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Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of some key historic developments in the geographies of neoliberal education policy in North America up to the early 21st Century, providing the necessary background to the city specific case studies in the following chapters. It has four purposes. The first is to provide some historical context with an overview of the development of teacher unionism in North America as it relates to the defining of professional autonomy (section 4.1). Second, I will demonstrate the importance of the particular histories and characteristics of the case studies New York, Mexico City and Toronto as major urban centres for the development of education policy and its diffusion (section 4.2). The third is to demonstrate the existence of a specific community of neoliberal education policy mobility and resistance at the North American continental scale, within the larger global flows of ideas and governance networks (section 4.3). Here I will provide some illustrative examples of education policy movement and convergence across borders within North America since the 1980s. The final section (section 4.4) will survey the experiences of North American teacher organizations and unions of cross border

collaboration on strategy and responses to state policy. These demonstrate diverse tendencies from conservative to radical unionism, and forms from top-level meetings of leaders to horizontal networks with more bottom-up participation. This chapter will introduce the

importance of both structural factors informing distinctive local, regional and national contexts, and the agency of significant organizations and individuals in creating the North American geographies of neoliberal education policy, out of which important common developments can

be identified. As may already be observed, this chapter will move up and down geographical scales, analyzing developments in teacher unions and education systems from the case study cities to the state/provincial and national levels.

4.1: Professional Autonomy and the History of Teacher Unionism: Three Contexts

This section is an overview of the emergence and key developments of teachers’ unions and movements and their relationship to professional autonomy in Canada, the US and Mexico up to the time period covered in the case studies of this dissertation. While distinctive historic trajectories followed in each country, broad parallels in periods of development are made below. We begin with the initial development of public education and formation of teacher organizations in the early 20th Century, follow to their consolidation as important institutions shaping the profession in a context of teacher militancy and the postwar demographic boom, and conclude with the emergence of neoliberal governance, fiscal austerity and an overall shift to the defensive for teacher unions. This sets the context for the current challenges to professional autonomy. 32

Despite many publications on how neoliberal policies have adversely impacted teachers and public education,

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relatively few address teachers’ resistance or analyze teacher unions. The literature has tended to focus on individuals and at the school level, usually due to ethnographic methods, neglecting the role of teachers’ unions at larger scales (Riegel 2003: 109). Studies on teachers’ unions tend to be official histories like OSSTF’s two books which focus on Ontario government policies and responses of the federation leadership (1971; 2005). The best history of the NEA and the AFT up to 1980 remains Murphy’s Blackboard Unions (1992). The Global Assault on

Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions (2008) edited by Weiner and Compton, is an important resource for the

breadth of its cases. Worth Striking For: Why Education Policy is Every Teachers’ Concern (2015) link a critique of contemporary neoliberal policy to teachers’ union struggles, also done by Weiner (2012). Labour geographers Brogan (2013) and Sweeney (2013) are important contributors, focusing on the US and Canada, respectively.

Organizing Dissent by Cook (1996) for the depth she provides on the internal functioning of the CNTE, remains one

of the best books in English not only on the Mexican teachers’ movement, but on the nation’s labour movement. Foweraker (1993) is an important source for the emergence of the CNTE, also covered by journalist and author Monsiváis (1987). Hernandez Navarro, one of Mexico’s foremost journalists on eduction politics is a definitive source on the movement (2012, 2013). No Habrá Recreo: Contra-Reforma Constitucional y Desobediencia

Magisterial (2013) (No Recess: Constitutional Counter-Reform & Teachers’ Disobedience) accounts the policies of

The Foundation of Public Education & Emergence of Teachers’ Unions

At its origins in the late 19th Century, mass public education in Canada and the United States typically gave little recognition of the capacity of teachers, many of whom had limited or no professional training, to interpret the needs of their students. As documented by Ravitch (2000) in New York City’s early schools, methods frequently consisted of rote learning using standard texts in large, crowded classrooms. Few students were expected to achieve more than basic literacy and numeracy. Public education in Mexico expanded rapidly in the 1920s,

following the end of the Revolution. Article 3 of the Mexican Constitution, ratified in 1917 in the midst of the violent upheaval, specified that the public education system would be “free, secular and scientific,” emphasizing a drive at the time to inculcate a humanistic vision of education as 33

an important pillar of national development. It also served to demarcate the autonomy of teachers from the influence of still powerful clerical authorities and local caciques (traditional clientelistic political bosses). Teachers were important actors for the post revolutionary state. In terms of furthering social development, they were among the few federal employees located in every community. They perpetuated official ideology by cultivating a national identity (Torres 1991).

