For three weeks in 1970 and for eleven weeks in 1971, the schools
in Newark, New Jersey, were paralyzed as the teachers went on
strike. In the wake of the 1971 strike, almost two hundred were
arrested and jailed. The Newark Teachers Union said their members
wanted improved education for students. The Board of Education
claimed the teachers primarily desired more money. After
interviewing more than fifty teachers who were on the front lines
during these strikes, historian Steve Golin concludes that another,
equally important agenda was on the table, and has been ignored
until now. These professionals wanted power, to be allowed a voice
in the educational agenda.
Through these oral histories, Golin examines the hopes of the
teachers as they picketed, risking arrest and imprisonment. Why did
they strike? How did the union represent them? How did their action
-- and incarceration -- change them? Did they continue to teach in
impoverished schools? Golin also discusses the tensions arising
during that period. These include differences in attitudes toward
unions among Black, Jewish, and Italian teachers; different
organizing strategies of men and women; and conflict between
teachers' professional and working-class identities.
The first part of the book sets the stage by exploring the
experience of teachers in Newark from World War II to the 1970
strike. After covering both strikes, Golin brings the story up to
1995 in the epilogue, which traces the connection between
educational reform and union democracy. The Newark Teacher Strikes
enhances our understanding of what has worked and what hasn't
worked in attempts at reforming urban schools. Equally important,
the teachers' vivid words andthe author's perceptive analysis
enable us to view the struggles of not just Newark, but the entire
United States during a turbulent time.
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