Facebook founder’s gift to Newark schools: The return of the aristocratic principle

[Hannah Bell]

The donation of $100 million by Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg to the Newark school system is a small episode that reveals something fundamental about American society. The move, lauded uncritically by the American media, embodies and further enshrines the principle that has come to prevail in the US in recent years: if the population is to have access to education, culture and technology, indispensable for life in a modern society, it will be at the whim of the very rich. Any conception of social rights residing inalienably in the people is rejected by the ruling elite and its political and media apologists.

This is, in effect, the return of the aristocratic principle. Under the old regime, the population was essentially at the mercy of the great ones in society, who bestowed—or did not bestow—favors and gifts as they saw fit.

The democratic revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries were influenced by the notion of the social contract—that a society arises out of the desire of people to live together for their mutual benefit. The government and its officials, according to the ideologists of the bourgeois revolution, were delegated to act as the representatives of society as a whole, with the people retaining the ultimate sovereignty.

All of that is now being reversed. The availability of decent public schools, public libraries, orchestras and other cultural and educational institutions is more and more reduced to the level of a privilege, which the financial elite can provide or not, as it chooses. The wealthy few buy and sell, set up or close down, these socially vital services according to their financial health and individual mindset.

The population is encouraged by the media and the political system to look on these billionaire benefactors as heroes, as their superiors in every fashion, to whom deference should and must be shown....Charity is degrading to those who receive it and those who bestow it. It inevitably demands that the oppressed feel gratitude toward their oppressors, and generally encourages slavishness...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/newa-s28.shtml

[ClarkUSA]

1. I wish more people would give so generously. Endowments really help any institution function better.

Kudos to those who give to those who need it. I'm sure Newark parents are happy about it and the kids are going to benefit, no doubt.

[ibegurpard]

2. I wish we could fund all of our school districts equitably

without having to rely upon strings-attached money from ignorant 26 year old billionaires.
But you go ahead and cheer for that system if you like.

[Hannah Bell]

4. ..

[DireStrike]

12. Seriously.

[Luminous Animal]

5. And what happens to kids when the well dries up? A society cannot run democratic public

institutions on the whims of benefactors.

[Javaman]

15. Before you start passing out the Kudos, you might want to read these first...

Newark residents torn by Christie plan to give Booker oversight of city schools on Oprah
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/gov_christie_to_give_mayor_boo.html

Putting Newark Mayor Booker in charge of city schools will incite legal action, experts say
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/putting_newark_mayor_booker_in.html

Then there is this...

$100 Million Facebook Donation Same Day as Movie Release, Coincidence?
http://www.blackweb20.com/2010/09/24/100-million-facebook-donation-same-day-as-movie-release-coincidence/

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggests closing failing Newark schools in TechCrunch interview
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/facebook_ceo_mark_zuckerberg_s.html

[HughMoran]

16. Hear! Hear!

I'm trying imagine finding the dark side in this - I can't do it.

[Hannah Bell]

25. maybe cause you're in the dark & can't see?

[HughMoran]

31. argle blargle ?

I'm underwater too! :rofl:

[leftstreet]

3. Please, Sir, I want some more!

K&R

[Luminous Animal]

6. John Ralston Saul---

"Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the élite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens."

[Hannah Bell]

7. +100.

[apocalypsehow]

8. Laughable stuff, per usual: it is simply absurd to hate on a $100 million donation to

a poor school district.

But somehow the purists manage to find a way to do it - even though I highly doubt many parents of Newark school students appreciate such moronic "purity" as opposed to the bucks that'll help their kids....( :eyes: )

[Hannah Bell]

9. yeah, damn those "purists" who have a problem with plutocracy & fascists.

[Kahuna]

11. Do you actually KNOW anything about the problems the Newark

School system has been having for decades now? I'm from Newark, so I actually do KNOW a little something about it. I don't see how this gift can possibly make things any worse.

[suzie]

13. Did I mis-hear this on the news, or wasn't New Jersey the state where the Republicans

managed to lose the $400 million federal grant because they didn't put in the correct statistics?

Seems like a good time for some schools in the state to be on the receiving end of funds.

Colleges get large multimillion $$$ donations from the Facebook types of entrepreneurs all the time, why is it wrong for a school district?

[lolly]

18. Because colleges are then beholden to benefactors

In the last generation or so, formerly public colleges have relied more and more on private funding.

So, if you're a major university president, and the Koch brothers are paying for your new science building, are you going to let your profs research the damaging effects of global warming?

On the high school level--I don't think people are bemoaning the money. The problem is that public schools are fast reaching the state where they can't function without infusions of cash from the super-wealthy.

I think some schools in have already faced situations where religiously-oriented benefactors have demanded that schools alter their curriculum to be more religion friendly.

See where this is going?

[suzie]

30. Actually no. Schools have always had benefactors. And public colleges have always

had legislatures that didn't appreciate this or that.

When certain posters start the whining about the current state of education and the terrible things that school districts are now doing and the evils of charter schools, the first name that pops up is New Orleans.

Where some 30 of the schools were in the past named McDonogh # 15, McDonogh # 39, due to a long ago benefactor. I remember seeing a huge portrait of John McDonogh being rowed across the Mississippi River by a slave.

