(Proverbs 28:19)
- Report to the Trinational, in Montreal, May 6, 2010
Six days after he took office, 17 months ago in January, 2009, President Obama made his first public appearance as president when he visited the Capital City Charter School in Washington, DC. This was a deliberate and symbolic act. It launched an ever-escalating wild-ride towards the corporatizing and privatizing the system of public education in the United States.
The United States was the first country to guarantee free, universal public education. It is now moving rapidly to becoming the first country to end it. The well-orchestrated effort to turn over public schools to private corporations is a part of a much larger joint corporate-government campaign to privatize everything that is public in the United States. This process has escalated drastically since the US bank collapse in September of 2009, and the bank Bailout with $13 trillion of taxpayer money. continue...
Estimados Compañeros del CNTE:
Estamos mandado esta carta a ustedes para darles nuestra solidaridad y apoyo en su lucha en contra de los corruptos lideres del SNTE y del gobierno corrupto, represivo y entreguista de el Presidente Calderón.
Como maestros su lucha es nuestra lucha, lo acontecido el dia 24 de Mayo y la represión a su lucha y sus demandas es el ejemplo claro de la política de represión a las luchas por los derechos a la educación publica y gratuita en México. continue...
Snow on Mother\'s Day in Montreal hailed the end of the ninth Trinational Coalition for the Defense of Public Education Conference on May 9th, 2010. Despite the weather being unseasonably cold, the topics of fighting school privatization, education budget cuts, and strategies to save our public schools were hot topics addressed during the 3-day conference. A diverse gathering of over 200 professors, teachers, paraprofessionals, students, and union leaders represented colleagues from British Columbia, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Morelos, Ontario, Quebec, Guatemala, Grenada, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina and more. The event was co-organized by the Canadian Teachers unions in Quebec the CSQ (Centrale des sydicats du Quebec) and FNEEQ-CSN (Federation nationale des enseignantes et des enseignants du Quebec) with the support of CISO (Centre international de solidarite ouvriere). This year\'s theme was, "Towards Public and Democratic Education." continue...
Felipe Calderón
June 13, 2009
President of the Republic of Mexico
felipe.calderon@presidencia.gob.mx
President Calderón:
We, the members of the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education – Los Angeles Section, are writing this letter in support of the teachers of Puebla, Mexico. We are making an urgent call to the governments of Mexico and of the state of Puebla to stop the brutal repression of the teachers immediately and to release all those people who have been disappeared or who have been jailed. We fully support the demands of the teachers of Puebla, specifically their demand to cancel the Alianza Por Calidad de la Educacion, and we demand that the state and federal governments recognize the democratic sections of 23 and 51 of the teachers’ union.
We urge you to put a stop to the corporate takeover of public education in Mexico. The right to a free quality education for all our children is under attack throughout the hemisphere. As with No Child Left Behind in the United States, the brunt of these programs comes down the hardest on the poorest and most discriminated against children. Teachers in the United States see the struggle against privatization of education in Mexico and here as one. Mexico being a sovereign and democratic country should be governed by its people and not by international corporations.
Sincerely,
| Rosemary Lee | Maria Elena Martinez | |
| Marc Rich | Marsha Steinberg | |
| Steve Teixeira | Gustavo Lopez | |
| Jose Amenero |
For the Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education, Los Angeles
Section
Los Angeles, California
Hola Compañeros y compañeras.
El magisterio democrático de las secciones 23 y 51 del SNTE (Puebla), fue reprimido brutalmente por el gobierno estatal el 10 de junio del año en curso. Fueron desalojados de sus locales sindicales, hay 17 presos, un desaparecido y maestros heridos. Hoy habrá una manifestación en la ciudad de México para protestar por estos hechos.
A los detenidos el gobierno amenaza con acusarlos de despojo y motín por lo cual serían muchos años de cárcel. continue...
Based on the article below and others (including the analysis by Víctor Raùl Martínez) it is evident that the new leadership of Secciòn 22 is putting more emphasis on extending and intensifying its position in society in general by means of interventions in aid of different struggles in different regions of the state,although they might be struggles not directly related with educational matters. another declaration Chepi, the new secretary general of the union, has affirmed that Section 22, with more than 70,000 members, has a presence in literally all the communities in the state. Therefore, if the teachers raise their social consciousness they can have a powerful effect in the life of the entire state. That is to say, the goal of the teachers should not be only to educate students in classrooms but to educate all of society. As a consequence of this broad definition of education, the teachers union can turn itself into the principal counterweight to the government which the union leadership considers illegitimate and repressive. continue in English...
Read in Spanish...
In Spanish
WE received this from our friends in Mexico. It concerns the standardized test called PISA, and was sent by the student committee of the Mexican section of the Trinational.
Hola! Queridos profesores
El día de hoy se aplicará la prueba PISA en mi país, la cual representa una forma más de exclusión social, ya que al estandarizar los conocimientos; se deja de lado toda forma singular del proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje. Por ello y como parte del trabajo que hemos venido realizando hemos hecho un pronucniamiento que queremos compartir con ustedes, para que este evento sea observado por toda la sociedad y se reflexione respecto a los impactos del mismo.
Cómite Estudiantil en Defensa de la Educación Pública de la Coalición Trinacional
Reciban un saludo fraternal
María, Hortensia, Alfonso, Montserrat y Eric
A conference on the impact of standardized evaluation on education in the Americas was held in Mexico City February 19-21. It was organized by the IDEA Network (Initiative for Democratic Education in the Americas) with representatives from 13 countries throughout the hemisphere participating. The primary objective of the conference was to collectively construct an understanding of the impact of standardized testing on public education, share stories of resistance to such testing and alternatives generated by education organizations throughout the Americas. The following is a speech given by Steve Miller, a teacher activist from the Oakland public schools:
Six days after he took office, Barack Obama was bored, sitting around the White House. At least, that's how he tells it. So he and Michelle decided to take off and drop in on a school. So they picked Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, DC.
Obama could have gone to one of the city's long-struggling ghetto schools, perhaps one which is being threatened with closure. He could have reaffirmed his support for the historic demand for equal, quality public education that drove the struggle for Civil Rights. He did neither.
By attending a charter school, Obama openly demonstrated support for one of the tools of social engineering that are being used to batter public schools and drive them towards privatization. Testing is the other major weapon. continue...
In Spanish
This is document that describes the essense of the Aliance for Quality Education of the teachers of Morelos from Mexico.
In Spanish
This is a newsletter from the Mexican Trinational Coalition to Defend Public Education Group.
