Thomas Frank, author, commends the striking teachers in Arizona and elsewhere for dashing the neoliberal dream of demonizing teachers.
He writes in “The Guardian”:
What I like best about the wave of teachers’ strikes that have swept America these last few months is how they punch so brutally and so directly in the face of the number one neoliberal educational fantasy of the last decade: that all we need to do to fix public education is fire people.
Fire teachers, specifically. They need to learn fear and discipline. That’s what education “reformers” have told us for years. If only, the fantasy goes, we could slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules that keep mediocre teachers in their jobs, then things would be different. If only some nice “tech millionaires” would step in and help us fire people! If only we could get a thousand clones of Michelle Rhee, the former DC schools chancellor who fired so many people she even once fired someone on TV!
Now just look at what’s happened. We’ve seen enormous teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona, with more on the way. Actions that look very much like strikes by people who, in some of these states, are legally forbidden to strike. It was the perfect opportunity for education “reformers” to fire people, and fire them en masse. It was the politicians’ chance to show us what a tough-minded boss could do.
And in most cases, it was state governments that capitulated. It was hard-hearted believers in tax cuts and austerity and discipline who caved, lest they themselves get fired by voters at the next opportunity.
That, folks, is the power of solidarity, and the wave of teacher walkouts is starting to look like our generation’s chance to learn the lesson our grandparents absorbed during the strike wave of the late 1930s: that given the right conditions and the right amount of organization, working people can rally the public and make social change all by themselves. Irresistibly. Organically. From the bottom up.
Teachers won’t stand for austerity any more. They are rising.
It is a wonderful article. I urge you to read it in full.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do NOT give the hard-hearted believers in tax cuts and austerity and discipline a 2nd chance. The next time we vote, fire them! fire them! fire them! but make sure we find someone we can trust to replace them because the autocratic billionaires behind the privatization of everything public and the death of labor unions are backstabbers, liars, frauds, and can not be trusted — ever.
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Yes
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Here’s another Guardian article by Tithi Bhattachayra about how women teachers are leading this wave of revolts against the corporate demeaning of women’s work.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/10/women-teachers-strikes-america
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Go FEMALES! Thanks, jcgrim.
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Thomas Frank is a treasure.
He was a fixture on MSNBC, CNN, etc after writing What’s the Matter with Kansas, his excellent book explaining how conservatives use wedge issues like abortion to get poor people to vote against their own economic interests.
His fantastic book Listen Liberal explains problems in the Democratic party — he isn’t welcome on MSNBC or mainstream US media anymore and found a home at The Guardian in Britain.
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Thanks for the link. The current Democratic slogan ” A Better Deal” evokes the same complacency and yawn as their earlier ones.
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How about this: The Best Deal Ever.
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I thought the current Democratic motto was
“The Betsy Deal Ever”
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Alternative Democratic slogan
“We’re not Trump”
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That was the slogan for 2016.
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Slogan for 2020
“Still not Trump — and not Clinton either.”
“The Democratic Motto”
The Democratic saw
Is simply “What we’re not”
We love to hem and haw
Cuz hawwings all we got
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Quoting Frank himself.
We forget that MSNBC is Progressive only when corporate interests aren’t threatened.
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I have repeatedly tried, even in a face-to-face meeting with Rachel Maddow, and I have never been able to get an invitation to her show.
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which is shocking in and of itself: therein lies the true state of national interest in public school protection
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If you want to get air time on the Rachel Maddow show, you really need to attend a conference put on by RT that Putin also attends.
Best of all is if you can be lucky enough to have Putin sit down at the same table at a conference dinner.
That will get Rachel talking about you nonstop.
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Yes, even while Trump’s tax law redistributing wealth upwards was being debated, it was All Putin All the Time on Maddow’s show (which I imagine made her employer, Comcast, happy).
MSNBC: Fox News for liberals.
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It ain’t called the “Tax Cut for the Vich*” for nothin’
*For Roman Abromovich, one of Russia’s vichest (and richest) billionaires and friend to Vlad Putin, of course.
