My site meter has had a big surge in the last couple of weeks because of a July, 2009 post: “NEA’s Top Attorney, Bob Chanin, Says NEA’s First Goal Is To Advance And Protect Teacher Rights,” in which I show a you-tube video of Chanin making a speech to an NEA assembly as he retired after 41 years of service.

I was so amazed at what this man admitted in public that I transcribed several key paragraphs. In the speech, Chanin vigorously defended the fact that NEA is first and foremost a union.

It’s fair to see Ohio’s SB5 as, in part, a push back to the actions and attitudes of the teacher unions of Chanin’s era. If SB5 is approved, it will be a huge blow to unions. If the requirement for nonunion workers to pay “fair share” is abolished, then union membership will likely be decimated. A lot of teachers will respond to their loss of income, caused by SB5, by keeping the $700 or so in union dues and not joining the union.

OEA and NEA likely will respond to the approval of SB5 is a totally reactive way, but, in time, if SB5 withstands a public referendum, teacher unions will need to craft a proactive response, one based on a thoughtful vision of the future.

Thinking through a thoughtful vision of the future will be the hard part. SB5 is a rejection of old-time teacher unionism. But, because SB5 is also a rejection of the factory model of education and a rejection of the blue colorization of teachers, the approval of SB5, in the long run, will offer an opportunity for teacher unions to remake themselves.

In the long run, SB5 could result in creating a lot of new opportunities for the teaching profession, particularly if teachers would have an “Education Association” that could effectively lobby on their behalf.

On the other hand, unless teachers have effective leadership and representation, SB5 could result in a rapid acceleration of the loss of professional responsibility of teachers.  The temptation for the management of schools and the management of educational systems, once they are empowered with dictatorial control, will be to find ways to marginally raise test scores by imposing ever stronger systems of control.

Can teacher unions somehow envision a future of teacher professionalism and can these unions fulfill a positive role in bringing that future to reality? SB5, I’m wondering, may be an impetus to teacher unions to somehow morph away from an industrial type union — one that sees teachers, basically, as factory workers — and to grow into a meaningful “Education Association” of professionals, who collaborate together to advance the profession and who work together to advance the opportunities open to teaching professionals.

The reason a society seeks to educate its young is based on the reality: it is in youth that the future of our society rests. Every primitive tribe has an educational program for its young with the purpose of strengthening and perpetuating the tribe.

Our tribe, our republic, seeks to educate our young through an elaborate and expensive government “educational system” that, overall, is ineffective. The premise of my book I am researching, “Kettering Public Education In The Year 2030,” is that, through a grassroots effort, Kettering, over time, transforms its system of public education and, by 2030, becomes a model system for the entire nation.

It is interesting to think that a successfully transformed system would be an invention widely copied.

The first step in building a system is to have a clear understanding of the aim of the system. We’ve created monsters called corporations whose sole aim is to make money and who see no responsibility to defend or promote the common good of society. What were we thinking? The creation and feeding of these monsters makes no sense if our aim truly is, “liberty and justice for all.”

The challenge I’ve made to myself is to write a book in which I imaging a future where Kettering, through a vitalization of its democracy, determines to create a system of education centered on preparing youth to advance the aim of “liberty and justice for all.” It would be fun to try to write a script of how a community could arrive at such a consensus.

The fun part of imagining this future will be to create a system design that seems feasible. I have in mind that readers of my book should be as Gene Wilder with hair on end, in “Young Frankenstein” shouting, “It. Could. Work.”

The structure of the system should demonstrate its aim. I’m thinking our system of public education should be an entrepreneurial system of some type — designed to empower students as individuals and teachers as professionals. It’s structure should be one that empowers community and cooperation and, at the same time, empowers each individual.

In the book I am writing, I imagine that at some point, a majority of the Kettering Board agrees on the aim of the Kettering system and agree to to fund an RFP that would pay chosen applicants to research, write and defend their plans for how Kettering might best achieve that aim. These plans would somehow be evaluated in a process I’ve not yet thought through, but I’m sure could fill a book. I want to write a more detailed RFP, but here is a rough draft of part of the information such an RFP might contain:

Request for Proposal

The Kettering Board is looking for proposals of what a transformed system of public education in Kettering, Ohio should look like.

Kettering seeks to create a system of education centered on: Preparing youth to advance the aim of “liberty and justice for all.”

Kettering believes that the structure of the system should:

• Demonstrate its aim.
• Empower students as individuals and teachers as professionals.
• Create community and encourage cooperation.

Resources:

• Administrative support
• Use of all the gorgeous facilities available in Kettering
• $10,000 per year per student

Interesting that The Columbus Dispatch used the headline “Big Savings” to show how SB5 would impact Ohio. From the standpoint of teachers, firefighters, police and other government workers, approving SB5 will result in a “Big Reduction In Pay.” The report cited by The Dispatch indicates that on average, approving SB5 would mean that each state employee would lose $3,739 in pay each year.

The report explains that if SB5 was already in effect, the state would save $216,871,804 — about 2% of the expected $8 billion shortfall this year — and it projects this savings to the 300,000 employees of school boards and local communities.  From the report:

“Given that the basic elements of state and local government union contracts are generally in line with one another, multiplying the state’s per-employee savings of $3,739 [$216,871,804 /58,005] by the approximate number of local employees [300,000] results in an estimated savings for local government of $1,121,700,000.”