A Teacher Unions Essay

Education has been a topic of controversy for many years now, and will continue to be for years to come. The modern American society is best defined by its education. A good part of the average person’s life is spent at school, going to school, and paying for school. However, even though education is so obviously very important, there are many groups in America that are getting shorted. The Native Americans are a key group that has struggled the most. The largest obstacle they face is lack of proper education. The standard educational practices being used for the instruction of Native American peoples are not effective. There are many pieces to this road-block, and many solutions. This can be rectified by having more culturally

The NEA and the AFT represent millions of teachers throughout the country. Moe indicates that teachers unions are known has political powerhouses which contribute millions of dollars to campaign contributions and lobbying. Fortune Magazine has consistently ranked National Education Association in the top 15 of its Washington Power 25 list for influence in the nation’s capital. The American Federation of Teachers along with the National Education Association has given more than $60 million combined in campaign contributions over the last 20 years (Moe 267). Ballot initiatives that are created in to order to begin school reform usually are defeated because their huge sums of moneys that come from these unions in order to defeat a ballot that can jeopardize a teacher’s job. Let’s keep in mind that unions are designed to protect the interest of the teachers, unions are not designed to help the interest of children. The unions use this money mostly to demand special interest for the teachers, such as imposing a structure at the workplace giving teacher’s rights and restricting managerial control. Teacher unions are by far the most powerful forces in American education and use their power to promote their own special interests at any expense.

In 1820, the United States made plans for a large scale system of boarding and day schools Noriega, 377). These schools were given the mission to, "instruct its students in 'letters, labor and mechanical arts, and morals and Christianity;' 'training many Indian leaders'" Noriega, 378). In the case of boarding schools, Native American children would be forcibly stripped from their homes as early as five years old. They would then live sequestered from their families and cultures until the age of seventeen or eighteen (Noriega, 381). <br><br>In 1886, it was decided, by the United States federal government that Native American tribal groups would no longer be treated as 'indigenous national governments.' The decision was made, not by the conjoint efforts of the Native American tribes and Congress; but, by the "powers that be" the United States Legal System. This self-ordained power allowed Congress to pass a variety of other laws, directed towards, assimilating, Native Americans, so that they would become a part of "mainstream white America" (Robbins, 90)<br><br>By this time the United States Government, had been funding over a dozen distinct agencies, to provide mandatory 'education' to all native children aged six through sixteen. Enrollment was enforced through leverage given by the 1887 General Allotment Act, which made Natives dependent on the Government for

Colorado is one of nine states in which local school boards have latitude and discretion regarding whether to recognize unions or other organizations as exclusive representatives of employee groups. Of Colorado’s 178 school districts, currently 39 are known to have one or more collective bargaining agreements. The industrial labor model is used in these 39 districts to negotiate education employee pay, benefits, and working conditions, in addition to various union perks and

An advocate for Indian education, Henry Roe Cloud wrote, “Is the Indian a ward of the government or a citizen? What are his rights and duties? . . . [He] must be trained to grapple with these economic, educational, political, religious and social problems” (59, 60). Cloud challenged the American educational system by rhetorically questioning the meaning of Indian citizenship and campaigning for more Indian societal responsibilities. In the Society of American Indians' (SAI) Quarterly Journal , progressivist Carlos Montezuma wrote, “Reservations are prisons where our people are kept to live and die, where equal possibilities, equal education and equal responsibilities are unknown” (93). In Indian schools, children were not even allowed to speak their native language for fear that they might return to their savage ways. Essentially, American Indians only wanted equal rights and equal citizenship; they wanted Euro-Americans to stop treating them like lower-level beings. But Euro-Americans continued their quest to mother the “savage” race by assimilating and converting Indians.