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I have my faves at MSNBC even tho I find them irritating [too much hi-volume echo-chamber], overly PC, neoliberal, & a chicken.
You can’t beat Steve Kornacki for election coverage, and he is good at untangling NJ politics. And Maddow has a special gift for breaking down complex DC-naked-capitalism-underworld events/ repackaging for step-by-step layman consumption. I’ve seen her do it for shady-messy political entanglements elsewhere as well. Wish we could get her onboard to do so for ed-“reform” issues.
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Count how many times on how many MSNBC/ CNN shows you hear Trump withdrew us from TPP. Remind me why as a progressive I am supposed to be upset about that.
I probably listened to this Frank interview a while back . I would disagree with him only in that the Email release was Comey . The Republicans created a narrative of Hillary and emails going back to Benghazi . The DNC and Podesta email dumps strategically released kept emails in the news cycle for months . Enter Comey and email investigation about emails that few ever read, certainly not any who voted for Trump . Add it all up and the election was definitely lost because of interference. The question it does not answer is why it was even close to begin with; that was decades of policy failure on the part of the Democrats ,detailed by Frank . . I must have called the Obama WH a dozen times and asked if Obama was on the Trump campaign staff running around the Nation promising to ram TPP down the throat of voters in the Midwest. .
But between Frank and lofgren you have all there is to see about the state of American politics .
But having spent the day on a building trades FB page .
“I could pay half the working class to kill the other half ” as Jay Gould said and I question how many of the teachers are true class warriors .
Remind me about the teacher who won the Republican primary and why I am supposed to be excited about a right wing Republican teacher defeating another right wing Republican . Oh I forgot he was protecting his pension.
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The attacks on teaching & teachers parallels the war against women.
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You are correct.
You do not hear the vindictive attacks on others who work in what might be termed caregiving roles, including for example nurses…also a profession with a high proportion of women (although that has changed a lot in my lifetime).
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I hear a lot of vindictive attacks on social workers, also a female-dominated caregiving role.
As far as nurses, as long as they are saints who care for others at the expense of themselves, I don’t hear attacks. But when nurses started organizing, I heard an awful lot of attacks. And probably the most attacked profession there is is early childhood/daycare.
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There are two reasons (mostly male) Deformers and (mostly male) politicians attack teachers:
1) most teachers are women
2) most teachers are controlled by superintendents and principals (mostly men), have little autonomy and are afraid of losing their job.
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“Call me daddy…”
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From what I’ve read, though, the national nurses’ union is not only strong but formidable…a notable contrast to so much national teachers’ union collusion with the “bad teacher” game.
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And, of course, there was the actual PHYSICAL attack on the nurse from Salt Lake City: https://www.cnn.com/2017/11/01/health/utah-nurse-officer-arrest-settlement-trnd/index.html
And nurses in Utah have been vilified for trying to organize.
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The libertarians, billionaires and the giant corporations are working overtime to destroy the last vestiges of unions. In spite of all their power, wealth and political clout, they could not stop the waves of teacher strikes in these red right to work (FOR LESS) states. Bravo to the teachers.
With Trump and the GOP in control, the SCOTUS and lower courts are being stacked with rabid anti-union fanatics. The GOP must be voted out which means voting for a Democrat in the general election. Sorry about that, but at least with a Democrat the courts will not be packed with far right wing libertarians.
As an example of a right wing court ruling:
The new Supreme Court ruling protects employers from class action lawsuits.
The Supreme Court on May 21 handed down a ruling, Epic Systems Corporation v. Lewis, that protected employers whose employees had signed arbitration agreements from being sued by those same employees for employment related issues in a class action lawsuit.
Elections have consequences as they say.
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The 1% has a torniquet on the neck of our people trying to squeeze the life out of the common good. The teacher walkouts have shown that teachers will defy the power structure when backed into a corner. The states must provide education to its citizenry, and it is the states that continue to ignore their responsibility. “Reform” has been nothing but bullying, badgering and cutting wages of the nation’s public school teachers, and it has failed to deliver any meaningful positive change. It is time to invest in our public schools and teachers.
