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Indybay Feature

The war on teachers and the neoliberalism agenda

by Systemic Disorder
The movement for charter schools is not a movement for reforming education, as promoters claim, but rather is naked union-busting.
The Chicago teachers returning to work today earned a victory — not for themselves, but for two important ideas. The first is that dignity and security are not unreasonable for those of us who have to go to work every day. The second is that the job of schools is to build the citizens of tomorrow, not line the pockets of corporate executives and investors.

We can’t understand the reasons behind the “war on teachers” without examining both of these ideas.

An additional message from the Chicago Public Schools teachers’ strike is that democracy and community involvement are indispensable. At almost every demonstration the chant “the people united will never be defeated” is heard, and here we have an example where a significant majority at least were united. The corporate executives salivating over their potential profits, the funders of the charter-school movement seeking more takeovers and, most of all, the willful mayor who expected to steamroll over the teachers each had their agenda stalled.

Not that those powerful people were defeated, nor that the teachers won a total victory. The new contract is a negotiated settlement, with both sides getting something. That is what a “negotiation” is — a compromise by two parties. A “negotiation” is not a dictation imposed by the more powerful party, which seems to be a point of confusion for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. But the very concept of democracy seems to be not well understood by Mayor Emanuel.

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