The European Communist Initiative (ECI), rallying many communist and workers’ parties from around the world, released a statement on education. Emphasizing the ideological function of education in the capitalist society as a preparatory tool to make the youth ready for the exploitative system, the statement explains the main differences in the educational systems and their outcomes in capitalist societies and socialist experiences.
The ECI also focuses on the obscurantist moves of the bourgeoisie and the capitalist governments on education, such as excluding and/or distorting the theory of evolution, reinforcing the inequality of women and men, and presenting the knowledge and "skills" as fragments, which inevitably "impede the development of critical thinking and scientific understanding."
Pointing at the ideological function of education, the ECI expresses that the children of the working class are transformed into “supporters of the EU and NATO through designated programs and funding for lessons, projects, trips that propagandise the "values" of capital and its organisations.”
The ECI states that the capitalist propaganda is also utilized for anti-communism in order to dehumanise communism, distorting the history of socialist experiences and what these experiences have done in a number of domains, one of which is education. Referring to this year’s being 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution, the ECI reminds that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) wiped off illiteracy, secured free and scientific education in all levels, made considerable amounts of contributions to the development of educational theory and practice, and cleared away unemployment, while the "problems that are related to educational infrastructure, the provision of meals, student accommodation, etc. … remain unsolved under capitalism."
Via the statement, the ECI describes education as a natural-born right of children and the youth, and calls for a boost in the struggle against capitalism, which unceasingly robs the children of the working class of one of their most basic rights.
