ABSTRACT
The Che-Lumumba School is an alternative school for children from the ages of six to twelve. It has a political philosophy that involves active advocacy of Third World liberation struggles from a generally progressive or socialist viewpoint. It is a parent-teacher cooperatively-run school. The parents are students, teachers and community people connected to the Third World community in Amherst and centered around the University of Massachuse. A strong emphasis in the curriculum is on the history of workers’ struggles in this country as well as studies of Third World socialist counties, problems of imperialism and so on. Children regularly visit factories, support strikes and march on picket lines. Perhaps the most important problem that the school-community has faced in its nine-year history is its ongoing economic crisis. Foundations are simply not interested in funding a radical school with explicit socialist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and anti-sexist values.
