I recently was searching google for Albert Shanker’s connection to the Holweide School in Germany, which inspired some of his ideas about education reform, and I came across this fascinating personal essay about his life in education as a teacher, a labor organizer, and an advocate for authentic learning. Shanker died in 1996, having served for many years as President of the American Federation of Teachers, and before that as President of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City.
In this brief memoir, he reflects on what it means to be “a professional” and how that idea was used against teachers, to control them, and also against unions, to discourage them.
His thoughts about collective bargaining and unions are worth reviewing as unions are today in dire peril given the spread of “right to work” and the Supreme Court’s Janus decision.
His thoughts about the kind of learning that sticks with you through life is well exemplified in his memories of earning a merit badge from the Boy Scouts in birding.
His thoughts about the importance and necessity of public education in building American society are very relevant today.
This is an enjoyable read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Language….it can hold you prisoner and set you free!
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I can see that Shanker really understands education. How much has changed since he originally wrote this letter? Schools still need improvements and class sizes have grown instead of gotten smaller. School boards still don’t want to give raises nor fix schools, nor lower class sizes because it costs money. Teachers are still underpaid and politicians don’t care. The wealthiest among us are trying to destroy public education and now, with Trump and DeVos, the future of education in the States is going downward. All of this happens so that the wealthy can proudly claim that they have found a new source of revenue.
It is sad that so many teachers are working under such difficult conditions. Their right to form a union has been diminished since Right to Work laws do discriminate against the build up of strong unions. This is an abomination for all public and private unions who will have to do with less. How much less can be tolerated when teachers are barely surviving?
It is a difficult time for education in the States. More and more children are coming to school hungry and teachers are being blamed for not teaching to improve all the disappointments that public political policy puts on them. It is difficult to be a student when class sizes are enormous and individualized learning, the true type not computerized garbage, is now almost impossible.
Teachers are the future of this country and they should be respected. The standards should not be lowered because politicians have decided to make teaching so impossible that now there is a shortage. Who wants to become a teacher today? It is not competitive with the salaries that people in other places get. It never has been but now, benefits are also being cut and pensions aren’t being funded.
It is a sad day for teachers and students in this country. Hope things get better when people realize that vouchers and charters are scams and nothing meant to be better than public schools.
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I recently listened to an interview where it was mentioned that Democratic Party leaders are now aware that while they had been looking to solutions enacted from President Obama’s two elections, they missed the point that the far right was making huge inroads by ignoring Wash. DC and strategically taking over state houses where they were able to plant their own anti-public service governors and legislation. The most logical way to bring back respect for public education is to carefully and purposefully SEE this strategy, and then counter it with exact opposite political personnel and message.
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The far right was making huge inroads by ignoring Wash. DC and strategically taking over state houses where they were able to plant their own anti-public service governors and legislation.
You are correct on this.
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Hi Diane
I had to comment on Albert Shanker because he was one of the people who shaped my life, though not in a good way. In the fall of 1968, I was an entering senior at Jamaica High School in Queens, NY. The Democratic convention had been held that summer in Chicago and for the first time I identified with the anti-war folks. In NYC, there had been a growing movement in communities of color (centering in Ocean Hill-Brownsville) for what was called “community control.” I’m sure you know this history. Schools were failing for a variety of reasons, and parents were demanding accountability and control.
Understandably, Al Shanker, who was leading the UFT at the time, said that giving the community control over the hiring and firing of teachers violated their collective bargaining agreement, which it did. He lead the teachers on a strike that lasted a month and a half or so. For many teachers and students, what the main issue was was the fact that Black and Latin students were going to crappy schools. We saw the strike as racist in that it was for the purpose of maintaining the status quo, which was unacceptable to us.
That UFT picket line was the only picket line I ever crossed in my life. I went to a “liberation” school (at Francis Lewis High School) staffed by teachers who did not support the strike and was exposed to ideas I had never been exposed to. It lead to a lifetime of political activism and union activism with CSEA, a union of mostly New York State workers. I worked at South Beach Psych Center in Staten Island for 33 years and the union itself as a staff person for ten years, which I’m retiring from at the end of the month. So thank you Al Shanker, though I always wished (as a union activist who understands that a union is stronger when it has close ties to the communities its in) that he tried to find a way to talk with the Ocean Hill-Brownsville folks and didn’t treat them like the enemy, which they most certainly were not.
