It is bound to come sometime. Maybe it is coming now. Bullies can keep their boots on people's necks only so long before they trigger a reaction. Maybe...
It happened first among the kids at Margery Stoneman Douglas High School who refused the "thoughts and prayers" guff and said, in effect: If guns are more important to your than our childhoods, we will recover childhood, if not for us (you screwed that up) for our younger sibs.
Then a strange thing happened in West Virginia. Teachers won strike. This is a state in which the leading Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination is a big giver to the Republican Party who was convicted of violating mine safety laws. The violations led to the Big Branch disaster in which 29 miners died for Mr. Blankenship's bank account. The felon is out of prison after doing his year and is seeking rehabilitation in a party that no longer asks big givers about felonies.
Nevertheless, the teachers struck. And won.
Now Kentucky and Oklahoma teachers are following suit. Their issues are not only their poverty- level wages that their bullies say is all their can afford if they are to properly coddle business interests. They are also talking about what is being done to their students. In Oklahoma, some districts can afford school only four days a week.
We have watched this build since 1980. People seemed to accept it. Suddenly, the young and their teachers are saying "enough." About time. If only it lasts.
I'll take any signs of springtime I can get, figurative or otherwise!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we're seeing a rebirth of labor rights.
I think there is a possibility we'll see a new lease on life for organized labor.
DeleteMy father, who was an executive during a number of strikes and like many Catholics of his generation had been taught the Catholic social tradition of labor rights, was of the opinion (this would have been the 1970s or so) that necessity was the mother of organized labor. At that time, business leaders were preaching enlightened treatment of employees; the idea was, if executives didn't give their workers a reason to organize and strike, they wouldn't organize and wouldn't strike.
My reading of the signs of the times is that, in West Virginia and possibly elsewhere, the exploitation of workers has reached the point that necessity is winning the day.
The world is different than it was in the 1950s. The jobs are a lot different. And there is not nearly the same sense of solidarity among Americans. And the mediating institutions that might have supported workers getting organized - and we can put traditional labor unions at the top of that list of mediating institutions - are a lot weaker than they were then. So I guess my take is, there is the possibility of workers organizing, but if this is a springtime for labor, it's going to be a long, slow one and possibly a cold one.
Teaching is a highly devalued profession. The fact that one state got some modest concessions is real nice, and I support them. But this doesn't make a groundswell.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, legislators, bureaucrats, and vocal groups of watchdog parent have little respect for the profession. Teachers are underpaid and have little control over what happens in the classroom--from behavior policies to curriculum, from textbook selection to class size. They are certainly not consulted about school building design, capital improvements, maintenance, or library acquisitions.
General support for public education, especially as a mechanism to teach children to be informed citizens in a highly diverse society, is very low. The burgeoning of charter, private, online, and home schools certainly is testimony to that.
I think that may be what's changing. The teachers in West Virginia got a lot of public support when the public saw the teachers fighting for the kids. I expect (hope) for the same in Kentucky, Oklahoma and elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteTeachers and kids may (I am in full hopeful mood) have more support than they knew they do. There is a guy alone one of our major roads -- one that leads to and past many gun shops and gun ranges -- who posts quips on the sign outside his bar and grill. After taking part in one of the Parkland marches (he has a high schooler) he is dedicating the sign to the memory of one of the Parkland victims, changing the name every two weeks until he has gone through all of them, with the legend, ""Honor her (his) life -- ban assault weapons." This will be controversial. But it shows a conscience aroused by the children. That's what I hope will catch on.
Technocrats are pushing the notion that human teachers offer too much inconsistency in instruction. Teachers forget things, go off on tangents, show favoritism, offer opinions.
ReplyDeleteDigital training can provide exact duplication of instruction and ensure learner outcomes ... or weed out those who have not learned correctly.
As more colleges embrace digital learning, teaching becomes mostly a facilitator/gatekeeper role. Seeing it happen right now, and that's why I'm retiring.
Once we've diluted or eradicated the human element in teaching, we'll be in trouble. But we won't know it because at that point, "education" will simply be job prep for providing products and services with minimal variation, and "the humanities" will be degraded to entertainment.
I guess I'm not in a hopeful mood.
More commodification. I'm arguing about that with Deacon Jim on the healthcare blog. Can thought be turned into a commodity that can be collected, packaged and sold under controlled conditions? Admittedly, some powerful people are trying. I can't imagine their efforts coming to a good end. (Not denying the upheaval and misery they cause by trying to get there.)
DeleteThere was some encouragement awhile back for us to video our lectures. Most people saw the handwriting on the wall and declined.
DeleteThe idea of having what amounts to TV school--pay the teacher for one performance that can be played ad infinitum--is enough to make any administrator slaver.
Digi-teachers! They don't get sick, they don't need benefits, they don't need an office, they don't have a union rep.
No down side where the suits are concerned.
Yeah. Well I turned off Superstar Sunday night; I never walked out of a live performance of it.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete(EDITED) You turned it off because you HAD seen it live and it didn't live up to your expectations or hopes.
DeleteWhen instruction is digitized and live "teachers" are merely there to take attendance, give assignment reminders, proctor tests, run them through a digital scorer, no one will remember that a real teacher could make eye contact, talk right to YOU, make you angry, inspire you, and generally remind you that you are human. The instruction will be factual, bland, smooth, and it won't offend anybody. Everybody will go around feeling calm and happy.
When it comes to a fight between money and humanity, money wins.
Every time.
Not if Dave Hogg and those Oklahoma teachers get their way. So let's support them. I have seen the promised land. (It was so close. Then Reagan opened it to development.)
DeleteI support them, of course, but not sure what I can do for them besides stay informed, vote, write letters.
DeleteThose Florida (and other)high school students have shown the "adults" how to organize effectively, efficiently and for the long-term. Keep you eyes on David Hogg; he is a fledgling national politician if there ever was one. And, to a lesser degree, Cameron Kasky.
ReplyDeleteYeah, watching. A great kid, but with a sometiimes cringe-making grasp of standard usage:
DeleteCan we please not debate this as Democrats and Republicans but discuss this as Americans? In the comments if you see someone you dissagree with do not attack each other talk to one another, this applies to me too. WE MUST WORK TOGETHER TO SAVE OUR FUTURE.