As with “neoliberalism,” “ideology” is a term that can be confusing to people in the United States. Other economic and political systems have ideologies, but not us in the United States—right? If we use “ideology” to mean shared political beliefs about how a society operates, its spoken and unspoken rules, then every society has a dominant ideology to explain why its political and economic systems are good and fair. Analyzing ideology rather than intentions helps explain why people who seem to care, genuinely, about poor kids embrace reforms that do harm. They buy into neoliberal ideology, primarily the belief that the “free market” and “choice” will solve the problem of educational inequality.
Persistent inequality, in society and education, is at the heart of neoliberalism’s appeal, not only to the wealthy but also to many poor and working people. Public education in the United States has not, historically, served poor and working people as well as it should, and we need to acknowledge that in order for our case about what’s wrong with current “deforms” to be credible to people who should be our allies. We also have to be forthright in stating that while teachers and their unions did not create educational inequality, they have been too complicitous in maintaining it, from the very start of mass public education.5 On the other hand, many policies in the ’60s and ’70s that could not have been enacted without support from teachers, teachers unions, and organized labor did, in fact, help reduce inequality in school outcomes. One example is high-quality early childhood education. Another is school lunch programs. At the same time that we note the successes, it’s essential to understand that much more was needed. Some of the ’60s reforms were, in hindsight, problematic, like using standardized test scores to measure whether federal money was well spent. This history shows us that education cannot on its own reverse deeply rooted causes of school failure, like poverty, racism, and unemployment, but schools and teachers that are better supported can make strides in closing the gap.6
Teachers Unions and Social Justice: Making the Connections Real
There’s far more to neoliberalism’s global assault on teachers and teachers unions than I can summarize in this book. However, teachers committed to working for social justice need to understand a few key issues. The neoliberal project in education has generated opposition wherever teachers and parents have the political freedom to resist—and in some places where they do not. The architects of this project aim to eliminate spaces in schools for critique, social justice teaching, and voices of parents and community—that is, when the voices are not a chorus supporting neoliberal goals. The elites who are orchestrating school “deform” understand (unfortunately, more than do most teachers) that despite their all-too-glaring problems, teachers unions are the main impediment to the neoliberal project being fully realized. Even when unions don’t live up to their ideals, teacher unionism’s principles of collective action and solidarity contradict neoliberalism’s key premises—individual initiative and competition. Neoliberalism pushes a “survival of the fittest” thinking. Labor unions presume people have to work together to protect their common interests.
Unions press for collective voice and intervention to counter the employer’s absolute control. Working together, employees possess a strength much greater than they have as individuals. Without a union, employees have no protection and no rights except those the employer grants. Especially in an occupation like teaching in which there is so much disagreement about what constitutes ideal practice, a supervisor has tremendous power to decide whether an individual is doing the job well. At its best the union brings individuals together to create a collective definition of professional conduct and responsibilities.
Another reason unions are a threat is that they can exercise institutional power. As organizations they have legal rights. Because unions have institutional roots, they are a stable force. And a union is able to draw on a regular source of income, membership dues. These characteristics give teachers unions an organizational capacity seldom acquired by advocacy groups or parents, who generally graduate from activity in schools along with their children.
I know from my work as a teacher educator that what I’ve written about the unions’ potential is often a hard sell to teachers and parents, so I want to clarify that I am explaining what gives unions their potential strength, not excusing what they don’t do or do wrong. It’s important to say, loudly, that the potential of teachers unions is not being realized and that they need to be transformed. Often union officials tell reformers not to “wash our dirty linen in public.” However, this dirty laundry has already been paraded to great advantage by our enemies. The only way we will persuade teachers and the public that unions can be different—better—is by coming clean about problems.
The very factors that make unions stable and potentially powerful also induce bureaucracy and conservatism. Consider the difference between how principals and superintendents are chosen and the elections that must occur in unions. Teachers unions are membership organizations, “owned” by their members, whose votes keep the leadership in power and whose dues keep the organization operating. Yet neither unions as organizations nor union members as individuals are immune to prejudices that infect a society, even when these prejudices contradict the union’s premises of equality in the workplace. The automatic collection of dues from members’ paycheck stabilizes the union financially but also insulates officers from members’ disgruntlement. Contracts offer protection, but they are very complex documents, and the staff’s specialized knowledge and skills in negotiating and enforcing contracts can encourage members’ passivity. When the law gives a union the right to negotiate a contract, it also generally gives the union exclusive bargaining rights, meaning that members can’t replace their union with another one they think will be more responsive, at least not during the life of the contract.
Classrooms, teachers, and unions are affected by social, economic, and political life. The Right has become bolder and government policies more conservative in almost every realm. The communities we work with have been altered too, by more economic hardship and political repression. We must also acknowledge our opponents’ ideological victories in changing how people think about education and government. The social movements that support social justice teaching and union work are weaker now. When I started teaching, we could often use school resources to support social justice work. For instance, when I was chair of my union local’s women’s rights committee, I helped organize a professional development conference that involved the women’s studies program at a local university, along with community groups.
Today, in contrast, teachers and teachers unions have fewer allies and are in many ways more politically isolated. Many teachers in schools struggling with low test scores fear their schools will be shut down. Others, in schools that seem immune from being closed, shut their classroom doors, literally and figuratively, trying to deny the powerful social and political forces that are subverting their hard work with students. Too many teachers have stopped asking, “Is this good for our kids?” because they fear that questioning authority puts their jobs at risk.
The deterioration in teachers’ confidence to stand up for their students, for social justice, and for their dignity as workers mirrors the weakening of teachers unions. If you care about social justice in education, you have a very important stake in not only the continued existence of teachers unions but also in their transformation. Though the popular media cast teachers unions as powerful, the unions are quite weak where it counts most, at the school site. Union leaders are disoriented and confused. When I started teaching, teachers unions might win economic gains without doing much to mobilize members. That is no longer the case. The propaganda campaign we have experienced has achieved its goal of discrediting the unions as organizations and even the idea of teacher unionism among much of the public and teachers as well. Yet we need democratic, vibrant, progressive teachers unions to turn back privatization of schools, which spells destruction for public education. To stand up as individuals for our dignity and our students’ well-being, we need the institutional support a good union can provide. If we fail to make the unions what they should be, most students in our country—and the world—will be trained