Students Wake Up In California
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of California students, from graduate students to kindergarten kids, walked out of their classrooms last Thursday to peacefully (mostly) demonstrate against the decline of education in the Golden State. Could this be the start of something big? Something bigger than tea bags?
I don't know. Modern American history tells us that young people rise up only when they are personally threatened. The youth-driven protests against the war in Vietnam ended when the draft ended. Now, unless they have family involved in the military, most young people seem to regard the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to be ridiculous but not their problem. (Most of the ones I hear as a university teacher have not realized that they will be paying for those wars as the national debt expands. That will come when they are earning more money than they are now.)
In California now — and in a few other states — students are threatened by tuition increases and program cancellations and explosions in class size at state schools. And what state schools they had, beginning with the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, public schools, were practically free and among the best universities in the world.
The California system includes 10 campuses of the University of California, 23 campuses of the lower-ranked California State University system and 109 campuses of what was one of the best community college systems in the country. That is to say nothing of elementary and high schools, which, depending on which numbers you follow, have fallen from first or second in test scores in the country to 48th or 49th.
Three other numbers are what have motivated today's student bodies: a 9 percent tuition increase (they are called "fees" here) last April and a 32 percent increase last November, making the total cost to students and their families in the neighborhood of $10,000 a year. That may be lower than comparable private schools, but it is the end of the promise of free education for all California residents. Besides, there is every evidence that double-digit increases will continue year after year if California clings to the illogical tax system that evolved after localities were basically stripped of property tax revenues with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978.
What has hit some students hardest is the cancellation of courses, many required courses, and of summer semesters, and the layoffs and "furloughs" of instructors, which means that many university students cannot get enough credits to graduate in four years.
So, what happened last Thursday? This is what signs and people were saying, as reported by 40 student correspondents of Neon Tommy, an online magazine produced by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism of the University of Southern California, which is a private school, not part of the state system:
"An elementary school teacher brought all 33 of her kindergarteners to the Burbank Board of Education meeting Thursday night to make a statement about what it's like to teach a large class of young, restless children and to protest faculty layoffs and bigger class size."
"'They Say Furlough, We Say Hell No !' chanted students at California State University Northridge ... signs reading — "I'm not a bank, but bail me out' and 'Invest in me. I'm the future!'"
"'I'm taking an astronomy class and there are 200 students in the lecture,' said Alex Castillo, California State University, Los Angeles. 'But there's only space for 100 students in the lab section. That means prolonging graduation.'"
"'We went to the library and protested and then participated in a march around campus,' said Rachel Silverman, a sophomore at Northridge. 'It was really moving and inspirational. I loved having the feeling of making a difference.'"
Will she make a difference? This is not a war. It's a tragedy, but the outcome depends on whether students have the motivation and patience to shout out again and again.
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