What Happened to Detroit?

By David N. Smokler

What American city was once called the “Paris of the Midwest” and the “City of Champions" after all its major professional sports teams won championships in a seven month period? What city had the greatest industrial output, the first paved highway, the first freeway and the first shopping center? What city had the best public school system in the nation? You guessed it: Detroit, Michigan. What happened to that great American metropolis now known as the “murder capital?” Automation and computer assisted production have caused jobs to leave Detroit. Most importantly, this new technology has actually replaced human labor, taking away workers jobs, forever.

And what happened to Detroit’s great school system? Let’s be clear, our education system’s basic function is to produce the type of employee that business needs. As science was applied to industrial production and society became more complex, the owners of industry needed educated workers and developed a publicly financed educational system designed to create them. When machines began to replace human labor in the late 1960s and early 1970s, public education became less necessary. Computer-based production limited the employer’s capacity to exploit the labor of workers. The workers were hamstrung in their capacity to sell their ability to work and buy the things that they produced. As a result the whole system of production for profit is fast becoming obsolete. There are fewer and fewer things where the corporations can profitable investments. As a result, they have begun to privatize public services. The public education system in this country is a $750 billion enterprise, ripe fruit in private hands.

In Detroit half the public schools have been ordered closed by the state legislature with 41or more to become “for profit” charters. A two or three-tier system is being created with some students going to elite schools and the rest being educated for low paying or no-paying jobs in the prison industrial complex. Our youth won’t be educated to see through the smoke and mirrors and outright lies of the system or to think and to ask tough questions while making demands that the system can't meet.

Teachers, parents and supporters have been marching and protesting in Detroit and in Lansing the state capital. On May 21st over 10,000 people rallied at the capital to oppose republican governor Snyder’s new tax plan giving corporations huge tax breaks, cutting per pupil funding and taxing senior citizens’ pensions. On May 24th thousands of teachers in 40 communities throughout the state protested drastic changes in the Michigan Public Schools Employees Retirement System.

To promote the corporate agenda, the state is using Emergency Managers to take over schools systems, cities and counties who can eliminate the powers of elected officials. Their agenda is privatization. The Detroit Public Schools have already privatized their security guards, bus drivers and janitors. What is happening in Detroit is just the start of what will happen nationwide.

Our schools are being used to fit the corporate agenda and its insatiable thirst for profit. Isn’t it our duty to recreate the educational system in our image and not in theirs? If computer assisted automation permanently eliminates the need for workers and has the capacity to create abundance for everyone our young people won’t have to do the jobs that we once did. They can truly reach for the stars and let their imaginations be their guide. To achieve this goal we need national legislation to insure that our countries public schools remain public and properly funded. Education is crucial to our entire nation and is recognized throughout the world as a human right. It should not be used to satisfy to the needs of a few people. We must have a national system of educating our children for the 21st century. They have the right to realize their full potential as human beings. Let them fulfill their destiny in the age of electronics to recreate the world so that mankind can finally realize its age old vision of a beloved community on a peaceable planet.