Class War: The Privatization of Childhood

Megan Erickson

sht 2015 · Verso Books

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What America has at stake when some children go to school hungry and others ride in $1,000 strollers

In an age of austerity, elite corporate education reformers have found new ways to transfer the costs of raising children from the state to individual families. Public schools, tasked with providing education, childcare, job training, meals, and social services to low-income children, struggle with cutbacks. Meanwhile, private schools promise to nurture the minds and personalities of future professionals to the tune of $40,000 a year. As Class War reveals, this situation didn’t happen by chance.

In the media, educational success is framed as a consequence of parental choices and natural abilities. In truth the wealthy are ever more able to secure advantages for their children, deepening the rifts between rich and poor. The longer these divisions persist, the worse the consequences.

Drawing on Erickson’s own experience as a teacher in the New York City school system, Class War reveals how modern education has become the real “hunger games,” stealing opportunity and hope from disadvantaged children for the benefit of the well-to-do.

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Megan Erickson is an editor at Jacobin magazine and coordinator of early childhood and youth programs at the YMCA. She was formerly an editor and blogger at Big Think, and has taught in both public and private schools in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn.