USA Today: For Shanker, education was a labor union of love

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-09-26-shanker-bio_N.htm


Albert Shanker believed schools were a place to teach children about democratic citizenship.


By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

Albert Shanker organized his first labor strike in 1945 at age 17, when he rallied his fellow New York City bike messengers for a $1-a-week raise. Over the next 50 years, Shanker's name became synonymous with unions, first as president of New York's United Federation of Teachers, then of the American Federation of Teachers. By the time he died in 1997, Shanker had become the USA's leading education reformer and, because of his stances on integration and national defense, a controversial figure. USA TODAY talks with Richard Kahlenberg, author of the Shanker biography Tough Liberal:

Q: What's a "tough liberal," and why does it matter now?

A: A tough liberal is someone who stands for institutions that promote social mobility — public schools and trade unions — but is also hard-headed about human nature and favors tough discipline policies and a strong national defense.

Shanker believed that trade unions were not just interest groups but were important institutions in a democracy, giving workers a voice in the workplace and in the Congress and checking the unbridled economic power of corporations. He believed public schools are more than places to train future employees — they're institutions that teach democratic citizenship and help bind children from vastly different backgrounds together to teach them what it means to be an American.

The same democratic rationale, however, drove him to be an unrelenting anti-communist and defense hawk, someone who placed democracy promotion at the center of U.S. foreign policy. And, he thought, in a democracy, it was essential to have a single standard for individuals of all races, so he was an opponent of racial preferences and quotas.

Today, his tough liberalism responds to the central critique of American liberalism — that it is elitist and soft and doesn't understand the way the world works. Centrist Democrats are accused of being poll-driven, and liberal Democrats are accused of being driven by interest group and identity politics, but Shanker had a coherent and simple answer to the question, "What do you stand for?" He stood for economic and political democracy. Today, Democrats would be more credible if they followed Shanker's tough-liberal path.

Q: You call Shanker "the George Washington of the teaching profession" and say he made teachers' unions the most powerful force in education. But don't a lot of people now say unions are the most powerful obstacle to real reform?

A: Teacher unions are by no means perfect, but it's important to remember what life was like before Shanker and his colleagues organized teachers in the early 1960s. When Shanker began teaching in New York City in the 1950s, teachers were paid less than those who washed cars for a living. Class sizes were huge. Principals exercised dictatorial control: In Shanker's school, an assistant principal actually used binoculars to spy on teachers from across a courtyard.

FULL story at link.