-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Mike Beggs Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2011 4:33 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Testing one two three
On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 7:21 AM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> Do you know of any successful boycott in which there was no way of
> witnessing who boycotted and who didn't -- and where the penalties as
severe
> as they could be for isolated individuals boycotting the tests.
It is possible to do an organised boycott of testing - and I agree that that's the only kind that makes sense. In Australia last year the teachers' union threatened a boycott of the NAPLAN national literacy and numeracy standardised tests, and when the government suggested parents could supervise them, the parents' association refused to cooperate.
O.K. The Teachers Union. That would work. I was planning to inquire in my next post on this, _Where_ do the organizers come from? If the Teachers' Union(s) would take this position, you have your organizers -- and of course when a teacher refuses to stay in a room, that's pretty visible. My main objection was to expecting students to boycott. And of course then it would not be a "first step": the first steps were taken about 60 years ago when the teachers''s unons began to gain strength, and the second step would be a year or two of debate inside the unions. The IFT & IEA went along with the legislation which in effect made strikes by the Chicago unions illegal. It would as a next step require a significant revolution inside each one before anyone could think of calling a boycott (or any other militant action).
My skin crawls a bit whenever someone on this list says, in effect, "they" should do something. I don't like calls to action that don't start with "We," the we definitely implying that the I is going to spend time and effort on the action.
Carrol