Gary Stager, an expert in technology and constructivist pedagogy, sent a bulletin from Australia about the latest events there.
He notes that American teachers have been subject to a campaign of bullying, vilification and shaming, that goes beyond name-calling to pink slips, cuts in their compensation and benefits, and removal of what were once standard protection for their freedom to teach. According to the Metlife Survey, teachers are demoralized. I have talked to thousands of teachers these past two years, and I can verify the survey’s finding. Teachers speak of feeling powerless, depressed, angry. They don’t know what to do. And the assaults on their professionalism continue in state after state.
By contrast, teachers in Melbourne, Australia, reacted swiftly and sharply to a proposal by the conservative state government for performance pay. 25,000 teachers stayed home, 10,000 marched on Parliament, and 150 schools were shut down. Parents got notice to make plans for their children, and many principals marched with their teachers.
The Australian teachers are not feeling powerless. They are standing up for their profession. Let’s see what happens next.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ll be frank. When I try to even defend our contractual rights at my school, I’m told by colleagues to back down; it could lead to “reprisals from the principal.” I can’t say I feel especially gutsy because I demanded the principal honor our contractual obligations. Now, I wonder if this could relate to the general public; is American culture too deferential to authority? Studies suggest this is the case.
Case in point:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/06/06/sweet_land_of_conformity/
There are serious activists in this country, fighting the ed deformer movements. I honor GEM, fairtest, many others. But, if we’re wondering why we haven’t accomplished a mass teacher movement, with sufficient numbers to really produce significant policy change, I think we have to question whether our culture of deference and fear of authority has something to do with it.
I don’t think it’s just because many teachers are women. Australia’s and Canada’s teachers tend to be female as well. We need to understand that we also have ourselves to blame, when our public system is becoming a farce thanks to a corporate coup d’etat. There is very little parent and teacher backlash, which allows the system to embrace corporate cronyism.
New York City has a population of 8,000,000. Yet, I’ve yet to see more than 100,000 show up at any of the recent Occupy/May Day/UFT rallies. Those are not such huge numbers. In Quebec, 500,000 (close to half the population) showed up to protest their Law 78, which would prohibit how many people could show up at rallies without prior notice.
Those who have not become part of their community activist organizations, need to do so. Until there are real numbers, there won’t be real change.
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American culture does indeed glorify business and business people and promotes conformism to the extreme. We still under the spell of McCarthyism, and the massive propaganda inflicted on us by the corporation and the crony politicians to try and not repeat the 60’s, when people moved from the being spectators into participants in deciding their own fate.
Everyone should look into the Powell memo.
http://www.wheresthepaper.org/PowellMemoFromMediaTransparency16pages.htm
written in the early 70’s the to be supreme court judge expresses the concern that the American educational system who produced the wave of protest – women’s libation, civil rights, anti war – as radical and leftist. It targeted the education system – mainly colleges – as the source of anti business sentiment and suggested ways to take over the discussion into a pro corporate one.
That is indeed where we find ourselves at this point, giving the Gates, a crony exploiters of children, criminals who detest democracy, the ultimate say. The cult of the rich business people shows that the Powell memo was effective in its recommendations.
Last there is one quot I wanted to bring forward, one that explains some of the events we have been witnessing. Corporate takeover of the public sphere with little to no backlash. It reminds me of a period not long ago: “”Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini
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Unfortunately our union does support some linking of merit to pay, although they weren’t clear about this fact to the 10K teachers who went to the meeting/march.
Teachers are very angry here in Victoria about this proposal.
The fact is that constant requests/pushes for “higher productivity” does have a point where you start to lose quality. This is the case with my own school/setting, where we have maximum mandated class sizes of 25 and absolutely full allotments. Don’t have time to get to know students as individuals nor plan innovative lessons. Don’t have time to explore new technology.
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Strong leadership with good organizational and motivational skills along with guidance from those who have the skills and resources to offer good advice are all important in bringing together people resulting in solidarity! Hats off to the Australian educators!
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Dear Diane,
Unfortunately I am afraid Americans, especially teachers have forgotten the fight we went through years ago to acquire what they now see as part of their entitlement. I am afraid we will have to sink yet lower into insult and and degradation before we finally rise up yet again. The problem is by then we will have a much longer fight back just to get back near where we are now. One of my early posts that I never published compared teachers to sheep, sheared and butchered.
This ReTired Tucson Teacher is worried.
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I think educational ‘deform’ has become so common place in the U.S., having been bombarded by it since the 80’s, that most teachers believe “this too shall pass”. We have been saying that more and more since NCLB. However, RttT is much more teacher centered whereas NCLB was school centered. Most teachers really never felt the effects of NCLB other than probably talking about being Highly Qualified, but we are all feeling the effects of RttT. RttT has an underlying notion of firing teachers. The Great Teachers, Great Leaders portion of the RttT application was the largest in point total and aimed at quantifying the outcomes of teaching and firing people based on those outcomes. The educational ‘deformers’ cry that they are sick of the status quo; however, the status quo IS school reform and it has been for the last 30 years. I’m sick of it.
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