Even post-Katrina, there are McDonogh schools named for this slaveholder who gave a large sum of money to the school district more than a century ago.

So, I don't really see this 'in the last generation" change.

[Hannah Bell]

32. actually yes. private funding statistically plays a larger role in the budgets of public colleges

than it ever has in the post-war era. & with that comes more strings.

[suzie]

33. Because the World Socialists say so?

Sorry, you may choose to repeat the opinions of ideologues in website editorials with no statistics other than what they've pulled out of the air.

But that don't make it so.

[Hannah Bell]

34. uh, no, because it happens to be true.

At OSU, the University of Oregon and their counterparts across the nation, donors have taken the place of taxpayers in funding new buildings, underwriting scholarships and endowing professorships. Ray described the influx of private money in positive terms, and appropriately so — without it, Oregon’s biggest universities would be sliding backward. But there are implications that Oregonians, and Americans, must face.

Ray asked, “Is there a point at which we cease to be a public university?” He noted that “being privately funded and having a public mission can create conflicts in priorities.” And he warned, “I often worry about how we will sustain that public mission in the face of declining public financial support; if we fail, there is no Plan B for students who depend on us and the state we serve.”

State appropriations, Ray wrote, make up 13 percent of OSU’s operating funds. At the University of Oregon it’s down to 9 percent. The retreat of public funding is even more notable in the area of capital construction. Private giving to finance the construction of Oregon University System buildings grew to $113 million in 2007 from $20 million in 1993. By 2007, the amount of state bonds for capital construction on Oregon university campuses totaled only $3.5 million.

http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/sevendays/25289086-35/public-private-oregon-universities-support.csp


but please, continue to talk about how great things were in the 19th century.

[suzie]

36. Sorry, I'm just not big on the "there's only one linear causation because that fits within my

ideological blinders" rhetoric, whether from Right or Left.

Makes discussion always sort of limited, and fairly uninteresting.

[Hannah Bell]

38. lol. In other words, don't confuse me with actual facts.

Too bad it wasn't from the world socialist website, huh? Then you could have done the smear routine again instead of ignoring it.

[suzie]

41. Actually, I listed some other causations during the post-war period for the increase in

private funding. But as I stated, that discussion would go nowhere, so I deleted it.

But the implication that there are strings attached to funding from the private sector, but none from monies handed out by state legislatures to public colleges is interesting.

Can one say Marco Rubio?

[Hannah Bell]

42. You really need to brush up on your civics. Public $ "strings" = those attached by a democratically

accountable government.

Private $ "strings" = those attached by a private individual, not accountable to democratic processes.

I linked you to evidence that the proportion of public money funding colleges has declined, a point you contested.

The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the point tells me all I need to know.

Massive fail.

[apocalypsehow]

44. And right on cue, the irrelevant reply coupled with the pedestrian personal attack.

You really are getting good at that model of "debating," yah know it? :eyes:

[Hannah Bell]

23. that was governor's christie's office -- you know, the deformer.

and he argued that he should get the money anyway, because submitting the data requested was a mere detail.

[Radical Activist]

29. Giving $100 million to schools doesn't make the founder of facebook a fascist.

[C_U_L8R]

10. The greater good

republicans have no idea what it means....

probably think it's a deepfried hot fudge sundae with bacon

[Overseas]

14. K&R. Very well said. //nt

[Nye Bevan]

17. OK. So the Newark school system should refuse the $100 million donation.

Right?

[dionysus]

20. yup. they should use magic comrade dust to fund the school instead.

[lolly]

21. No

They should fund the schools adequately so they don't need to rely on billionaires to fund them.

It is NOT a good thing when private funding becomes a major source of money for pubic schools.

That money doesn't come with no strings attached.

[dionysus]

22. it's two seperate issues. it doesn't make someones donation a bad thing.

[name not needed]

27. It's kind of hard to do that when the governor eliminates your state funding

and his administration fucks up and loses 400 million dollars in federal aid.

[DevonRex]

28. Hey, don't harsh their buzz, man. Giving is bad now. Got it?

:rofl:

[name not needed]

37. Apparently the CIty of Newark should stop all revitalization efforts until

Hannah Bell is convinced that Mark Zuckerberg and Cory Booker are ideologically pure enough for her to not hate them.

[dionysus]

19. or, the comrades might appreciate that somone donated a large sum of money. nah...

:rofl:

[Hannah Bell]

24. why don't we just privatize public education, then the billionaires could run their own for-profit

schools and run them however they wanted.

oh wait, that's what's happening.

[DevonRex]

26. Giving to the public schools is now bad? Damn. I wish I'd known that BEFORE

I donated all those supplies. I guess I'm gonna go to hell now. :scared:

[Starry Messenger]

35. I fully expect some of our rich assholes to start sporting big puffy French wigs.

England's Paul Marshall is already sporting a suspiciously high 'do.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Marshall_%28investor%29

[Hannah Bell]

39. lol. I think most of the folks in *this* thread would look right at home in powdered wigs.

[DirkGently]

40. "Noblesse oblige" always was a crock of crappola.

Basically translates to: "Let us keep our unearned privilege and we'll let a little 'trickle down' to you.

Nice piece.

[OregonBlue]

43. I bet Zuckerberg will be surprised to find out he did such a horrible thing. Shame on him.