The professional prestige of teachers was heightened by their status particularly in rural communities, as local intellectuals and leaders. As a function of the vast ambitions of the post- revolutionary SEP under Jose Vasconcelos that public education would be the medium for social transformation, combined with the limited resources of the state, teachers were given a broad

The adjective ‘socialist’ was added by the left nationalist president Lazaro Cardenas in 1934, removed by his

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mandate within which they had considerable autonomy. Not only were they to establish schools 34

in rural communities, but to serve as local leaders and organizers. Their formal training followed after the fact. These were the origins of the foundational myths of the Mexican education system of dedicated teachers rooted in communities. They are alternately described as the ‘martyrs’, willing to acquiesce to abysmal salaries and working conditions (Martin 1994). Reflecting the predominantly rural population of Mexico through the first half of the twentieth century and the government’s priority of establishing federal authority across its vast geography, the first

teachers’ colleges in the 1920s opened in Michoacan, Hidalgo, Guerrero, Guanajuato and Puebla, with an emphasis on agricultural training. Rural teachers led many peasant and Indigenous movements, and in the case of Lucio Cabañas, a graduate of the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Guerrero in the 1970s, leftist guerrilla movements (Padilla 2013; Cook 1996: 243). With 35

education authorities lacking capacity to regularly surveil schools, a significant degree of de facto professional autonomy existed for decades in many regions of Mexico, until the introduction of the first national standardized testing system in 1992 (Aboites 2012: 16).

While New York and Ontario’s secondary schools were growing in the 1920s, Mexico’s system of middle schools (equivalent to grades 7-9) was only officially established in 1923. As late as 1958, while NYC high schools enjoyed a reputation as among the best in the US (prior to

Jose Vasconcelos advocated paying rural teachers twice the rate of urban teachers to encourage graduates to leave

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cities, “there is no better training for a young teacher than to discover in the countryside the needs of the school, and to have to improvise their solution.” (quoted in Curiel Méndez 1982: 442) His vision never came to pass. Urban teachers and their schools have historically enjoyed considerably better working conditions and more resources.

Rural normal schools became the spiritual home of the dissident teachers’ movement that coalesced into the

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CNTE. In the 1980s, a third of all teachers in Oaxaca and Chiapas were Indigenous bilingual instructors when the movement emerged and established its stronghold in these states (Solano 2016). They were considered centres of leftist organizing by the Mexican government, according to recently declassified Mexican intelligence agency reports, leading to efforts since the 1960s to restructure or close the schools. They were also viewed with hostility by the official SNTE leadership. Elba Esther Gordillo, SNTE president from 1989 to 2013, described them in 2010 as “guerrilla seedbeds.” (Padilla 2013: 24).

mass expansion in the 1960s), the reappointed Secretary of Education, Jaime Torres Bordet, reported that of every 1000 entrants to primary schools, only 114 graduated (an 88.6 percent drop out rate). Of these 114, 59 enrolled in secondary school, of which only 27 graduated. One in a thousand obtained a university degree (Méndez 1982: 452). Under Torres, the Secretary of Public Education (SEP) focused on retaining students and increasing overall enrolment by rapidly increasing funding for more schools and teachers (though with miserly salaries) in the 1960s and 1970s. Like the US and Canada in these decades, Mexico experienced a baby boom, but the profoundly centralized nature of infrastructure and the postwar ‘economic miracle’ in Mexico City, driven by growing manufacturing industries protected by Import-Substitution policies, led to the zona metropolitana (the contiguous urban area of the Federal District and adjacent municipalities in Mexico State), growing disproportionately from the migration of poor rural families. Mexico City became the preeminent megapolis of the developing world in this period, with its education system expanding apace.

