Education, Chicago, and an Excellent Speaker!

Today we had a talk from a gentleman called Matt (an organiser at the Chicago Teachers Union) who talked to us about how Chicago schools are struggling against proposed changes from the “Pioneers Project” put forward by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and the CEO of the Board of Education. This was an incredibly interesting and insightful talk on a subject that I must admit I had very little interest in to begin with. I am afraid to say the Koval readings set this week inspired me very little, but after having the talk today I found them to be a lot more fascinating. No doubt this was due to listening to somebody who was evidently very passionate about his cause. 

I was astounded to hear the word ‘propaganda’ used so often during the talk about the current education issues, but after having it explained to us it started to make sense. He spoke about how the Board of Education were targeting parents and telling them to “persuade your teachers” to vote for the longer school day, and teachers were all for this, but they felt threatened by this tactic because it neglected their issues about a) what to do with this time and b) the issues surrounding not being paid for the 30% extra class time they would be spending and meant they were scared to speak up. However he spoke very inspirationally about how parents came together to support the teachers and their endeavours. 

It was also very interesting because I felt I could relate this issue somewhat to the ‘machine politics’ that we both read and talked about in class today (that, as opposed to the Koval reading, was INCREDIBLY interesting to read). He told us how ‘waiver votes’ were supposed to be used to allow schools to vote for or against the question of extending the school day, with the promise of $1300 for the teacher and $150,000 for the school. This made me think of the patronages and bribes used in Chicago politics of Richard J Daley, and also the way in which the Mayor and Board of Education bypassed the community meetings and discussions normally expected by the teachers union to go into deciding such issues. This reminded me of the ‘boss man’ who headed the top of the machine politics and was able to dictate what happened in city politics. Although this was not an example of a political machine I believe it was certainly comparable and not a little bit surprising in the 21^st century. 

I was very encouraged to hear that the teachers unions and parents were able to make differences in particular schools, especially because in England at the moment Parliament is trying to encourage local councils to transform failing secondary schools into ‘academies’ – something comparable to Charter schools here, and nobody wants them. I know that the teachers at my old secondary school are campaigning against the changes and I really do hope they succeed in the same community manner that schools have in Chicago.