The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice

by Lois Weiner

In The Future of Our Schools, Lois Weiner explains why teachers who care passionately about teaching and social justice need to unite the energy for teaching to efforts to self-govern and transform teacher unions. Drawing on research and her experience as a public school teacher and union activist, she explains how to create the teachers unions public education desperately needs.Lois Weiner is a professor at New Jersey City University and has been a life-long teacher union activist who has served as an officer of three different union locals. She is the author of The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Stories for Resistanc e .

Genres: Education, Politics, Nonfiction, Social Justice

220 pages, ebook

First published October 16, 2012

Reviews

[Konrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I savor the brain space to think about education beyond the four walls of my classroom in the summer. A few thoughts after finishing this book: At their core, school buildings are a petri dish of all of society’s ills and inequalities, and teachers feel the weight of that daily.

For too long we’ve clung to this myth that education is responsible for restoring the country to sound health, but education neither creates economic and racial divisions, nor can it by itself erase them. By insisting that education is the key to ending poverty, politicians avoid taking on the fight for economic policies the country desperately needs.

Therefore, as a teacher I need to advocate for the flourishing of my students in all aspects of life. Education equality simply won’t come without racial, class, and sexual equality. But also, that advocating is much easier said than done. The task of advocating seems incredibly overwhelming as I juggle lesson plans, grading, and just trying to pack my lunch for tomorrow. Social change cannot come about individually, it’s just too big a task. However, teachers unions offer a vehicle for teachers to come together, to advocate for the well being of society, with power in numbers beyond the four walls of their classroom.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a union guy, and I'm not involved in K12, so I'm probably far from the authors target audience. I read it cover to cover twice, and I still find it incredibly confusing to say the least. As I related in an earlier comment, I generally lean quite far to the left, and after reading this, I feel like a right wing extremist.

That being said, my purpose in reading this text and other related ones, is all I see are echo chambers of the defenders of the status quo on the one hand, and the hard core reformers on the other. There has to be more than meets the eye as concerns educational policy.

Alas, I actually finished reading this book a while ago, and decided to let it percolate for a bit, as well as seek out other texts... some light bulbs are finally coming on. In a lot of ways, this book is like jumping into a grad school course on epidemiology when your last exposure to undergrad biology was decades ago. One needs more than a bit of background to take the concepts presented within and run with them.

That being said, a few highlights.

1. There are historical essays spread throughout the text. Such are incredibly enlightening, and the proverb about history working in cycles is all too true. The author makes a good case for not repeating the mistakes of the past which soundbite world should take to heart.

2. Teachers and labor union practices are like an emulsion of oil and water. Competing values will never grant a labor based teacher union the power that organized labor once had 60 years ago. When shaken up, progress can be made for short intervals, with the emphasis on short and reversion is entirely possible. The author proposes a differing form of union, a social activist one. In reading Wisconsin education legislation from the early 80's, it seems that the Wisconsin teachers union functioned in such a vein during that time slot.

3. Democratic schools play a big part of the answer to social justice concerns according to the author... assuming said social justice concerns are addressed externally to education. Ie, govt policies which increase the GINI index and expecting schools to pick up the carnage is not only unwise, its govt setting up two systems to work against one another.

4. Democratic schools won't work, if teachers are viewed as white knight professionals who can sweep in and solve the problems. Problem solving needs to be a community thing, not something outsourced to professionals. Ie a self-policing guild of teachers while positive for elite schools, would likely be counter to a community based democratic school.

4. The author seems to adhere to a belief that equality and excellence are one and the same, unlike the views of reformers, albeit nuance is key here. Both will talk equality, but their definitions are different enough to talk past one another. The author references a book entitled Choosing Equality by Bastian et al through out the text. It fills in a ton of blanks, and I believe the two texts should be read in parallel. Again, this may be obvious stuff for those in K12, but its anything but for me, an engineer with an interest in education policy.

I think the author hits a lot of stuff out of the ball park with this text, but it is not for the casual reader, or for those unwilling to fill in the blanks. If one is willing to put in the time, this can fill in a lot of the gaps between the soundbite world we live in. Now, if only the reformer side of the coin would have an author of this calibre and experience to present and more importantly back up their points of view.

