Education Privatizers Have Gone Global. So Must We If We Want to Stop Them.
In February 2018, West Virginia teachers launched a strike that reawakened a movement. Tens of thousands of teachers from around the country have taken part in what is now the largest strike wave in decades, demanding better public education in the face of years of austerity.
On February 11, 2019, as the U.S. wave continued, teachers union leaders from across Africa gathered in Addis Ababa for a meeting of African Union heads of state with their own demands: to halt the continent’s moves toward privatized education and provide “inclusive and equitable quality free public education for all.”
Though an ocean apart, West Virginia and Addis Ababa are two fronts in the same war. The fight for public education reminds us that working-class struggles around the world are linked—and that international solidarity is the key to victory.
In many U.S. districts, school funding still hasn’t recovered from cuts made during the Great Recession. Teachers are underpaid, classrooms are overcrowded and textbooks are out of date. Rather than increase funding, conservative public figures like Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education, have turned to private and charter schools that deepen inequality and further drain resources from the public system.
At the same time, foreign-owned, for-profit schools like Bridge International Academies and GEMS Education have swept Africa. There is no doubt that the status quo of public education in much of the region is dire: Education systems are largely underfunded, illiteracy remains high and a large gender gaps prevail. But an CONTINUE READING: Education Privatizers Have Gone Global. So Must We If We Want to Stop Them.
