Shocking Truth of Puerto Rico’s Schools: The Hurricane Disaster Has Caused Public Schools to be Taken Advantage of by The Government. Why? Neoliberalism
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017 with soaring winds up to 155 miles per hour. It was the worst hurricane to ever hit the island and caused 64 deaths and over $95 billion in cost of damages to the already poor economy. To this day, Puerto Rico and its citizens still suffer to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane along with an overwhelming lack of power, supplies, and services.
Natural disasters are fairly common and author Naomi Klein explains in her book, The Shock Doctrine, the unfortunate and selfish actions taken by governments and organizations that affect the people in need during a disaster. She explains in detail the concept of neoliberalism, which is a term that describes the idea of favoring free-market capitalism over the lives of people in need. During the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Klein explains that during her time helping refugees in the shelter the citizens of New Orleans knew the people in charge would take advantage of the storm as an opportunity to rebuild and “cleanse” New Orleans. The loss of public schools meant a chance for charter organizations to build their own schools and take in profit from the struggling families. Currently, US Secretary of Education Betsy Devos has pushed for the widespread adoption of charter schools yet they have been shown to be detrimental. In fact, current charter schools have affected children’s knowledge as current test scores show a continuing decrease in performances. Klein uses the example of the rapid spread of charter schools to talk about the “shock doctrine”, which is explained as “the use of public disorientation following massive collective shockswars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters — to push through highly unpopular economic shock therapy”. In other words, the chief executives are hoping that a disaster will distract you as they suck up all of your money behind your back. The shock doctrine didn’t only affect New Orleans, but also Puerto Rico.
PROMESA, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, is being used to enforce the neoliberalism agenda currently being facilitated in Puerto Rico. PROMESA is the reason schools are being privatized from K-12 all the way to universities. Due to the supposedly lowering population, the government has released statistics of large schools “not being utilized correctly” and propose that students be moved to “new schools”. This information to the parents doesn’t seem like harm but it is. The government wants to destroy the Puerto Rican public education system so they don’t have to fund it anymore. Hurricane Maria did most of the work to destroy public schools. Now that there’s plots of land, the new plan is just to build charter and private schools. They will make sure to say that this is progress and it will benefit the Puerto Rican economy when in fact it is only hurting it by increasing the debt. The hurricane disaster gave the government a chance to quickly issue out the new privatized schools. The shock doctrine is in full affect here.
The citizens of Puerto Rico do not realize the truth of why the government is privatizing schools. It is important that the people in need are aware of these changes to make sure they aren’t being used to favor free market capitalism. The idea that sacrifices have to be made in order to obtain a good economy is completely unethical and selfish. It is also important that people in the US should help the struggling citizens of Puerto Rico since our current neoliberal President doesn’t want to.
