Those of you who believe that public education couldn’t get much worse might be interested in comments made by Bill Ayers—just two years ago—as a participant in the World Education Forum in Venezuela, and reported on Townhall.com.
Ayers noted that while serving a jail sentence in 1965, he met several activists who shared his view that “we can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”
“Capitalism promotes racism and militarism—turning people into consumers, not citizens,” he continued.
Ayers believes that education is “intimately connected with social justice.” He openly praised Venezuela for showing the world how “the failings of capitalist schooling can be resisted and overcome…Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education—a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.”
E.D. Ironically, leaders of the Venezuelan Student Movement are not likely to claim that Hugo Chavez’ “democratic” reforms have made education in their country particularly humanitarian.
Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.