Take it easy,
Joel
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I found Shanker’s reflection on his career interesting. Many of the same challenges we faced then are still the same issues today. The difference is the freedom to experiment has been replaced by the one size fits all erroneous “solution,” privatization today. After many years of disruptive experimentation, we have created parallel schools that are less efficient, no more effective, full of corruption, waste and fraud, and they promote segregation.
The chaotic year of the 1975 Shanker mentions was the year I started teaching in New York state. After a six week period, it also a time when we went on strike for twelve weeks. It was a very interesting way for me to meet my colleagues and learn about the culture of the school district. At least in those days we felt the union was in our corner and willing to take a stand.
When Shanker was considering deployment of teachers, he was looking at numbers of twenty students per class. This is far less that what most teachers are facing in urban schools today. The NAEP scores are still around to remind us that are schools are “failing,” and poverty is an even bigger issue today than in 1975. Accountability is still very much alive and unwell as we know test scores reflect students’ socio-economic status. Today, computers, which are useful tools, are falsely claiming to to be the big “solution.” Computers fall short in many aspects of instruction as teaching and learning are best accomplished in a social setting. Shanker would be very disappointed by union membership in our country. At 11.3% we have a lower membership rate than almost all industrialized nations. This paltry number is doomed to fall even lower under the Janus decision.
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I adored Shanker’s paid op-eds in The New Republic years ago. A cogent voice in a profession filled with groupthinkers.
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Not The New Republic, the New York Times.
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Both.
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Here is a link to many of them from a special edition of American Educator (Spring/Summer 1997):
Click to access Power%20of%20Ideas%204.pdf
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Thank you so much for sharing this. I had the honor and privilege to meet Albert Shanker at a reception in 1994 at the AFT building and I can still vividly remember spending 10 minutes with him when I worked for an education organization. A remarkable man and one I miss more and more, especially now that his vision has been stolen and perverted by the charter lobby. I would love to hear his voice today.
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But then again, even though he passed away more that 20 years ago, how relevant is this observation?: “Critics now say that the common school never really existed, that it’s time to abandon this ideal in favor of schools that are designed to appeal to groups based on ethnicity, race, religion, class, or common interests of various kinds. But schools like these would foster division in our society; they would be like setting a time bomb.”
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That’s what the 1% keeps trying to impose on the rest of us. Maybe the time bomb is designed to get the rest of us to turn on each other. Prescient, sadly!
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My father taught in Harlem (District 5) from 1950 to 1984 so I grew up, indirectly living through the Shanker years – and strikes.
American Educator journal had a special issue in Spring/Summer of 1997 titled:
“The Power of Ideas; Al [Shanker] in His Own Words; A Collection”
It is a collection of many of the “Where We Stand” columns that Al Shanker wrote for the NYT, from December of 1970 to February 1997. Priceless reading; a link to the PDF version below:
Click to access Power%20of%20Ideas%204.pdf
I saved my copy of the American Educator and continue to go back to it every know and then. It provides an invaluable insight into the modern history of education, union activism, and a glimpse into a time period that forged the shape of public education at its peak.
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And he was the reason for the nuclear war in Sleeper. It was a great line in a silly, funny movie.
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What a great piece!
Mr. Shanker was absolutely right in saying that public education is the glue that has held this country together. Sadly, we are witnessing the unraveling.
My father taught in NY before and during the Shanker years.
He was always thankful for Mr. Shanker’s leadership and the benefits that a strong teacher’s union brought to our family of 7! We didn’t have much and my dad often worked 2 jobs to support us, but without the union, I doubt he would have been able to stay in teaching for long.
I remember my father talking to me about the importance a strong union which protected his job from discrimination because of his ethnicity and religious beliefs.
Before unionism, he had hall duty and other non professional “chores”.
And though my dad passed away in 2004, my mother still collects his pension without which she would be dependent on a meager social security check.
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