Lessons for Wisconsin From the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University

With the state legislature in Wisconsion occupied and surrounded by thousands of state workers and their supporters, and with schools closed throughout the state because of teachers calling in sick, I cannot help but think of the greatest strike and building occupation in the history of the American labor movement- the Flint Sit Down Strikes of 1936-37. Though the Wisconsin struggle is being led by government workers, and the Flint Strikes involved workers involved in automobile production, both movements took place during the worst economic crisis of their era and were fighting for the same goal- collective bargaining rights for working people through a union of their own choosing- and were much more about dignity and respect than about income.

The Flint Strike, which involved the occupation of 9 General Motors automobile plants over a six week period, transformed the history of the industrial labor movement. During December of 1936, when the first GM plant was seized and occupied, the entire automobile and steel industries in the United States were union free. When the strike was finally settled, both General Motors and United States Steel agreed to bargain collectively with the CIO ( Congress of Industrial Organizations) unions seeking to organize their industries.

The Flint Strike , thought it was precipitated by local conditions- a fierce unrelenting speed up on the GM assembly line , the involvement of a Ku Klux Klan like organization called the Black Legion in suppressing labor unrest in GM plants- was part of a national movement to win bargaining rights for industrial workers. As a result, the Flint workers were supported by the national leadership of the CIO-led by the formidable John L Lewis- as well as their own national union, and numerous leftwing organizations including the Communist Party. Though only GM workers actually occupied the factories, at key points in the strike, thousands of union workers were mobilized to come down from other cities to make sure that right wing Citizens Committees were unable to storm the plants, and that food and medical supplies were delivered to the striking workers. There were also doctors, nurses, lawyers, and journalists who came from all over the country to help the strikers. By the second week of the sit-down strikes, it was clear to everyone involved that this had become a truly national movement

The same dynamic must operate if the Wisconsin movement is to achieve its main goal- removal from the governor’s legislative program of any effort to weaken the bargaining rights of public workers in the state. Unions around the nation who face similar initiatives ( in Ohio, Tennessee and New Jersey) must send delegations to join the occupation and the protests and give whatever financial and legal support is necessary to teachers who are keeping the local schools closed. National union leaders who have a high public profile, people like Richard Trumka and Randy Weingarten, must not only come to Madison to offer their support of the movement, they must head straight to the White House to demand that President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders come out aggressively in support of the Madison movement. Student social justice organizations must send delegations to Madison to join the thousands of students at the state’s public universities who have been a central part of this movement from the beginning.

This movement has to be approached as the single most important labor struggle in the United States in the 21st Century. If the governor destroys collective bargaining for public workers in Wisconsin, you can be sure that similar initiatives will succeed in other states. If he
Is forced to take attacks on collective bargaining off the table by the strength of the protest, it will reinvigorate not only the entire labor movement in the United States, but the movement to prevent Congress and state legislatures from destroying what little of a safety net we have in the United States of America

The stakes could not be higher. So if you are in a union or part of a progressive organization, press your leadership to send people to Wisconsin. Insist your elected representatives pass resolutions in support of the Wisconsin movement. And get ready to fight the same battle in your own state when the time comes

Solidarity Foreover!

Mark Naison
February 18, 2011

The Ugly Underside of School Closings: A Telling Incident

Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University



If you think closing schools for low test scores doesn't hurt children, listen carefully. This morning, at 8 :30 AM I got a panicked call from a dear friend and colleague whose daughter, a special needs child, was auditioning for an arts junior high school in the Bronx. The teacher in charge of auditions told her ( something that the principal later confirmed) that the school didn't take special needs children, no matter how talented, and used reading scores as their primary criteria for admission. They let my friends daughter audition, so as not to hurt her feelings, but made it clear that she had
no chance of getting into the school.

This kind of educational triage, which we already know is widespread at charter schools, is now spreading to schools throughout the system,as the NYC DOE
makes it clear that low test schools will lead to school closings and firings of teachers and principals. If you are a principal, it is simply not in your interest
to take children, who because of developmental issues ( or in some cases poverty and stress) do not score well on standardized tests

So what happens to children like my friend's daughter who is bright, beautiful and talented, but doesn't test well? Is she systematically excluded
from the schools with the most resources, and the best programs and services and shunted to schools that the DOE has marked for closing?

School reformers who enthusiastically endorse school closings, like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee, say they are doing so because they represent "the children."

