I actually ignored everything you said before you used that last but, so this was a good entry. We do pay dues, and yet the younger teachers get put to the wayside because they say we won't stay. that's unfortunate. With conditions like this though, who wouldn't?
Yet Randi has put into play yet another committee to decide on this issue. Of course she will control the outcome (Outer Limits style).
I have no doubt that the decision will benefit her career (and that of her closest Hacks).
A commitee? She doesn't know what this mayor has been doing for 6 years?
Probably because she's the one who's helped him do it.
You've been tagged for a Teacher Meme at http://mentortexts.blogspot.com/...ching-
meme.html.
ENJOY!
I knew that their numbers were on the rise, but I had no idea that the majority of teachers has less than 5 years in. I didn't feel totally confident in my classroom until year 5, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.
Is this the legacy that Bloomklein wants? A legion of inexperienced teachers who, just at the time they are becoming effective, pick up and leave the system?
You gotta love mayoral control. Thanks Mike. Thanks Randi.
Weingarten's real job is to distract, deflect and control the labor movement in NYC (like did she really want the TWU to win their strike?) and in the nation. Corporate and certain political interests could not find a better person to sell and execute their plan. She is the master of deflection and deception.
No one should be fooled that she is somehow incompetent or bamboozled by BloomKlein or Eli Broad or the Clinton/Democratic party interests which include Green Dot's Steve Barr. She is the perfect agent.
In NYC it has been a corporate-style takeover. An extreme historical analogy would be that of Pol Pot (the genocide of Cambodia, that tried to wipe the slate clean and start the Zero Year), where there were mass firings in the Board of Ed (new DOE). The belief being; if you were part of the old system, you had nothing to offer. Historical/institutional memory counted for nothing.
Chancellor Joel Klein also used public relations techniques with those he couldn’t outright dismiss. He visited our school, Murry Bergtraum High School, shortly after regime change in 2001 with a “town hall meeting”. It was run Bush-style, no questions taking by the Chancellor; one-way communications. Then they broke up the meeting into focus groups of parents and teachers. In these breakout sessions DOE underlings listened and took notes like they were interested in what we had to say. Nothing ever came of our comments; no analysis or reporting back. It’s like they took our feedback, and with our backs turned, chucked it into the garbage.
Things have been run that way ever since. Principals now look over their shoulders in fear, as managers do in the corporate world, for who is going to get the axe next. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Klein have a mechanistic and reductionist view of education. That is, you can micromanage and script teachers, whose measure of success can totally be assessed by the standardized test scores of their students. With the weakening of worker rights via the worst union contract for teachers in the UFT’s history, there has been mass demoralization of educators, while parental involvement in activities in our school has plummeted.
Such management style comes from the Theory X view of human motivation you will find in the organizational theory literature. In the early 20th century a social scientist named Taylor developed a theory premised on the belief that workers were basically lazy and stupid. They responded only to external motivations- rewards or punishments. Hence we have the mayor’s “merit pay” for teachers and “accountability” for students that makes learning not fun but serious business, supporting the “feel bad” education environment. Why else would Klein recruit the likes of Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, who boasted of creating a climate of fear for his employees, to set the standard of leadership for the DOE’s principals' institute? Mayor Bloomberg demonstrated just how committed he was to an openness to ideas by creating the Panel for Educational Policy, only to fire some of them when they were going to rule against his anti-social promotion scheme. That’s the kind of bureaucracy management we used to see in the old Soviet Union and dovetails with the poisonous pedagogy of the No Child Left Behind Act. At least with the old Board of Education, there were some members you could reach and convince to advocate for your school or a special program you were involved in. They didn't view veteran teachers a pariahs but conveyers of experience and institutional memory. Now there’s an unaccountable corporate bureaucracy in the DOE, wanting to implement the Zero Year.
On the other side of the spectrum Theory Y states that people have an inherent tendency for growth and creativity. This theory came out of the humanist school of psychology. It’s the premise this teacher operates on in his class. Democracy is taught as a value in and of itself; that the exercise of freedom allows one to create meaning and engage in and shape societal change as a natural right. The primary accountability is to oneself, premised on the view of Socrates that, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Only an educational system true to the ideals of democracy, where individuals take responsibility for their freedom; to learn what they will and how they will, with the guidance of a teacher who has only the student’s interest in mind, not a salary increase, can serve a free society. Such a system will put the students, teachers, parents and local administrators as equal partners in the driver’s seat with the standards of success to be determined by and for the these stakeholders.
Albert Einstein, a charter member of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “It’s the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” Einstein had the audacity to consider that the motivation for learning could be intrinsic and that teachers should become expert at nudging it and creating opportunities for such joy to come alive and grow. Our educational systems must become democratic and not remain bureaucratic to nurture such joy. Corporate dictatorial bureaucracy is to joy of learning as a straight jacket is to dance. Bloomberg's experiement is a failure, it's time for something different.
John Elfrank-Dana
UFT Chapter Leader
Murry Bergtraum High School
http://laborslessons.blogspot.com
First time I ever heard Pol Pot being described as "corporate".
I know Bloomie is a cause, legitimate, of anger here, but I think genocidal metaphors and hyperboles of any kind are totally out of place.
Bloomie, Klein and teachers and parents are advesaries not enemies in the sense of those who killed millions or brought down the Towers or any other historical analogy.
And I find it hard to understand how a poster who seeks to instill the ideals of democracy in students could countenance such analogies, let alone use them.
As for Jack Welch. I wouldn't want to work for him, but some friends have/ While he boasted about climate of fear, actually he used the phrase creative anxiety, he also lavishly rewarde those who met expectations. The problem for Klein and Bloomie is that they can create a climate of anxiety, but have no power to reward any of us in any meaningful manner. Bonuses, if they were given, would be insignificant, and I believe immoral. We work for the public not the shareholders. When the sharehoders do well it's right to reward those who made it possible. There are no profits in public service to divide among the staff. It comes from the taxpayers in the form of higher gov't spending. To treat paying taxpayers in the same way as dividend receiving shareholders is ridiculous.
Oh, and Jack Welch may not be the guy I invite for dinner, but he's not Pol Pot either.
I guess I needed to make it clear that the Zero Year analogy was not meant to be a total analogy. Let me spell it out for you.
Also, corporate institutions are fascist in structure; and there's a lot of similarity between fascists and communists. While certainly Bloomklein aren't going to kill people (again, I guess I have to be clear about that), their values are anything but democratic, but are more about power and control. That permits them do fire people (kill them professionaly?).
Sorry you got sidelined with the provocative analogy. What did you think about the Theory X v. Theroy Y analysis? That's the heart of the post.
John
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