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If teachers were stronger in math than the so called reformers the conversation would change. It’s not a women’s issue, it’s a math anxiety issue. Get strong at math and all will be equal! Equalitythroughmath.
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I know lots of excellent, female math teachers. I do not believe our current crisis is related to math anxiety. It is related to an imbalance in the power structure, and teachers have had enough abuse. They realize if they want change, they are going to have to fight for it.
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I too read the article in The NY Times about austerity in Liverpool, that “It wasn’t driven by a desire to reduce spending on public services. It was driven by the fact that we had a vast deficit problem, and the debt was going to keep growing.” So false. You’re right that it’s simple arithmetic. Reducing deficits should mean taxing the wealthy to increase revenue, not cutting spending on public services. Since, U.R., you like math, here’s a math equation for you: reducing class size for the good of many > a few super yachts. Supporting the socioeconomic security net will go a great deal farther toward the equal sign than austerity. Yep, math is cool.
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What evidence do you have that teachers are actually weaker in math than Deformers?
I see plenty of evidence that just the opposite is true.
Fact is, one could not be much weaker in math than Deformers like Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Andrew Cuomo and Raj Chetty who believe in and push stuff like “value added models” (VAM) which is no better than throwing dice for evaluating teachers.
One could probably find monkeys at the zoo who are better in math than most Deformers.
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Think tanks and legislators take notice! My favorite statement was, “Now, in a beautiful reversal, it is the shibboleths of the conservative era that are shaking.” The conservative era. I was born when it started. Finally, it could end if parents and teachers keep up standing for students over tax breaks for the wealthy. Thank you, Thomas Frank. And thank you again, Diane.
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If you haven’t read Thomas Frank’s latest book Listen Liberal then you have missed out on one of the most important books for thinking people who vote in the last 40 years.
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Hear, hear.
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Absolutely.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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One thing I struggle with is that in some places, especially in the NYC metro area, taxes are a genuine burden on many hard working people. Taxes are also very high on businesses already and I get why politicians are afraid to chase millionaires/billionaires elsewhere with higher taxes.
And yet according to the CFE decision, schools are still underfunded in NYC.
If education is too expensive for communities to afford – where does the money come from?
I’m far from a conservative (actually I’m a liberal) and I’m also very pro-public ed.
Away from the “make government small enough to drown in a bathtub crowd”, I see taxes as a real and genuine issue for many struggling families.
As a member of the UFT, when they pushed for a raise AND retro pay amidst the debris of the financial crisis in NYC, I myself was going WTF – this just isn’t right – and I benefited from their push.
Now I’m waiting for them to announce a new contract imminently – I’m guessing it will come right before the Janus decision or immediately after so as to lock in our union gains before dues are made voluntary.
In regards to the teacher strikes – these communities DO have a history of underfunding education and especially underpaying teachers or finding ways to cheapen their credentials or knowledge. I would never deny that – they are correct to strike.
On the systemwide level, I’m wondering, how the heck do we resolve these funding inequities when it seems impossible to do away with local property taxes and the state being a redistribution hub according to formulas also hasn’t proved out as a great equalizer. How do we fairly compensate and inspire people to want to become teachers (and not as martyrs for young minds) but also not increase taxes to the levels that New Jersey/Westchester areas see while also getting pretty bad results for the level of funding (it’s REALLY hard to argue those systems are underfunded).
I really don’t have an answer, I’m actually trying to figure out for myself what’s the reasonable compromise with all these interlocking mechanisms and systems and contracts that seems impossible for any one person or group to change even one of them.
Is it small classes? Teacher training? Technology? Better teacher candidates? How much in taxes can the state ask of the middle class before the downward pressure is too much? What’s the effect of trying to make it up from millionaires? Do they really flee to pay no taxes?
Just some morning musings….and the topic seemed apropos.
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Terrific article in The New Yorker on the teacher strike in Oklahoma:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/06/04/the-teachers-strike-and-the-democratic-revival-in-oklahoma
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“irresistibly. Organically. From the bottom up.” If only that were true, Mr. Frank, and not prodded by a very wealthy, very powerful organization that’s very cozy with legislators in all the states you mentioned, and all the others.
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