But which children are they talking about? Certainly not my friends wonderful daughter, and the millions of childrens like her, who mark my words, are
going to be casualties of this misguided movement

Mark Naison
February 12, 2011

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School Reform: The American Version of the BIG LIE

The idea that school reform, rather than progressive taxation, is the key to ending poverty is the American version of the BIG LIE. To paraphrase Tupac ( from Changes) "Instead of a war on Pov-er-ty, they have a war on Teachers, so the Rich Can Ride Free!" The more the economy deteriorates, the more we can see pressure on schools to raise test scores. It will never work, so long as the conditions students live in get more desperate and stressful! Beware the billionaires who finance school reform and the politicians who support it. This movement-truly a fool’s errand- diverts attention from their own responsibility for the catastrophe that has befallen the nation’s poor and working class people!

What’s Love Got to Do With It? Is Test Driven Educational Reform Driving the Joy in Learning from the Nation’s Classrooms.
Dr Mark Naison
Fordham University

Sometime during my childhood, probably before the age of eight, I fell in love with learning new things. Maybe it was the trips to the Bronx Zoo and the Museum of Natural History I took with my parents, maybe it was the explosions I made with my chemistry set ( which today would mark me off as a future terrorist!) maybe it the wonder of reading about dinosaurs and how humans evolved from apes; maybe it was the excitement of memorizing the capitals of every state and the batting averages of major league players, but I became a person to whom the joy of acquiring and make sense of new information was as powerful as my love of food sports and music.

The public schools I went to, though students sat in rows and did more than their share of memorization, did much to encourage the intellectual curiosity of kids like me! There were science fairs and spelling bees, regular trips to zoos and museums, science labs and arts projects and an audio visual squad that allowed its student members, once they were properly trained, show films for the entire school. There were assemblies where we sang and put on plays, regular recess where we played punch ball and Johnny on the Pony, and gym classes where we did calisthenics and played dodge ball. Sure, there were fights with tough kids and bad moments with mean teachers- and I had my share of both- but I loved going to school. So much so that I became a teacher myself, figuring that the best way to keep the joy of learning alive was to share it with future generations of students.

Today, with all the pressure on students to pass standardized tests, and the public humiliation, and possible loss of jobs, that awaits teachers and principals if their students don’t “perform,” I wonder if students who grew up in working class neighborhoods like mine ( Crown Heights Brookyln) are having the love of learning smothered and driven out of them in the schools they are attending? The feedback I am getting from my former students who teach in such schools is not encouraging. Huge amounts of their teaching time is devoted to test preparation, and they are under close and constant scrutiny by school administrators whose own careers are now entirely dependent on student performance. More and more, the principal becomes like a high level college coach whose future employment depends on their won loss percentage, and they pass that pressure on to their teachers and students as surely as those coaches do to their players. What disappears in that situation is joy- joy in playing, joy in learning. Young people who should be experiencing the wonder of discovery are being told, in ways indirect and direct, that the jobs of the teachers and administrators who work with them are dependent on their performance on the tests they are taking. No young person should be subjected to that kind of pressure at age 18, much less at age 8! What you have is a situation where the time and space for creative playful thinking, and experiential learning is being squeezed out of the school culture. School is no longer a place for dreamers, for adventurers, for people who live in a world of the imagination; it is a place for people who dutifully follow orders, and respond to a fear of failure.

Unfortunately, things have gotten much worse since Barack Obama took office and launched “Race to the Top.” Seven years ago, I was invited by a visionary school leader, Julia Swann, into thirteen Bronx elementary schools and middle schools to train teachers to do Oral and Community history projects with their students. Ms Swann had located a two month window of opportunity in the school year where teachers were no longer under pressure to do “test prep” and she thought that community history projects would be something that would energize school communities and get parents more involved in the schools

Ms Swann’s vision proved prophetic! The teachers leaped on the opportunity to bring the history of Bronx neighborhoods to life in the classroom. Students interviewed their parents and grandparents, their teachers, neighborhood merchants and created amazing visual as well as literary records of what they had learned. Some schools had day long oral history festivals, to which the entire neighborhood was invited, which included poster boards, exhibits ( some of near museum quality) journals and newspapers, performances, student made documentary films and food fairs highlighting the cuisines of the different cultural groups represented in the school. One school, PS 140 in Morrisania, created an “old school museum” honoring the cultural and musical traditions of the neighborhood and decided to make community history an integral part of the school culture. Everywhere I went (and I attended events at all 13 schools!) I saw incredible joy on the faces of teachers, students, parents, administrators when they showcased what they had done. There was no pressure to meet an external standard or pass muster with an outside reviewer. Rather, there was the joy of discovering that history lived right among them, in the stories told by the people closest to them, and in the material objects (immigration records, birth certificates, articles of clothing, recipes, records and tapes) that they had preserved. I even wrote a little rap, which I performed at all 13 schools, to honor what had taken place

Region 2 and Network 3
Are Rocking Oral History
Our 13 schools, in the BX
Are using daily life as text


We do food, music and immigration
To show how the Bronx leads the Nation’
With hip hop, salsa and R and B
The Mixing of Cultures is Our Family Tree

Working on this Project, with these remarkable Bronx students, teachers, and administrators, may have been the best single experience in my forty years as a college teachers

Unfortunately, it could never be done today? Why, because there is no longer a two month period in the school year where teachers are free of the pressure of test prep! Now, you are lucky if you could find a WEEK in which classroom learning is not dominated by the pressure of student, teacher and school evaluation.