[Dan Sharber · Rating 5 out of 5]

short but indispensable book on what is wrong with the education 'reform' on author and how rebuilding our teacher's unions is our only hope of winning the kind of rich and useful education that all of our students deserve. but also how that fight back must move beyond simple bread and butter union issues and take up the mantel of social movement unionism - as evidenced by the recent strike in chicago. great book!!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

An important read for teachers and teacher union activists.

[Mrtfalls]

The Future of Our Schools - Review
There are two reasons why I decided to read this book. The first reason is that I am going to be working as a teaching assistant in a primary school very soon and I feel both passionate about that work and I wanted to work in the sector so that I could get involved in union organising that has strong links to working class communities. The second reason I decided to read this is that I had heard some critiques she had made of Eric LeBlanc´s very good book “Red State Revolt” and her perspective (which seemed overall much more critical that of LeBlanc´s interested me a lot). Moreover, she has spent over 17 years in education and researching education unionism.
The book itself gives a broad outline of the assault on public education both in the US and internationally, the role that education unions have played and can play, and the need for education unions and education unionists to see themselves as “social justice” unions and unionists respectively.
In this review, I will give a basic summary of each of the chapters in “Part One” of the book and pick out two things that interested me from “Part Two”. I´ll also comment briefly on how the lessons in this book relate to my experience so far having been involved in the National Education Union in Bristol.
In chapter 1 Weiner outlines that the set of privatisations that have been seen in the US and elsewhere in the world are part of a wider global attempt to restructure public education to produce workers that are minimally educated and to open up a market where private enterprises can enter “education markets”. The result of demanding that you have most workers be minimally educated is that those teaching need only be minimally educated. The result of it is also that you do not attempt to teach students more than whether they can fulfil basic numeracy and literacy exercises that involve them following a basic manual (https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regio...). The push to allow private enterprises into public education (i.e. the privatisation of education) means that rather than having a schools and school districts run according to what local districts democratically mandate, this power is devolved to individual enterprises and how they run schools (http://documents.worldbank.org/curate...). These different private providers exemplify how well they are “performing” according to sets of metrics - in particular standardised testing - and how cheap they provide this service. This privatisation of education is often sold in the name of providing “clients” i.e. students and their parents with “choice” and providing alternatives to public schools that are in turmoil due to years of cuts (http://documents.worldbank.org/curate...).
In chapter 2, Weiner talks about the main reason why teachers do their job is they want to support and empower students. They want to educate them. However, the assaults as outlined in chapter 1 do not allow for this. As schools become more privatised they become less democratic, as school funding becomes attached to a school´s “performance”, that is to say how well these schools match up to standardised testing. Weiner talks about the need for teachers to become politically educated and to think of their work that they do as being not just about what they do in the classroom but that if they want to fight for the education and good of their students they need to also fight for issues that affects their students outside of class - their access to housing, their right not to be intimidated and harassed by police, their right to healthcare, their right to safe neighbourhoods. This means that education unions have to fight for their children and by extension the family and communities that surround these students and they have to fight for their own members - the workers inside schools. They have to become “social movement unions”
In Chapter 3, Weiner defines what she means by “social movement” unions and contrasts it with the current state of education unions which she dubs “service model” unionism. Broadly service model unions are smaller in their scope of demands, the participation of members and their democracy. In particular service model unions focus narrowly on wages and internal working conditions of mainly teaching staff and they also sell themselves as an insurance service that will speak on your behalf to enforce an existing contract or negotiate with the boss for you - you might also get some extra perks which means that you are definitely getting your “money´s worth” when it comes to the union. On the other hand, social movement unions, whilst still being an organisation that fights for its worker members, sets its scope as being about class-based issues such as housing justice, transport, healthcare and state violence. The union itself is run by its members: members dictate its demands, actions and structures. And being run by members it must have open debate and critique, transparent and member-led negotiations and high participation by members.
In Chapter 4, having defined what a “social movement union” would like, Weiner turns to the state of national and local unions as they currently exist and the fight that will need to be put up against incumbent leadership and structures of national and local unions. Some of these issues include: a large amount of paid and unelected staffers, union leadership acceptance of things like funding being attached standardised testing, stifling of debate and criticism of union leadership and a large amount of intransparency of decisions made within the union. Weiner also outlines some issues that are particular to the two large education unions in the US - the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA). Weiner argues that the main guiding principles for taking on these union bureaucracies is “care”, “courage” and “critique”. You have to genuinely care about what you do and what happens in education, to students, their families and communities. You have to be constantly reflecting and critiquing the approach you are taking when it comes to organising and you have to do this collectively with other members. And finally, you have to have the courage to take on the leadership even if you have a minority opinion or you are taking on a largely “respected” incumbent leader.
In Chapter 5, the author gives some pointers as to how union members can take steps towards building a rank-and-file base that can fight for a reform of their unions as “social movement unions”. Her main pieces of advice are to: make alliances with other members who have similar ideas to changing the unions, talking to your colleagues and discussing important issues, set up newsletters and announcement lists for members as well as for the community, and to make strong links wherever possible with parents and wider parts of the community. Some of these pieces of advice I found very useful. However, I think there were important pieces of advice that were lacking. If I were to advise anyone trying to unionise, my main pieces of advice would be to listen to listen to people and raise their expectations, in my experience the main thing that stops people taking action is fear and negativity - the feeling that things are hopeless. My second piece of advice would be that you should be systematic in your approach: do your homework on your school and whatever decision makers run your workplace, chart your workplace and identify who the most respected people are. And my other piece of advice, which Weiner somewhat mentions but does not expand on is the need to talk to all workers in a workplace - that means if you´re a teacher, don´t just talk to teachers, talk and unionise all school staff such as cleaners, bus drivers, porters, caterers - not just because they need a union too, but because a union you will be stronger together than if only some types of staff are in the union - it means management can´t divide you as easily.
Part 2 of the book contains a set of republished essays which Weiner wrote for New Politics between the years 1976 and 2012. These essays touch on the subjects of bureaucracy in both the AFT and NEA and the resistance to it (or lack thereof); issues around racism within workplaces and unions and how this played out in a teachers strike in Newark, and on the global education union response to attempts to marketise and privatise education. These essays were good to read if you wanted a better understanding of the particular state of US education union organising. However, I think the final two essays on “The People´s Summit of the Americas” and “Teacher Unionism Reborn” are important reading for anyone organising in education union.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It´s very readable and packed with important information. And overall, she gives a really good blueprint as to how education unions should position themselves. My main issues with the book were a) it´s constant referral to “teachers” unions and the book being addressed to teachers, and b) that the advice given to workers organising in schools was missing some important bits, which I address above.

