[WS:] Yes and no. On the one hand, the school "reform" crowd touts concern for children as justification of their effort to undermine public education, but on the other hand - the NEA-speak liberally uses concern for children to defend teachers against "reformers." That reminds me of the Polish Solidarnosc tactic to use party speak (proletariat, socialism, yada yada yada) to defend the right of workers to organize. It did not work not because of the deficiency of the rhetoric, but because in the end rhetoric does not matter - it all boils down to how many divisions the pope has.
For that reason, I lost interest in what is called "theory" - I see it it as an attempt to use words instead of divisions to conquer an enemy, if only symbolically. In other words, theorizing lost its explanatory function and became reduced to phatic expressions covering up the total lack of power to stand up to the bosses. Because all that matters is the capacity to stand up to the bosses, whoever they are - if you start theorizing the bosses' power, you already lost some ground, and the more you theorize the more ground you keep losing.
For the same reason, I am a little more optimistic about the prospects of public school teachers - they simply have more forces on the ground - 36.8% of the public sector (and 42.2% of local government employees) is unionized vs. 7.6% of the private sector ( http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf). Afai, NEA is very active in endorsing political candidates to local governments (where most of the battles over education are fought) and that endorsement matters quite a bit - at least in the DC area. the ex DC mayor Fenty lost mainly because his mignon Michelle Rhee pissed off teachers' unions. Of course, they face very powerful enemy, but that is yet another reason why teachers' union should receive unconditional support of everyone considering him/her self progressive, anti-capitalist or left of the center. The public sector, especially public schools (but do not forget the police and fire fighters) is the only remaining sector with a meaningful degree of unionization - if public sector unions fall, nothing will stop the deluge of business fascism.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Wojtek
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