This, to me is a crime . Not to the children of the wealthy, who go to private schools, or suburban public schools, where the arts and science and creative learning are still integral to the school experience, but to working class kids like I once was who are filled with intellectual curiosity and are having the joy in learning replaced by pressure and stress that is being passed down relentlessly from school administrators to teachers to students.

Make no mistake about it, when we destroy the joy of learning in a large portion of our youth, most of whom are from racial minorities and immigrant backgrounds, we are doing our nation irreparable harm

Will people please wake up and stop this travesty against the young people of our nation. Let students learn, let teachers teach, let the joy return to our schools

Mark Naison
February 5, 2011

New Video From the "Teachers Talk Back Project" Featuring Bronx English Teacher Maria Castillo

Teachers Talk Back: Maria Castillo8 min - 1 day agoUploaded by charliehustleproductyoutube.com
YouTube - charliehustleproduct's Channel

Akua Naru “Gets Acrobatic” and Produces the Most Brilliant Hip Hop Album in the Last Ten Years

An Album Review by Dr Mark “ Notorious Phd” Naison

“There’s no girls in the cipher so I rock solo”

From “The Backflip”

“I can’t relate, nor can I hate, for ways we negotiate, the sexist spaces we navigate”

From “The World Is Listening.”

Imagine a hip hop artist with the flow and dexterity of Rakim, the poetic brilliance of Lauren Hill, and the ability to invoke, through their art, the full weight of Black women’s history the way Nina Simone or Toni Morrison does. That would describe Latanya Hinton, aka Akua Naru, whose album “The Journey Aflame” is the single most important collection of songs on a single hip hop album I have heard in the last ten years. Naru is currently a doctoral student in American Studies in Cologne Germany, but her formative years were spent in Black working class New Haven, a place she returns to with great regularity. When you add to that a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and travels to China and Africa, you have an experience that might bring skepticism from those who feel you have to stay in the hood to cultivate hip hop as an authentic expression of urban art.

But the brilliance of Naru’s lyricism speaks for itself. I have spent two full weeks living with this album, listening to it in my car, in my office, and on my home computer, and am still dazzled by the variety of skills Naru brings to her art, and the power and brilliance of her songs.

There is one song on the album “The Journey” that is such a powerful invocation of the trials of African American women from the first slave ship to the present that it brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. I will use this song in every single African American history class I teach. It manages to condense the experience of Black women from the first slave ship through hip hop’s “video vixens” into four relentless minutes the include some of the most inventive juxtapositions of words and images I have heard in any work of art, musical or literary.

But Naru doesn’t just deal in tragedy. Like MC Lyte, she can “rock the party” and “rock the body” with sounds that will get your butt and shoulders a shaking whether you are in a car, a classroom, or on the dance floor. Naru begins her her album with two songs “The Ride” and “The Backflip” which establish her credentials as a battle rapper. She boats, and backs it up with some sick verses that she can match any male MC, in any place or any era, for speed, flow and inventiveness. As Naru puts it “I’m so competitive my flow ran for President.” These songs represent pure, joyous boasting from a B-Girl posture, a stance Naru earned growing up in a single parent family in Black working class New Haven. Naru grew up around hip hop, inspired by the sounds she heard in every schoolyard and on every street corner, but felt found herself excluded from neighborhood ciphers when men and boys showcased their skills. As a child

“she rocked solo” but now she is ready to show the world she can take on all comers. “ For all of you waiting for hip hop,” she raps, “ she’s here.”

Naru’s stance is that of the B-Girl, competitive, combative, and confrontational, rooted in neighborhood realities, but honed by an acute historical sense and a deep rage at the objectification of Black women’s bodies in mainstream hip hop and in film and advertising. She admits to falling in love, and even to having erotic thoughts, but never constructs herself as seductive in a way that connotes weakness or availability. Her lyrical power and inventiveness never wavers, and she never relinquishes her dignity. She is creating music designed to empower Black women and help them reclaim a place of honor in their community while speaking out in behalf of Black and oppressed people all over the globe. As she sings in “Tales of Men”

“This is for my people, stuck in poverty, all around the World

This is for my people, who be suffering, all around the World

This is for my people, who be fatherless, all around the World”

