A Test of Our Character

The sad truth is that the recent announcement of Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein that they were making plans to lay-off close to 15,000 public school educators in September 2009 is quite consistent with the way our schools have been governed these last seven years.

The Bloomberg-Klein vision of education is a technocratic one which sees the world of schools through the prism of numbers — the data which they have made into an educational false idol. This way of looking at teaching and learning makes it possible for the masters of Tweed to “manage” schools from their desktop computers, an indispensable arrangement when one understands that the number of top administrators in the Department of Education who have actual classroom and school experience can be counted on a single hand. Indeed, in its perverse way, the current administration has made the absence of educational experience into a managerial virtue. The less you understand about the actual workings of the classroom and the school, their theory of action goes, the more likely you will take on the infamous educational “status quo,” those “entrenched special interests” of teachers.

So when New York State and New York City proposed slashing a total of $1.5 billion from the 2009-10 budget of our public schools, the technocratic solution is to go straight to an announcement of 15,000 layoffs. A few strokes of the keyboard on budget documents, and the problem is addressed. None of the $900 million plus of savings suggested by the UFT well before this announcement, from a hiring freeze to a moratorium on school-wide bonuses to a retirement incentive, were even considered. Instead, a choice was made to use students and teachers as expendable pawns in the mayor’s political chess game.

Teachers see schools in an entirely different way: education is about relationships, not numbers. The most important relationship, the heart of the educational undertaking, is that of the teacher and the student. Ever since Socrates and Confucius, educators have understood this central truth about we do. It is only through powerful teacher-student relationships that the minds of young people are opened, and they learn how to think critically about the world around them and how to solve problems. Great schools never fit a single mold, but what they all have in common are school cultures that build and sustain such relationships.

When educators hear of 15,000 layoffs, we think immediately about the teacher-student relationships that will be uprooted and destroyed, not only for those young teachers who end up out of a job that has often been their life’s dream, but also for the thousands of others who will be bumped from school to school. We contemplate the damage that will be done to teacher-student relationship when class sizes increase at a geometric pace, as high schools teachers begin to see well over 200 students a day. In short, we understand that the numbers translate into educational carnage: the abandonment of a generation of New York City public school students, and the obliteration of a generation of new teachers.

After seven years, the public school educators of New York City understand full well the character of those who lead the Department of Education and have announced these layoffs. We have no right to be surprised when those who have elevated numbers above people, have supported the collection of data over the nurturance of powerful teaching and learning relationships, make the same choice once again. It is who they are.

The unanswered question is who we are. When faced with an announcement that a path of educational devastation is being planned, how will we respond? This moment is nothing less than a test of our character as educators. If we are true to our calling as educators, and if act on the stewardship we assume for the young people in our care when we take on the title teacher, our duty is clear: we must oppose these cuts with all the will and determination we can muster.  We must work for a federal stimulus bill that provides major support for education, we must fight for a state income tax surcharge on the wealthiest New Yorkers to increase state revenues to public schools, and we must battle Tweed to ensure that whatever cuts must be made are targeted away from the classroom. Most importantly, we need every educator, every parent, every trade unionist, and every member of a community organization outside City Hall on Thursday, March 5, protesting these cuts and sending a loud, clear message to City Hall and to Albany that you pursue this educational carnage at your our own political peril.

At the January 30 press conference held by the UFT to protest these cuts, Pashen Hutton from P.S. 36 in Harlem said, “I’m not afraid of Mayor Bloomberg; I’m a kindergarten teacher.” Let’s be a city of Pashen Huttons. Let’s tell the Mayor, the Chancellor and Albany: as teachers, we won’t let you wreck havoc on our school children.

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