Posted on 02/07/2011 7:00:55 AM PST by Kaslin
Former American Federation of Teachers President Albert Shanker made teachers’ unions what they are today. He was hard-nosed defender of teachers’ rights, but he also came clean about public school performance.
In the making of “Kids Aren’t Cars,” I unearthed a 25-year old PBS interview with Shanker. His indictment of the public education system was stunning.
“You could do things that are absolutely wrong, you can have huge dropout rates, you can have kids who are leaving without knowing how to read, write, count or anything else and what do you do next year? Do the same as you did this year and the following year and the following year…”
And when Shanker – again, 25 years ago – rattled off achievement statistics, the host challenged him:
Shanker: When it comes to the highest levels of reading, writing, mathematics or science – that just means being able to read editorials in the New York Times…or write an essay of a few pages…or do a mathematical equation, not calculus…the number of kids who are about to graduate who are able to function at that level, depending on whether you’re talking about reading, writing, math science – 3 percent, 4 percent...Host: Oh, come on!
Shanker: No! 5 percent. That’s it.
Does anyone honestly believe our education system – which has had billions of dollars more each year dumped into – is better now than it was in 1986?
Anyone??
Shanker was straight with the public – even if he didn’t see teacher quality and accountability as part of the solution.
If only current AFT President Randi Weingarten and National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel would be as candid. But I’m not holding my breath. The AFT and the NEA have presided over the decline of public education in America, and they know it. But if the union leaders admit to that, well, it would undermine their call for ever greater levels of “investment.”
But in the wake of “Waiting for Superman,” Weingarten and Van Roekel are acquiescing to the public outcry for accountability, and taking rhetorical baby steps toward reform, such as maybe one day making student achievement a tiny sliver of a teacher’s overall performance evaluation. Maybe.
The teacher unions are walking contradictions. They portray themselves as experts in education policy, but somehow never manage to deliver the goods. They claim to elevate the teaching profession, yet bend over backward to defend the worst among them, including a Michigan teacher deemed to be a danger to herself and others.
The sad truth is that the AFT and the NEA have an agenda that revolves around accumulating as much money and power as possible for themselves and their political surrogates. The teacher unions are a collection of far-left progressives who use the honored title of “teacher” to conceal their radical political agenda. How else to explain why the Rhode Island chapter of the NEA would participate in a rally for same-sex marriage? What does that possibly have to do with education?
Back to Shanker. Even though he ardently defended teachers, he was genuinely concerned about the quality of education being given to America’s school children. Can the same be said of Randi Weingarten and Dennis Van Roekel?
Consider this quote from social writer and philosopher Eric Hoffer and decide for yourself: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
Sorry, not buying the Shanker rehab article... wasn’t he the guy that said words to the effect of “when it is the children who start paying dues to the union, I will start representing their interests” ?
Teachers ... Union ... Honesty
These three words cannot appear together without a glaring contradiction in terms, or at the very least, a cognitive dissonance.
Shanker was a dedicated socialist, and his concerns about education were that children should get a good quality socialist education. The problem with that was how much of “good quality” *means* “socialist”, instead of objective quality.
That is, in his mind, socialism was equated with quality. Doctrinaire, at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he was early on a member of the Young People’s Socialist League and chair of the Socialist Study Club. This was in the late 1940s, when there was no mistaking what being called a “socialist” meant.
He also wrote a column for the NYT justifying involvement of his union in political subjects not related to schools, education or teachers. Invariably supportive of the radical wing of the Democrat party.
He also illegally lobbied the head of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, to not uphold Ronald Reagan’s decertification of the PATCO (air traffic controllers) union, after they decided to try and muscle Reagan to show him who was boss, and lost.
Two of his quotes:
“When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
“There is no more reason to pay for private education than there is to pay for a private swimming pool for those who do not use public facilities.”
Teachers unions, government employee unions, and regular labor unions are simply money laundering schemes for the Left. The media provide them free political campaign advertising, by the way they report and editorialize, and the unions provide them funds and “volunteer” campaign workers.
In return we get the destruction of our freedom. The Left is ingenious in getting us to finance our destruction. Yet, it is easy for an amoral movement to overcome an open, moral and free society. We are good and they lie about their intentions to get us onboard. Then when their true intentions become obvious they call it unintended consequences.
A small minority, and the Left is a small minority, can wield great power by seizing the means of communication and a few other key aspects of society. They gain control of BGO such as trusts and foundations which were set up to further far different aims than they put them to. They form tax free organizations so that they don’t even pay the minimum into our society while they insist we pay the maximum.
They are evil and Satan has much the easier path with us weak sinners.
You can't get more honest than that statement.
I have met Shanker. You are mistaken about him. Like so many Jewish teachers of his time he had an almost rabbinical sense of mission and appreciation of the intellectual life. Which is one reason reason why he clashed with black parents, who cared only that their teachers have black faces.
Shanker was the product of a different era. His socialism stemmed less from Marx than from John Dewey. Dewey believed that head and hand could not operate separately, that doing was the equal of thinking. That was different from the present view which reduces everything to feeling. Neither man could see when you let each man choose what is good, many , many will as often choose what was keep him from attaining that good. Pragmatism leads to moral anarchy.
Socialism is socialism, doesn’t matter whether you view it through the prism of Marx, Dewey, or someone else.
I disagree. The utopian socialism of the early 19th century was very much concerned with the establishment of small, perfect communities. It was inspired somewhat by the romanticism of the period. What it shares with Marx is an antipathy with the rising middle class and their indifference to the plight of the workers.
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