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MARCH 30, 2023
Meyerson on TAP
A Teacher Answers Back
With public schools under attack, American Federation of Teachers
President Randi Weingarten counters the right wing's slanders.
Watching the news, you might think that teachers are the most
disrespected workers in America. Reading state budgets, you might think
they're the most underpaid.
That first assertion is true only if you limit your intake to the
anti-teacher jihads that the right is currently waging. As poll after
poll makes clear, however, the great majority of Americans actually
think well of their teachers-and perhaps even more important, support
their freedom to teach. If anything, the polling here is even more
lopsided. As one recent CBS News/YouGov poll
<[link removed]>
showed, when asked if books used in public schools should "ever be
banned for criticizing U.S. history," fully 83 percent of the public
answered "no."
That second assertion, sadly, is on the money. As a recent survey
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by the Economic Policy Institute demonstrated, teacher pay has been
falling relative to the pay of other college graduates since 1979.
Take that declining level of monetary support, add to it the challenges
of pandemic-era and post-pandemic-era teaching, and that of becoming the
whipping boy of right-wing politicos and media mouths, and you find that
the share of teachers who report that they're "very satisfied" with
their job fell from 62 percent in 2008 to a bare 12 percent in 2022,
according to a recent survey
<[link removed]>
by MetLife.
All these topics were the subject of a major address
<[link removed]> earlier
this week by Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation
of Teachers. In the current crop of American labor leaders, Weingarten
is the one who most seriously engages and frequently addresses broad
societal concerns, somewhat in the tradition of such past unionists as
the UAW's Walter Reuther and the Clothing Workers' Sidney Hillman.
The right's current attacks on public education, she began, have to be
viewed as an effort to destroy it. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's
universal voucher program, which he signed into law on Monday, will
reduce support for his state's public schools by $4 billion-this in
a state, she noted, that already ranks 44th in per-pupil spending and
48th in average teacher pay.
To counter the state defunding, the ideological delegitimizing, and the
eventual destruction of public education, Weingarten advanced several
strategies that her union is pursuing. The first called for establishing
more community schools, with wraparound services provided before,
during, and after the usual school day. Citing the examples of several
unionized community schools, those services have included medical
checkups and mental health services, food assistance, clothing, language
support, and legal aid. That obviously requires ample public funding,
but it also addresses the manifest crises that afflict today's
children and their families.
She called as well for an increase in experiential learning,
highlighting in particular "programs where students use their minds and
their hands to learn everything from auto repair, to nursing, IT,
graphic design, welding, culinary skills and hospitality." She cited the
AFT's project to help teachers who've come under attack for teaching
topics that the right doesn't want taught-a phone hotline "for
teachers, parents, or students to use if they need support."
"It's a place to call if you've been told to remove a book from the
curriculum or from the library," she said, "or that there are topics
that can't be discussed in your classes, or that you cannot teach
honestly and appropriately, or if politicians in your district or state
are targeting vulnerable student groups to score political points."
Arresting the decline in the number of teachers by making teaching a
more livable profession, she pointed to a contract recently won by the
AFT's Kansas City local. That contract created a category of mentor
teachers (with mentor-level compensation) who'd guide first- and
second-year teachers in classroom skills, and which also created paid
family leave for teachers with children, making Kansas City the first
school district in the state to provide what should be a standard
benefit.
"Teachers should have the freedom to teach, and students should have the
freedom to learn," Weingarten concluded. "A great nation does not fear
people being educated."
~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>
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The State of American Cities
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Gabrielle Gurley and Luke Goldstein discuss the condition and politics
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