So, to start, a lot of HS students with aspirations of going to a university of some sort have to spend a decent amount of their last year or 2 trying to court different colleges for scholarships (most of which are colleges you’ve never heard of offering like $400 off or something) and free ride scholarships are (and this is admittedly anecdotal) unheard of in my area (suburb near major city). Should more socialist minded youth without the means to go to college find jobs? I don’t say this out of an anti-education perspective or some sort of belief that colleges are too liberal of institutions or anything, if it was free for families to send their children to school, I’d be all for it. What do yall think? And feel free to give me book suggestions or quotes from Leftists if you have any that may apply to this, specifically on the topic of the US where college costs more annually on average than any other nation.
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated” - Che Guevara
Depending on what you want to do, some alternative options might be available to you. For example, if you have the drive, aptitude and desire to learn medicine and you are a citizen of the United States then you are likely eligible to enrol for a subsidised medical education in Cuba. These Cuban medical degrees are internationally recognised, including in the United States itself.
Another alternative is to game the U.S. military like Christopher Helali did. The guy might be a bastard, but he was able to attain a military officer’s education and free access to college as well as full military benefits while simultaneously dodging participation in the war in Iraq and siphoning resources from the U.S. war machine. There are clearly tangible benefits to doing this, not least of all being free access to US higher education. Even in the event of people becoming career military men, its still a net positive for the movement in America to have class conscious junior officers embedded in the U.S. armed forces (any truly class conscious officer would likely never attain a senior rank without compromising their politics). Such a development is an essential condition for the success of socialism during a revolutionary situation, historically speaking. The Chinese communists famously sent cadre to infiltrate the armed forces of the various competing warlords and the Nationalists during their revolutionary period and carry out party work amongst them, for example - Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhungxun carried out such work.
I have no idea tbh. I went only to trade school, and I’m doing okay. I enjoy my blue collar job working with my hands sort of. Pursuing higher education distances oneself from the masses of lower paid working class people, so ymmv.
The vast majority of people who are in higher education and students are working class. The idea that they aren’t isn’t a Marxist view of classes.
Yes. But there is a clear difference in the imperial core from one who makes the median wage or less and an aristocrat who can insulate themselves from the class struggle.
That is true, but you need to remember that a lot of people who have a college degree don’t actually have labor aristocracy level wages.
