Confronting Colonialism and the Attack on Public Education in Puerto Rico

• In Event: 25.067 - Challenging Trump's Xenophobic Fascism in the Era of Fake News: Presenting a Collective Front

Abstract

We are living in an era where solidarity with and support to communities that are currently under attack provides much needed hope, energy, and resources to continue the struggle to save public education and teacher rights. In my recent work with the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (Federation of Puerto Rican Teachers), I learned of the massive layoffs and school closures about to give way to charters and privatization in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (Aronoff, 2018), all under the pretense of school reform and fiscal austerity (Project 825 and Congressional Project 1441). The flagrant use of positive depictions about vouchers and charters has clouded the reality of how well-loved and highly regarded local public schools on the Island, especially those poor and remotely located high need areas, are being stripped of their furniture and materials and closed, and their teachers displaced or released. Compare this to the damaging effects from full chartering of education in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, which has been misreported to create a charter panacea (Gabor, 2015). Disaster capitalism in education is taking advantage of critical situations to move in on vulnerable communities and displace one of the few public and common goods left in the U.S. (Thomas, 2014; Karlin, 2018; Klein, 2018). It is no secret that private interests have been lurking in our midst for decades to further an agenda that removes union protections for teachers and replaces education for a process of schooling “a la consumerism” (Saltman, 2012).
This presentation will highlight the efforts of the teacher unions in Puerto Rico to fight and push back on school closures, teacher layoffs, cuts in benefits, and the sellout of public schools. It will provide a backdrop of the colonial status of Puerto Rico and its second class U.S. citizenship since 1917, which has further attacked the efforts of Puerto Ricans (Denis, 2015), especially under the current administration. In contrast, it will expound solidarity efforts of educators throughout the country that inform the general public, and seek ways to unite. This effort, to deter the wave of federally supported actions that aim to weaken public school structures in the United States in favor of deregulating schooling and what we know as public education. In the midst of growing ultra-right wing, racist, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQIA, anti-Muslim furor, we examine how the current wave of teacher protests is significant and timely in rallying support for an uprising in education. How can we play a role as educators to insist on maintaining a sense of civility, democracy, tolerance, discourse and equity, as we build support for teacher rights for fair pay, health and benefits, and community rights for a critical and liberatory democratic education (Freire, 2018)? How can we use the power of dreaming to help us have the faith and courage to continue to struggle against the monster that is capital?

Author

• Anaida Colon-Muniz, Chapman University