281 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60631-9
List price: $28

Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that works to largely eliminate governments’ power to influence the affairs of private business. In the name of privatization the goal is to maximize profits—with the vague promise that wealth and prosperity will eventually make their way down to the rest of society. In order to achieve this end, standards such as a minimum wage, job security, health insurance, environmental protections, and collective bargaining rights are replaced with an unrestricted flow of production and trade, and a global division of labor.

Over the past 30 years, within the growing dominance of this economic logic, the labor movement has taken a serious beating. This is in part due to the assault from the right, especially since the Reagan era in the U.S., but it is also because of union collaboration with capital during this age of rapid technological transformation and globalization. Unfortunately, organized labor has yet to adequately address the new strains of capitalism and the emerging character of intellectual labor that is shaping industrial production and social services such as public education. Working from a conception of social class that equates power with consumption and standard of living, unions generally miss the boat on contemporary problems faced by workers, especially their diminishing power to influence the workplace, let alone domestic and foreign policy. It’s imperative that Labor moves beyond concerns over salaries and benefits, and encourages its membership to ask critical questions not only about the basic needs of workers, but also the specific needs of their constituents, and more so, the larger social, political, and economic logic that has shaped a new labor process.

Under assault by neoliberal forces, globally educators and their unions continue to lose power and focus. Meanwhile, in the U.S. for example, public schools are increasingly controlled by private interests such as publishing, food, and pharmaceutical companies, for-profit education management organizations, and corporate lobbyists. The privatization and commercialization of this institution has been engineered in the U.S., in large part behind closed doors, by a handful of anti-labor corporate executives, politicians, and media moguls who have already profited enormously from the over $600 billion-a-year education industrial complex.

The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions: Stories for Resistancetakes up the problem of neoliberal influence on public education, and provides tangible examples of reconciling this dire state of affairs; examples worthy of recontextualization and critical appropriation. Assembled by Mary Compton, the former President of the UK National Union of Teachers, and Lois Weiner, a scholar who has done a great deal of research on urban teacher education in the U.S., the book is subdivided into six sections: Part I: Neoliberalism, Teachers, and Teaching: Understanding the Assault, Part II: Neoliberalism’s Global Footprint, Part III: The Need for Unions to Defend Public Education, Part IV: Teaching, a Profession under Attack, Part V: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and Teacher Unions, and Part VI: Going on the Offensive.

This collection of essays by union leaders, teachers, and activists from around the world effectively uses personal testimony, empirical work, and critical analysis, as the authors expose how educators, their unions, and the general public can take back control of these vital institutions. Providing vivid illustrations of labor struggles in education in the U.S., Mexico, Denmark, the UK, China, Australia, Namibia, India, and South Africa, is particularly revealing given that some of these countries have been far more successful in organizing elements of the professional/managerial class in their critique of capital, and in demanding a stronger welfare state that can protect the rights of workers and ensure that the spirit of civic mindedness and responsibility be a key component of public education. In fact, this book is a must read for anyone interested in making schools democratized institutions that have the collective protection they need in order to be fundamental places for preparing students and educators for the socio-economic and human rights challenges of the 21^st century.

Recommended Further Reading

Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies.   (May, 2008).  Volume 6, No. 1.  http://www.jceps.com/   (International articles on Neoliberalism and education).

Harvey, David (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.