NYC Educator: The UFT and Learned Helplessness

NYC Educator: The UFT and Learned Helplessness:

The UFT and Learned Helplessness

A colleague of mine told me yesterday about an experiment in which dogs were shocked when they tried to leave their cages. After a while, their cages were left open and the dogs didn't leave anymore. She said it was called "learned helplessness." It sounds like a fair description of the 83% of our colleagues who can't be bothered voting against our autocratic and inept leadership. Why bother? The same people always get elected anyway.

I vote every chance I get, and I can't think like that. But I get the strong impression leadership is fine with it. The very first question at the DA when they were pushing the contract was something like gee, Mike, I love standing here taking in your wonderfulness and by the way, what happens if we vote no? The answer was a straight appeal to fear. We'll have to wait in line behind 150 unions and we won't get anything at all. Scary, huh? Maybe we shouldn't try to get out of this cage. Who knows what lurks out there? They toned it down a bit for last night's post-webcast tweet, but here it is again:

Screw the ATR teachers. Who cares if they get second-tier due process? Who cares if there's some vague agreement about health savings? It doesn't matter to me that UFT leadership has backed down from its promise that costs won't go up, and that my whopping 2% raise could get eaten up in fees in arbitration. I can't think about that. It's too scary!

I want to get my 18%, years and years from now, if a safe doesn't fall on my head between now and retirement, and if some future mayor NYC Educator: The UFT and Learned Helplessness: