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proud2BlibKansan

(96,793 posts)
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 11:09 PM Jan 2012

Teacher Unionism Reborn

In the past five years, we have witnessed a demonization of teachers unions that is close to achieving its goal: destruction of the most stable and potentially powerful defender of mass public education. Teacher unionism’s continued existence is imperiled — if what we define as "existence" is organizations having the legal capacity to bargain over any meaningful economic benefits and defend teachers’ rights to exercise professional judgment about what to teach and how to do it.

As I explain elsewhere,[1] financial and political elites began this project forty years ago when they imposed school reform on Latin America, Africa, and Asia as a quid pro quo for economic aid. Though specifics of this global social engineering differ from one country to another, reforms have the same footprint: School funding is cut and school systems are broken up to promote privatization under the banner of "choice"; teachers and curriculum are controlled by tying pay to standardized test scores and eliminating tenure; standardized testing measures what is taught to most students, reducing content to basic math, reading, and writing. Teachers unions have been singled out for attack because throughout the world they are the most significant barriers to this project’s implementation.

Rhetoric about equalizing school outcomes for groups long denied access to adequate, let alone quality education, masks the real aim of the last twenty years of reform, creating a docile workforce that receives no more than the 8th grade education needed to compete with workers elsewhere for jobs that can be moved easily from one city, state, or country. World Bank materials lay out the assumptions seldom articulated in this country: Money educating workers beyond the level most will need wastes scarce public funding; and minimally educated workers require minimally educated teachers, whose performance can be monitored through use of standardized testing. The newest World Bank report, "Making Schools Work" takes the reasoning (and policy) even further, insisting that "contract teachers" who work for one-quarter of what civil service employees receive, have no benefits, no job protection, and no rights produce good enough outcomes.[2]

The attack has been fueled by right-wing foundations and advanced by Democrats and Republicans alike. The corporate media, including traditionally liberal elements, like Hollywood, The New Yorker and The New York Times, have blanketed TV, radio, and the press with bogus premises about education’s relationship to the economy and the role of teachers unions in blocking much-needed change. The Obama Administration substitutes educational reforms straight out of the playbook of right-wing foundations as the panacea to unemployment and poverty. When Secretary of Education Arne Duncan avers that education is the "one true path out of poverty" he displays the administration’s intention to divert attention away from unemployment, health care, child hunger, and homelessness. School improvement supplants all the economic and social reforms that have, historically, been used to ameliorate poverty. Defenders of public education frequently answer these inflated claims for education with protestations that schools can do nothing to alter the fate of poor children. Unfortunately, their response serves to heighten public perceptions that school people — teachers — refuse to take responsibility for what occurs under their watch. The more accurate and politically effective response is that schools can do more and better if we have well-prepared and well-supported teachers at work in well-resourced schools, and yet, even with these conditions, schools are hostage to powerful forces that depress achievement — factors that are beyond their control. This more nuanced defense of public education and teachers undercuts one of the most difficult problems we face in defending public education, neoliberalism’s exploitation of historic inequalities in education. This is especially true in the United States, where the rhetoric of the civil rights movement has been totally hijacked in defense of charter schools and improving "teacher quality" by eliminating seniority and tenure. Even The Nation has bought the reification of individual teacher performance as the sine qua non of school improvement.[3]

more . . . http://newpol.org/node/579

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Teacher Unionism Reborn (Original Post) proud2BlibKansan Jan 2012 OP
My wife is a teacher in Tacoma, Washington gopiscrap Jan 2012 #1
That's great proud2BlibKansan Jan 2012 #2
In Queensland Australia the teachers' union claims about 96% coverage Tanelorn Jan 2012 #3
Kick cause this is a very important read proud2BlibKansan Jan 2012 #4

gopiscrap

(23,674 posts)
1. My wife is a teacher in Tacoma, Washington
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 11:15 PM
Jan 2012

and the Tacoma Education Association went on strike for the first time in 33 years...you should have heard the villianization of the teachers union. They weren't even striking about money...it was about work conditions. They did win in the end, but it was a brutal battle..the joy of it was that huge amounts of the community stood behind them and pressured the District for fairness and then the Governor intervened...8 school days later the strike was over. The by product was that it made the union a LOT stronger and the teachers tighter as a group.

Tanelorn

(359 posts)
3. In Queensland Australia the teachers' union claims about 96% coverage
Fri Jan 27, 2012, 11:49 PM
Jan 2012

of over 40000 teachers. The employer talks to us, not very well sometimes but they know the consequences of not listening.

We are not a radical union, no wildcat strikes. Strikes happen approximately once every 4 years, usually over pay.

Often a new education department initiative will have the employer's and union signatures on a joint communique. It means we work better with more conviction because it has the union sanction.

Now of course this level of membership is not reflected in the general union movement throughout Australia, more is the pity. This due to greater casualisation of the workforce and many other factors.

The success of the teachers' union is due to grassroots support and recruitment of the staff representatives and paid officers who act as regional organisers. Also we have the union shopper which gives members discounts for cars ,whitegoods, electronics etc. If worked well you could earn back your union dues in discounts.

Be that as it may .....Unionism is strength. Solidarity forever.

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