What It's like to Be a Red Teacher

Being a communist teacher is a contradiction. You can be a communist, but as long as you're in your classroom, you teach what the bosses want the students to learn, you impose their discipline, and you adapt your students to live under the wage system. How can you sharpen this contradiction?

The school is a place where thinking, behavior, skills and attitudes are molded in accordance with the system and its mode of production. From the relationship between the tardy bell and the factory time clock, to working for a grade and the wage system, everything responds to the mode of production. How can you struggle against this while you're teaching it?

"It's about taking risks," says a comrade teacher, referring to the communist struggle with his students in the classroom. To create a struggle between capitalist ideology, which the schools are designed for, and communist ideas, the teachers in ICWP bring the communist line to their students by way of Red Flag. Debates, discussion, struggle, confronting the bosses' ideas with the ideas of communist workers is one way to mobilize the future masses of workers and soldiers of the world for communism.

To the bosses' pacifist teacher, the teacher must bring communist struggle. To the bosses' selfishness, working-class collectivity, to racism, nationalism, sexism and all the ideas and practices that capitalism seeks to impose, teachers must bring questions, debate and struggle with the students. That way the teacher can use the bosses' attack against them.

In communism, education won't be the responsibility of specific persons. Communist education will eliminate the division between theory and practice. We will all participate in the process of instruction. We will learn to cure in the hospitals, to grow food in the fields, to produce in the factories. We will eliminate all traces of the old class education.

The way to sharpen this contradiction is to sharpen the struggle for communism. To destroy sexism, nationalism and racism in education, we must destroy capitalism. We need to recruit the future masses of workers—and their shapers. We need more red teachers who take as their own the flag of communism, the Red Flag.

communist education is erected
to eliminate the sale
of the capacity that creates…

During a lecture about communism, socialism, and capitalism my teacher said, "Under Communism the government owns all means of production, the workers run the factories, and everyone earns equal pay. The government intervenes in everything from what you make to how much you make and where you work." Another thing my teacher mentioned was, "The people gave up a lot of freedoms for equality." I wonder if "freedom" is code for individualism?

Although most cannot choose their ideal job under capitalism, this is not obvious to people, even to the unemployed. The examples he used about communist countries are NOT communist. I know this because there will no longer be ownership over property, money, or wages under communism and the countries he talked about all had these.

As the lecture continued he said, "Capitalism is a 'hands-off' government and business owners pay workers and mostly take care of things while the government stands back and watches." From my observation, capitalism is a highly governed society with 2.4 million people incarcerated, a huge military, and the government is unable/unwilling to take care of all people.

Lastly, he talked about socialism. He said that socialism is half communism and half capitalism. However, I have learned from real communists that socialism is state capitalism and that while socialism was thought to be a middle stage before communism…it actually only created new oppressors and exploiters, like in Russia and China.

Overall, we were taught that communism is a strict government system; capitalism is a "hands-off" government system; and socialism is somewhere in the middle. However, I think capitalism is more like a dictatorship, monarchy, or slavery system camouflaged in a democracy. The rich act like a queen or king telling the president and everyone below them to tell the working class to "work" harder or produce more materials for the bosses, so the bosses could make a profit off our labor. Then the bosses say to vote and petition to change things, which creates the illusion of "freedom."

Teachers are taught lies, then teach us lies. It's hard to know what is true. The government, school, media, are set up to keep us from truth. They don't want us to figure out how messed up this system is. That is why we have Red Flag, to show us why we need communism and to free ourselves from capitalism. Read Red Flag and help organize for communism.

FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!

International Communist Workers Party

COMMUNIST AND CAPITALI$T CULTURE

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What It's like to Be a Red Teacher