cost and not an
investment in society.  The resultant increased trend towards
mobility can lead to the disintegration of unions, as their power
bases in the once stable employment fields of public service become
unstable, facilitating the race to the bottom in terms of wages and
the further drop in skills as workers opt for employment in better
paid fields.  The secondary system is already experiencing a mass
exodus of its best teachers to other professions. In recent years
teachers have seen their pay levels fall significantly behind the
majority of other professions.  They earn on average £9,000 less than
other college graduates. Last year's embittered ASTI dispute was an
attempt to prepare secondary education for privatisation by
connecting it to the private sector, through bench marking, easing
any future transition and wiping out the Union as a source of
resistance to neo-liberalism.  Betraying a further agenda of
compliance with GATS.

In No Logo, Naomi Klein explores some results of the corporate attack
on education.  In 1996 the faculty and students at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison were unwillingly censored because of the
administrations sponsorship agreement with Reebok.  A clause in the
deal stated `During and for a reasonable time after the term the
University will not issue any official statement that disparages
Reebok.  Additionally the university will promptly take all necessary
steps to address any remark by any University employee, agent or
representative…that disparages Reebok'.  An Amnesty Chapter at Kent
State had their application for funding revoked in 1998, because of
Coca Colas exclusive vending rights on campus, after they advocated a
boycott of cokes products in response to the conglomerates support
for the since ousted Nigerian dictatorship. There's the case of the
expulsion of a student in Greenbriar high School because he wore a
Pepsi t-shirt on a day dedicated to Coca Cola.  There's the invasion
of American schools by Channel One, where kids must watch two hours a
day of ads sandwiched between 12 minutes of teeny bopper current
affairs, in return the schools do not get direct funding but are
allowed utilize the TV equipment for other classes.  A student who
refused to sit through the daily dose of ad blitzing was arrested for
playing truant and detained by police.

While these cases may seem extreme and serve to highlight the
eradication of independent and free thought on US campuses.  Ireland
is following closely behind.  The Public Private Partnerships are the
first major warning signs of the oncoming privatization of education.
We have seen attacks on civil liberties with 16 arrests and police
violence against peaceful protesters at a recent anti-PPP protest, as
the forces of the state crackdown on any dissenting voices.  While
students in France used the tactics of culture jamming to rename
their colleges in an effort to highlight the corporate seizure of
education, in UCD it is too late to engage in such creative acts of
resistance.  We already graduate from Tony O'Reilly Hall and attend
The Smurfit School of Business.

GATS is not some abstract issue, it is no longer something our
students' union can dismiss as irrelevant to the students of UCD. 
The concerted campaign of the global elite to rob us of a decent
publicly funded education system, to take our grants, to turn our
colleges into factories of the mind, no longer concerned with
intellectual development and stimulation, where students are churned
out to work as obedient automatons in the `dark satanic mills' of the
future is something that encroaches into all our lives.  We can no
longer ignore the cannibalization and commodification of all aspects
of our lives for profit.  Another world is possible.  Join in the
fight back, because enough is enough.

EU-wide protestcampaign in 2002

Forum about education and culture &
demonstration in Salamanca(Spain) during EU culture and education
ministers meeting March 17-19

Forum about education and international studentblock at demonstration
in Sevilla (Spain) during EU summit June 21-22

Decentral protests in Europe during the summer-semester

More information:

International Website:
http://int-protest-action.tripod.com

http://www.antilou.org

Website organising Students in salamanca:
http://www.geocities.com/observaglobal/ (in Spanish)

Mailinglists:

English (The international list):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/international-pupil-and-studentactions

German:
http://de.groups.yahoo.com/group/int-schueler-und-studentenaktionen

Dutch:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/int-scholieren-en-studentenakties

EDUCATION IS NOT FOR SALE!