Mexico’s secondary schools doubled between 1964 and 1970 to 4 379, staffed with over 78 000 teachers and attended by 1.2 million students (Cosio 1982: 410). Through the

demographic boom, increased retention and higher graduation rates, secondary enrolment increased 1000% from 1950 to 1970 (Levinson 2001: 27). Secondary school only became compulsory with the General Education Law of 1993 (Brambila 2009: 219). Enforcement was delayed for nearly a decade due to the 1995 peso crisis and an ensuing deep recession (Levinson 2001: 27). Enrolment reached 93.4 percent by 2000, but only 57.3 percent of students graduated (Brambila 2009: 221). Citing government statistics (INEGI) for 2008, Marquez places the secondary attendance rate at 72 percent (2008: 156).

The mass expansion of public education in Canada, the United States and Mexico, was followed by varying approaches to group together teachers. The remainder of this section explores the growth of teacher unionism in this context. In Canada and the US, the dominant trajectory was the establishment of professional associations to regulate its membership, represented by the National Education Association (NEA) in the US (founded in 1857), which included principals and superintendents. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) established in 1916, defined itself as a union and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. It

remained a minor presence outside of its stronghold in Chicago and non-majority unions in New York City, Philadelphia and a handful of other cities. From the outset, responsibility for K-12 public education in the US was the responsibility of local school boards, directed by state governments. Financing was divided roughly evenly between local and state taxes. The Great Society program of Lyndon Johnson in 1964 established a precedent for additional funding from the federal government. However Washington’s intervention in education policy would not be significant until decades later (Murphy 1992: 225; Vergari 2013).

In Canada, K-12 education is constitutionally established as a provincial responsibility without federal intervention, while the balance of finance and governance powers between local and provincial governments was similar until centralization towards the latter in the 1990s (Wallner 2014; Vergari 2013: 232). Teachers’ federations had emerged in every province but Ontario by 1917, where the Federation of Women Teachers’ Association was formed in 1918 36

The Women Teachers’ Association of Toronto formed in 1888. They were the first group in Ontario to pursue the

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distinct occupational interests of teachers as opposed to earlier associations controlled by school board trustees and administrators. Confronted by the opposition as late as the 1950s of male elementary teachers to their struggle for pay equity and to base pay scales on seniority rather than the grade level taught, women teachers opted for a separate gender-based organization until attacks by the Harris government pushed the organizations to merge as the

representing elementary teachers, followed by OSSTF in 1919 and the Ontario Public School Men Teachers’ Federation in 1920. Unlike other provinces where teachers formed one unified federation Ontario teachers were divided between five organizations, also including the 37

Catholic Teachers’ Association for those employed in the publicly funded Catholic school

boards, and an association for the French language public system. None affiliated to provincial or national labour federations. The Ontario Teachers’ Federation coordinated provincial lobbying 38

and represented its five affiliates in pension discussions, but held no formal role in collective bargaining. The Canadian Teachers’ Federation had less power, it was an umbrella organization tasked with international liaisons and limited forms of inter-provincial cooperation. Ontario’s five federations, relatively weak in relation to the provincial government, were strengthened institutionally with the Teaching Profession Act in 1944. This made membership in the

corresponding affiliate and the payment of dues mandatory for all publicly employed teachers. With no provisions for certification, decertification or contestation by another union, it

represented among the strongest institutional language in Canada (Spagnuolo & Glassford 2008: 58-59; Shilton 2012: 224). However, decades more would pass before the federations would take collective action as unions and strengthen the autonomy of the profession.

In Mexico, at the urging of President Manuel Avila Camacho and with the assistance of the government aligned Confederation of Mexican Workers (CTM), an array of regional

teachers’ unions merged into the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) in 1943. Like the CTM and the rest of organized labour in Mexico, the SNTE was rapidly absorbed into the

Except for Quebec and New Brunswick with separate federations for teachers in the English and French boards.

