Back to the July, 2008 issue

Teachers need strategy and vision in fight for public education,
says teacher

Jinny Sims
Photo/British Columbia Teachers Federation

By Bob Lee

CHICAGO—As in many U.S. cities, teachers and parents in Chicago are involved in a struggle with the corporations and city government over the ongoing efforts to close some schools and to privatize others. Against the backdrop of this escalating assault on public education – and a related war going on within the Chicago Teachers Union – some Chicago teachers, organized as the Caucus of Rank and File Educators, invited Jinny Sims to Chicago to address them. Sims, of Vancouver,  British Columbia, is past president of the British Columbia Teachers Federation (BCTF).

After the Liberal Party was elected to power in British Columbia in May 2001, it began a continuing assault on public education that included tax cuts that would undermine funding for education, school closings, the destruction of teachers’ collective bargaining rights, and moves to strip teachers of their professional authority. In October 2005, the BCTF began a historic strike in defiance of the law and in support of their rights as workers and the right of their students to a quality public education. The two-week strike got support from students, parents, other unions and teachers across Canada, as well as international support. The teachers went back to work after two weeks, having won much of what they struck for and vowing to continue fighting.

In Chicago on June 7, Sims told a group of teachers, “The state of public education is at a crossroads around the globe,  not just in the U.S. All around the world the corporate agenda is about privatization of schools and the safety net, about the dismantling of systems to help those who  can’t just look after themselves. It’s not only about education, but education is a prime target, for the very reason it was put into place – public education is the cornerstone of democracy.”

She noted that the corporations push standardized testing because the test results can be used to attack the professionalism of teachers and justify replacing public schools with charter and private schools. Such testing also “does damage to the learning process, “said Sims. “Critical thinking, the arts, the liberal side of education, gets destroyed.”

Sims said the BCTF strike got broad backing because the union spent several years before the strike building a base of public support, especially among parents. “Parents are your biggest ally and resource. We invited them to meetings. We told them what was happening [in education]. “She said the BCTF strategy also had legal, electoral and political components. The union also spent considerable time consulting with and mobilizing its members to prepare them for political action, said Sims.

She said unions need to fight for social justice around such issues as homelessness and poverty, and she stressed the importance of having a broader vision of the struggle and what’s at stake. “You need to build a civil society movement…Democracy is at stake. We have to advocate for publicly funded public education…If you don’t act, you’re not going to have the America you have today or would want for your children.”

Sims also urged the teachers to “talk to your members, find out what kind of a union they want, and have them help you build it.”

In an interview, Sims told the People’s Tribune that the corporations are pushing the agenda of privatizing schools now because “It’s all about profit, and control and power. At one time we used to have national agendas, and now we have transnational agendas that are being driven not by our politically elected people, but by corporations that are funding a lot of our politicians who are in power, and their goal is profit. And what stands in the way is an educated citizenship, and what stands in the way is that last frontier that they haven’t conquered yet, which is that K-12 student. So there’s a need to intrude into that and grab our kids at an earlier and earlier age.”

Regarding the relationship between education and democracy, she said, “There is a direct link between an informed democracy and an educated population. If you keep the population so busy fighting little skirmishes and working two and three jobs that pay a minimum wage  that’s not a living wage, and you don’t give the children of the poor an education opportunity where they actually are critical thinkers and question the decisions that are made around them, the elite gets to rule, and gets to hold on to the power. It’s about the distribution of wealth and the minority having a need to hold on to that wealth for themselves .”