Q&A: Dana Goldstein, Author, 'The Teacher Wars'
by ERIC WESTERVELT
September 06, 2014 8:43 AM ET
I recently came to the education beat after spending the better part of a decade as a foreign correspondent, mainly reporting on conflicts in the Middle East.
Shortly after turning in my Kevlar vest for chalk dust I was struck by how intensely polarized the education reform debate is in America. I'd traded real mortar fire for the rhetorical kind: Man the barricades, incoming Common Core!
Which raises the question: How did we get here?
Fortunately, that's the topic of a new book from journalist Dana Goldstein's: The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession.
In it, she explores the origins of today's debates and the key players involved in them, from embattled union leaders to wealthy philanthropists to activists concerned about poverty and inequality. Goldstein argues that, if you look back a century ago, you find a very similar cast of characters.
The feminization of the teaching corps in the early 19th century built on the idea that teaching should be a kind Christian missionary work for women.
The rise of unions in the 20th century in reaction to political witch hunts, sexism, and absurdly low pay.
Goldstein's policy recommendations for today, including ways of increasing race and gender diversity in the classroom; reducing the role and impact of testing; eliminating some union protections that were needed decades ago but that, she argues, thwart innovation and change today.
Goldstein has been an associate editor at The Daily Beast and The American Prospect, and she's contributed to The Nation, Slate, TIME, and other publications. The Teacher Wars is her first book.
What are the origins of teachers' unions? And what kinds of opposition have they faced?
Unions start in about 1897 and gather steam throughout the first half of the 20th century. And we see a lot of sort of ridiculous, politicized attacks on teachers at that time: Whether it's firing a teacher because she's pregnant, or firing a teacher who opposes IQ testing of kids, and then using those IQ test scores to track kids into either vocational or academic curricula. Or these witch hunts in which tens of thousands of American teachers lose their jobs either because they are Communists or have expressed some interest in communism.
There's a huge sense that there's this red menace and that teachers are going to be indoctrinating children with these far left-wing beliefs. And we see teachers being asked to sign or swear loyalty oaths to the United States government ... thousands of teachers do lose their jobs across the country because they do take a stance that they are unwilling to really perjure themselves. And a lot of reasonable people look at these witch hunts and say teachers' unions make sense. Teachers need someone to defend them. They need an organization to defend their interests.
This grew out of a real problem — that teachers were being pressed for political and social conformity?
That's true, and another thing that was happening is that the profession was subjected to a lot of sexist pressures as well. In a city like Chicago at the turn of the century, 97 percent of the teachers are female. And school reformers are attempting to lower female teachers' pay in order to pay male teachers more, because they perceive that it's a problem that so many Q&A: Dana Goldstein, Author, 'The Teacher Wars' : NPR Ed : NPR:
