Teachers are the solution, not the problem

Editor,

Thanks to Jamillah Wilcox for her fine article (in the July 22-July 29 issue of the Daily Lobo) reporting on the attack on public education by representatives of the private sector at the recent meeting of the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee in the SUB, of all places.

We should not let Hanna Skandera and Eric Hanushek spread the lie that public school teachers and principals are the cause of students not finding jobs and success in the economy.

Basic economic theory holds that private sector corporations do most of the hiring of workers, creating jobs. It is not teachers who hire anyone.

It is widespread common knowledge that there is a surplus of workers now for almost every job category in the country. This is because the greedy corporations are passing their profits onto the stockholders instead of using it to hire more workers.

It is not teachers and principals who are causing the lack of success for students, it is the private sector. I think our public schools and teachers have done a pretty good job in this situation. We do not need such class warfare abuse heaped on them like what happened. Shame on UNM.

The real goal behind these Ayn Rand followers is to actually turn the larger public against the union-wage public education workers, one of the last main pillars of our middle class. This is easy to do now that so many workers at private sector corporations have had their wages and pensions cut.

The corporations want to do this to public schools so they can further cut their tax payments that support public schools. In this Skandera economic theory the corporations are supposed to then be free to create more jobs for student success. But all the students out of work now after 60 years of this system prove it is a failed theory.

Who let this idea into UNM, a school of higher education? If I had to give their presentation a grade it would not even rate an F for historical accuracy. They want us to believe they can grade public education with their metaphysical economic theory.

The long term goal of the Skandera-Hanushek-Rand school of propaganda is to turn the general public against public education so it can be privatized and turned over to software and computer based high-tech corporations to run as an online, slimmed-down for-profit education business, free of union-wage teachers, of course.

If they do that, only the well off will be able to afford an education at an elite private school while kids of the general public will get a quick online certificate or degree that is only good for standing in the unemployment line.

A real program for education success would be for our political leaders to work to create a national jobs program with living wages based on taxing the wealth of these corporations that are hoarding all the wealth of our society for themselves. Ayn Rand is dead and so is her theory.

Robert L. Anderson
UNM alumnus