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OSSTF and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association (OECTA) affiliated to the Ontario Federation of

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Labour and the Canadian Labour Congress in the mid 1990s, in the context of significant attacks by the governing Progressive Conservatives on public sector unions.

corporatist political structure of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which through its predecessor parties had governed Mexico since the 1920s. The takeover of the SNTE in 1948 by PRI-aligned groups led by Jesus Robles Martin, extinguished democracy within the union. Robles and other bosses imposed by the state on unions were known as the ‘charros’ (cowboys), for the fashion preferences of the newly installed leader of the railroad workers’ union (Rincones 2008: 217-218; Foweraker 1993: 45-50; Torres 1991: 118-119; Monsiváis 1987).

The Consolidation of Unionism & Emergence of Teachers as a Militant Social Force

An upsurge of teachers’ activism in 1958 centred in Mexico City and led by the Mexican Communist Party, demanded wage increases and control over their own union, in the context of a major national strike by railroad workers over similar issues. Both movements were crushed by police and military units in cooperation with the charro union leadership. Robles controlled the union until 1972, when he in turn was ousted at gun point by Jongitud Barrios and his

Vanguardia Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Vanguard) group. Barrios had the tacit support of PRI officials who were concerned that Robles was unable to control his restive members. Nearly from the outset, rather than serving as a legitimate union of educators, the SNTE acted as a mass membership appendage of the state-party, like most labour organizations in the PRI’s Mexico (Cook 2007; Rincones 2008: 218). The SNTE seldom advocated on behalf of its membership, and so teacher salaries and working conditions generally followed the will of the governing party in this period. Alongside its subordination to government policy, its corporatist status as a

political arm of the state mobilized during election periods to support the ruling party, gave it a high degree of influence within the Secretary of Public Education (SEP). The union exercised

significant control over administration, often controlling the appointment of school and state level officials, as well as the ‘sale’ of teacher jobs. While ruling the union, Barrios amassed considerable power. Through the 1980s he was simultaneously a federal senator, president of the Congress of Labour (the umbrella organization for PRI-aligned unions) and state governor of San Luis Potosi (Foweraker 1993: 50-60; Torres 1991: 123; Monsiváis 1987: 170-172). The rapid expansion of the SEP in the 1950s-1970s created an increasingly unwieldy bureaucracy highly centralized in Mexico City. Combined with a desire to check the pervasive influence of Jongitud Barrios, federalization progressed from 1976 to 1982 under President Jose Lopez Portillo.

Fuelled by a short term burst of oil wealth, the system reached it maximum extent for decades, as did teachers’ salaries (alongside workers’ wages overall) (Brambila 2009: 217).

The defeat of the initial large scale attempt by Mexico City teachers to organize independently of their corporatist leadership and improve their conditions was superseded by educators in New York City. With the decline of the Cold War era McCarthyism that had broken up the New York Teachers Union, the union benefited from considerably greater freedom of association at a time when municipal workers were beginning to organize and private sector unionism was near its 20th Century peak of influence (Freeman 2000). The rapid victory between 1961 to 1963 of the AFT aligned United Federation of Teachers (UFT) in signing up a majority of NYC’s teachers, obtaining legal status as their official bargaining agent and winning significant gains after short citywide strikes, had explanations related to far more than a desire to match the salaries of skilled unionized private sector workers (Robertson 2000: 101-103;

militant male high school teachers in spite of docile female elementary teachers, citing the many examples of important female teacher union leaders to this point in New York. She argues:

If one were to dismiss the gender argument as an explanation of militancy yet agree that economic factors alone did not explain the rising militancy of teachers, there was one other issue, explored in all the studies, that can serve as a less gender-biased explanation of what was happening in the schools... teachers were fed up with the centralized

bureaucracy of the schools. Teachers complained about oversupervision, increasing bureaucratization, inappropriate assignments, and a lack of control over licensing, training, and assignments. These grievances go back to the beginnings of unionization; after tenure laws had been effectively introduced, teachers were willing to strike for those same demands (as well as higher pay) after World War II. (Murphy 1992: 222)

Alongside the expansion of high school education after the Second World War, teachers in New York State in the 1960s and Ontario in the mid-late 1970s made substantial gains in defining and protecting their professional autonomy in a wave of union militancy. In his book on the Newark 39

Teachers Union of New Jersey, historian Steve Golin finds that its strikes in the early 1970s,