[Frank Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part One is a very straightforward and clear discussion of, and advocacy for, "social movement unionism" (as distinct not only from "business" or "service" unionism, but also from "social justice" unionism). Weiner argues effectively for greater democracy within teachers' unions, and not simply more progressive policies (which can be top-down). Her primary example of this is the Chicago Teachers Union, in particular the changes it underwent after CORE was able to organize a bottom-up challenge the union leadership.
Part Two is a set of articles Weiner wrote for New Politics, which covers much of the same ground. In that section, "Neoliberalism, Teacher Unionism, and the Future of Public Education" is the best in putting the need for social movement unionism in the broader sociopolitical context (discussed in other works such as Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains and Gordon Lafer's One Percent Solution).

[Antoinette Van Beck · Rating 2 out of 5]

honestly gonna dnf this one 46% because it's very repetitive and doesn't do a good job of summarizing the main issues of unions and teacher unions specifically. while it is repetitive, each chapter i read brought something slightly different to the main idea that i thought i understood and made it more confusing. i recognize that a topic like unions is complex and can't be completely grappled with in one pass due to the dynamic nature of the beast, but for one such as me who will push through a book for just about anything, i simply could not with this one. maybe i'll get the gumption to finish it another time, but not today.

[Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used to think little about unions, especially as they related to me as a young teacher. After reading Weiner’s perspective, I feel really motivated to get involved in my teacher’s union. Unions, with their institutional influence and organizational structure, have the potential to be hubs of education advocacy for democracy, equity, and justice. As a teacher, I’m excited to foster a community of colleagues at my school who are interested in being informed members and advocates for the “common good.”

[Scott E · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Sounds like a professor with too much education and not enough real life education. I wouldn’t even donate it to our library.

[Andres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone wanting to become a teacher or educator should read this book and the recommendation from here. Also an important read to the future generations of teachers and union members

[Jennifer]

I don’t think we’re going to finish reading this in class, but I’m interested enough I’m adding it to my list to finish. Stopped on page 71.

[suzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great excerpt from the last chapter "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..."

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciate Weiner's definition of social MOVEMENT unionism, emphasizing not only the importance of having progressive leadership but also an engaged and active rank and file.

[Dan Plonsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished reading The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice, by Lois Weiner, just in time for International Workers' Day. This book is an excellent introduction to the problems facing teachers and their unions, and the urgent need for teachers to reform their unions in order to combat the neoliberal threat not just to public education but to people and to democracy worldwide. Weiner believes (I agree) that teachers' unions are potentially the most powerful group in fighting those capitalists who seek to privatize and commoditize all that remains to us, driving social inequality to new extremes while decimating the planet. The problem is that many unions follow the “business union” model (which perfectly describes my own union): elected officers carry out all the work of the union, which is primarily to negotiate contracts and endorse candidates for office. Negotiations are conducted in secret, with members coerced in voting to approve the contract, but to otherwise participate only minimally, in prescribed ways. Democracy and open discussion is stifled. This is a deliberate strategy by those in power to maintain their power – and as Weiner points out, unfortunately is facilitated by the very structure that makes unions powerful: the agency fee which every teacher must pay to the union, whether accepting of the union or not. (Legal challenges to agency fees have arisen before, and certainly will again soon – my hope is that if unions are forced to court workers, then what they lose in power they will gain in having to be more responsive, more democratic, and ultimately more militant.) At the national level, the union is structured so that dissent is nearly impossible. In recent history, the two main unions, AFT and NEA, have allowed charter schools to proliferate, supported standardized testing, and supported tying test results to teacher evaluations. This has had the result of worsening social inequality, as public education has re-defined its mission to be to teach students only the most basic skills necessary for low-level jobs. Weiner contrasts business unions with “social movement” unions, which she favors: the latter seeks to democratize the union, empowering the membership, while making alliances with the community, and with those who work for social justice. A social movement union goes into negotiations with issues that will improve the lives of their students and families, as well as the teachers. Weiner says that it is “suicidal” to enter negotiations without such issues.

Weiner relates ways in which organizations such as the World Bank have overtly pushed developing countries to actually provide less education for children and less preparation for teachers, in order to inhibit democracy and to reduce the expectations of workers for decent jobs and working conditions. The same thing is happening in the US, under the pretense of “reforming” schools to “educate students out of poverty.” Yet the fact is, Weiner writes, “as neoliberal policies tighten their grip on governments and capitalism's assault on the living conditions of working people intensifies, schooling becomes an ever-weaker lever for improving the economic well being of individuals.”

The “neoliberal policies” which drive “school reform,” Weiner makes clear, are a bipartisan collaboration with the billionaire class, as Diane Ravitch has documented so fully and clearly. Where Ravitch has fallen short, says Weiner (and I would agree), is by not acknowledging the complicity of our unions, and by not enlarging her critique to take on capitalism on a larger scale. Indeed, when Ravitch spoke to our union, she expressed surprise and dismay at AFT president Randi Weingarten for going along with test results being part of teacher evaluations (Weingarten crowed about the union's “collaborative” approach to dealing with the reformers) – but Weingarten has been a consistent foe of democracy in the AFT. Recently, for instance, she engineered an early endorsement of Hillary Clinton, which certainly had a major impact on the Sanders campaign.

In summary: teachers' unions are indeed horrible, but not because they “protect bad teachers” and “stand in the way of reform,” as we read in such supposedly liberal publications as The New York Times, but rather because they have not fought the neoliberal myth: that lack of equality is entirely the fault of bad teachers. Weiner advises against saying that schools are entirely powerless in the face of poverty – those who say this are accused of “making excuses” – but evidence shows that parental income is the largest factor by far in predicting a child's success in school. Unions are also horrible because they have not been democratic, nor have they successfully made alliances with communities. (Weiner includes a chapter about disastrous consequences not doing so in the Newark strikes in the 70's.)

The latter half of the book is in the form of a handful of history lessons: previously published articles by Weiner going back to the 60's. I appreciated the color and personality these added to an otherwise abstract book, though I did wish that these chapters had been re-edited to remove repetitions (e.g., we are told of the history and structure of the AFT and NEA at least three times).