Despite Naru’s global reach and profound historical sense, she never strays far from working class New Haven. Indeed, her music is as deeply connected to New Haven as Biggie Smalls was to Brooklyn, or Nas’ to the Queensbridge Houses. One incredibly beautiful song, “Nag Champa” invokes visions of Black folks in New Haven coming together in peace and unity on Sundays, even after “another murder on a Saturday night,” “another rape on a Friday night.” “Never Run” is a tribute to her mother, and to other black women, whose husbands left, but who “never ran” in the face of unpaid bills, difficult work, and the trials and tribulations that come with having children. This a woman’s version of “Dear Mama” except that Shari Hinton, Akua’s mother, never wavered, and never broke. It is on her strength that the foundation of Naru’s music is constructed.

Two more sounds, “The Wound” and “The Block” display the different emphases of Naru’s art. The “Wound “ is historical, invoking the ways that black folks have internalized the injuries whites inflicted on them. “Centuries pass the flashbacks still cripple me,” Naru raps. But her greatest anger is reserved for how black folk are treated in popular culture.”Another industry ready to bitch, ho and nigger me.” The song ends with guest artists Bliss the Ambassador saying “We Need Some Healing”

“The Block” is a haunting journey through Black working class New Haven, the donut shops, the bars, the barber shops and beauty parlors, the corner drug deals, the beefs and drive bys, juxtaposed to an extraordinary story of a woman raped and abandoned, claimed by no one, and a description of please shootings of men of color. The images flow in rapid success, all to an almost romantically beautiful studio beat, ending with an incredible saxophone solo.

In all these songs, the background beats are perfectly complimentary, whether they be created electronically, or with live instruments. All of the production was done in Cologne, Germany by people who loved and appreciated the artist and her music. There is not a lose note, not a moment that your attention is diverted from the powerful messages, and the magical lyricism

“The Journey Aflame” is an album you will find yourself coming to over and over again, for inspiration, for comfort, for the rage and strength you need to keep fighting for justice, and for a reminder how history lives in inside of us and must be dealt with if we are to achieve the freedom and peace of mind we seek.

This album will be part of my life for years to come. I hope it will become part of yours

Peace in the Struggle

Mark Naison

Brooklyn, NY

January 21, 2011

A Book Coming Out This Spring that Should Be Required Reading for Anyone Who Cares About Schools and Teaching

As Bad as They Say?Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx
Janet Grossbach Mayer
$16.95
ISBN: 9780823234172Book (Paperback)Fordham University Press, Empire State Editions5 1/2 x 8 1/2150 pagesApril 2011

Quantity:

"Janet Mayer's book is a page-turner about real life in urban classrooms today."—Diane Ravitch, author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education

"Janet Mayer's As Bad As They Say is a brilliant and badly need answer to business minded 'educational reformers' who think that nothing good happened in American education before they took over. The story of a teacher who spent forty years of her life in Bronx public schools, it shows that the love of teachers for their students is the true transformative force in American education, not mindless imposition of standardized tests. Mayer turns her Bronx students, who learn under the most daunting conditions, into heroes, but in the process reminds us that great teachers are motivated by compassion as well as a love of learning. Signficantly, the book ends with a powerful, carefully documented attack on 'No Child Left Behind' a piece of legislation that seeks to render great teachers like Mayer irrelevant and invisible."—Mark Naison, author of White Boy: A Memoir

Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and As Bad as They Say? tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer’s students during her 33-year tenure as a Bronx high school teacher.

In 1995, Janet Mayer’s students began a pen-pal exchange with South African teenagers who, under apartheid, had been denied an education; almost uniformly, the South Africans asked, “Is the Bronx as bad as they say?” This dedicated teacher promised those students and all future ones that she would write a book to help change the stereotypical image of Bronx students and show that, in spite of overwhelming obstacles, they are outstanding young people, capable of the highest achievements.

She walks the reader through the decrepit school building, describing in graphic detail the deplorable physical conditions that students and faculty navigate daily. Then, in eight chapters we meet eight amazing young people, a small sample of the more than 14,000 students the writer has felt honored to teach.

She describes her own Bronx roots and the powerful influences that made her such a determined teacher. Finally, the veteran teacher sounds the alarm to stop the corruption and degradation of public education in the guise of what are euphemistically labeled “reforms” (No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top). She also expresses optimism that public education and our democracy can still be saved, urgently calling on all to become involved and help save our schools.

Janet Grossbach Mayer has just completed her 50th year as an award-winning high school teacher of English and reading. For 45 years, she taught in NYC schools, 33 of them in the Bronx, and for the past 5 years she has been a home instructor for Port Jervis, N.Y., schools.She has no plans to retire.