In the beginning, the Federal Government and the Plains Nations both thought that adding schooling to the treaties that they were establishing in the 1870’s would be a good idea, but both had different reasonings. The Plains Nations wanted their youth to learn the skills of the society established by strangers and to learn how to survive. When the British North American Act of 1867 and the Indian Act of 1876 were both passed, the government was required to provide education for Indigenous children and ways to help them integrate into Canadian society. The government’s plan was to pursue the schooling as a way of making the Indigenous people economically self-sufficient, but it’s underlying agenda was to lessen the dependency of the Indigenous on the government’s money. The government decided to collaborate with the Christian missionaries to help encourage the self-sufficiency and the conversion to christianity through the educational policy that was later developed in in the 1880’s.

On the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus, a strike is being held by the Non-Tenured Faculty Coalition, which is an established union consisting of 500 non-tenured faculty members. The group of lecturers, researchers, clinical professors, etc. arose as a result of their short contracts and the University’s refusal to negotiate their terms.

On September18th, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to end its strike. After seven days of rumbustious protects, the CTU accepted the suggestions made by the city of Chicago. And there are many things we can think about through this strike.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) was founded in April 1916 by eight local teachers in Winnetka, Illinois. The union began to rise and drew more members during World War I when school boards were pressuring and intimidating teachers to resign from the union. From this time, the union fought for tenure laws and academic freedoms of teachers whose belief were investigated, following the “Red scare” hysteria. Fast forward to the 21st century, now governed by elected officers and delegates to the union’s biennial convention, the AFT represents about 80,000 early childhood teachers and 250,000 retiree members. The national union represents 1.6 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel;

Commonly referred to as the American Indian boarding schools, these schools came into existence in the late eighteenth century but later experienced increased presence in the Indian American community during the nineteenth century (Judy & Bennett,1986). Indigenous peoples view the introduction of residential schools as one of the most painful chapters in the history of their culture. Several studies carried out a by anishanaabe affiliated outfits have indicated that

The whole reason for creating these schools in the 1870's was to "assimilate" Indians into our culture, to force them to abandon their

In this article, it discusses how teachers’ unions in Ontario being decidedly non-activist and rarely giving any voice heard about the union right. Teachers’ unions had pushed away from supporting themselves with other unionized workers and had refrained from employing of labour to bring to their members. The sudden growth in teachers’ union strength during the late 1960s and early 1970s resulted in the attempt to contain teachers’ forcefulness. In response, union leaders turned to mobilize their membership and to be heard without giving in to

Unions provide lawyers to teachers when necessary and advocate for safe working conditions. They also advocate for appropriate professional development. What they can’t do, however, is stop a district from de-tenuring and firing a teacher, provided the school’s administration and Board of Education have done their due-diligence to document infractions and don’t pass on an incompetent or dangerous teacher with a letter of recommendation simply to eliminate a problem. This side of the story is rarely discussed alongside the power of the unions and the public is left with only one part of the picture: that the union is solely at fault.” (Goldstein,

In this time of increased expectations and decreased funding, schools are under fire more than ever to produce results. In an effort to produce these results, schools are being asked to examine all of their practices and to revamp the system. Certainly, as part of this exploration process, teachers’ unions and the system for collective bargaining has undergone intense scrutiny. What use to be considered the standard for teachers, joining the union, has now become more of a choice and in some districts an unavailable option. In contradiction, some other districts have move to a non-right-to-work policy where teachers are required to join the union, although most allow for teachers to opt out of the union’s political agenda.

I am not a huge fan of unions myself. Part of it is because I am on the Human Resource Management side of things. The other part of it has to do with the instability of it. Although I work for a union, I have seen the process of going through a contract. A lot of the things we are fighting for don’t seem fair to us, because everyone always wants more. Employees want more money, more free time, more chances of getting a promotion, amongst many other things. I believe that everyone should work their hardest to move up in a company, regardless of seniority, age, race, ethnicity etc. If you want something bad enough, you will work hard to achieve it. I feel that unions, although sometimes are good, make it so that the employees protected by the union can get things handed to them. Throughout my education I have been taught to treat employees fairly and to make sure you aren’t breaking any rules or laws, or to play favorites. Although generally easier said than done, it can happen. Like I have previously stated, employers and managers are getting smarter, and learning