Following is a talk
given in a panel titled “Building a new workers’ movement: Organized labor and
the challenges ahead” at the Nov. 13-14, 2010, National Conference on Socialism
sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
I am a proud public school teacher, one among 6.2 million
across the United States. Together, we educate 80 million students nationwide!
Most of the people in this room attended public school and
many went on successfully to college or the workplace.
Public education is a fundamental human right, and it is one
of the institutions in society that we understand the social value of paying
into. We are taught to believe that a society of literate, informed, critical
thinking individuals benefit us all because we will all gain from the advances
in music, philosophy, medicine or mathematics that an educated mass can make.
Public education is also an investment in the working class, which produces for
the needs of society.
The contradiction lies in the fact that education in this
country is not equitable. The more money you have, the better the education you
will get.
As a teacher I see every day how underfunded our public
classrooms are. I cannot assign homework because there are not enough textbooks
for my students to share. There are even schools where classes take place in
the hallways because of overcrowding, or science labs riddled with ancient equipment
and dysfunctional computer carts that have to be wheeled around the school
building.
I say all this because there is a great load on the
shoulders of this country’s public school teachers. No matter how giving, how
dedicated or how prepared our educators may be, there is no teacher great
enough to mend all the symptoms with which our children walk into our
classrooms from a broken society.
In a country as wealthy as this one, no classroom should
lack. And when the ink dries on the report card of a failing child, it was not
his or her teacher who failed them, but this capitalist system.
We may already understand this. Unfortunately, many people
believe the propaganda of the corporate media and many politicians who are
pointing the fingers at the teachers and our unions.
The so-called reform movement is being fashioned by the
mouthpieces of the capitalist ruling class in the interest of the capitalist
ruling class. They have very little
interest in educating workers who they want to just perform menial jobs with
little to no education required. And they have much to gain from the
privatization of schools.
The teacher’s union is being portrayed as the most
significant hurdle to reform and progress. Never have the attacks on public
education been so prevalent than today with an economic crisis serving as the
justification for cutbacks on public sector workers and social programs.
Hundreds of public schools are closing down throughout the country, making room
for more charter schools and dislocating thousands of workers (teachers,
secretaries, paraprofessionals, counselors, janitors, etc.).
The intentions to launch a major attack on the teacher’s
union were made most clear in David Guggenheim’s recent film “Waiting for
Superman,” which was strategically released in late September with the largest
publicity campaign for a documentary ever. The film definitely represents the
views of the capitalist movement to privatize education. The main idea of the
film is that U.S. public education is a failed enterprise.
The film goes on to argue that test scores are low because there
are so many “bad” teachers whose jobs are protected by powerful unions.
Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish
practically anything if they were saved from “bad teachers.” They would get
higher test scores if schools could fire more “bad teachers” and pay more money
to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor
Black and Latino children, according to the film, is to escape from public
schools, and run to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government
but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a
profit.
Some of the country’s largest foundations are promoting
these educational reforms based on principles drawn from the corporate sector,
which are not appropriate for education. These same foundations and private-sector
entities are not accountable to anyone and are not voted in by anyone–they
simply elect themselves.
An example of this has been the trend for mayoral control of
the schools, which is currently in place in Boston, Chicago, New York City and
several other cities throughout the country.
Simply put, mayoral control of schools displaces parents,
students and teachers as empowered decision makers and replaces them with
capitalist mangers who have no experience in education. The mayor of New York
City, for example, recently hired Cathleen Black, the chairwoman of Hearst
Magazine, as the new chancellor of the New York City school system despite the
fact that neither she nor her children have ever attended public school and she
has no experience whatsoever in education. Now, she is the head of the largest
public education system in the country with over 1 million students and 80,000
teachers. She will set out to emphasize standardized testing, firing more
teachers, closing down more public schools to open charter schools, as well as
paying more money to principals and managers instead of evenly distributing pay
among teachers and workers within the school.
Both Democrat and Republican administrations have supported
market reforms for the public sector, including deregulation and privatization,
believing that it will cut down bureaucracy and “inject entrepreneurship”.
By privatizing education through charters and vouchers,
politicians envision schools having the power to (1) get rid of “incompetent”
teachers and set their own uneven pay scales, (2) compete for students
(consumers), and (3) be judged solely by test scores and graduation rates.
The problem with the “market-based” solution to education is
that instead of dealing with the problems of how to teach reading and writing, the
government is simply focusing on redesigning the management and structure of
the school system.
There is more concentration on incentives and sanctions than
on fundamentally improving teaching practices and pedagogy.
In blaming the teacher’s union, the capitalists have tried
to wedge division between parents, students and teachers. But teachers and the
working families of the students we educate have the same interests. We want
more resources to improve our classrooms, we want smaller class sizes and
better training on tools and techniques to improve teaching styles. And we want
that training to be free!
We face many challenges. We face a lack of consciousness
among teachers, who do not always see themselves as workers. We face the
overwhelming daily struggle of working-class families to survive.
Also, the union that defends us teachers and public
education is tied down by a fatal flaw—its complete devotion to the Democratic Party.
Now, we must be absolutely clear because the union must be defended. It is a
target of fierce attack. And the union is a powerful weapon in the struggle for
public education. Where the union is strong, teachers are better and happier
workers, and the education provided is superior.
What is needed is an organized movement that is capable of
shaking the capitalist class to its core. Reforms are won when the capitalist
class is in danger. And that movement is entirely possible. Teachers, students
and families are angry. Workers are angry. But that movement needs to be a
movement that doesn’t just take up the banner of public education, but the
banner of health care, housing, jobs and the war. Public education is a working-class
issue connected to these other countless working-class issues.
And that is exactly what should be done. The reform of
public education should be led by the working-class students and families
served by public education and the workers who make schooling happen: teachers,
paraprofessionals and others.
