Albert Shanker,
1928-1997
Albert Shanker, the son of
Russian-Jewish immigrants, was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side on Sept. 14, 1928. His
father delivered newspapers from a pushcart. His mother, who worked in a sweatshop as a
sewing machine operator, taught Al a deep appreciation of trade unionism and a love of
spirited debate. Although he didn't speak a word of English when he entered first grade,
Al flourished in New York City's public school system. He headed the Stuyvesant High
School debating team, graduated with honors from the University of Illinois, and ran out
of funds in the early 1950s, just short of completing a Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia
University. He found a "lousy job" as a per-diem substitute teacher at PS 179 in
East Harlem and launched a career as an educator and trade union leader. As president of
the American Federation of Teachers, he became known as a strong and courageous advocate
for labor—as well as an "iconoclastic thinker," "champion of children,"
and "educational statesman."
 "Tough
Liberal" by Richard Kahlenberg
On Labor Day 2007,
ten years after his death, the first major biography of Albert Shanker
was formally released, stirring considerable praise and debate. The
author, Richard Kahlenberg, spent seven years researching Al’s life and
the events and people that shaped it. He interviewed more than 200
people who knew, worked with, agreed, and disagreed with Shanker on the
central issues of his time. He poured over union and public records. The
result is Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools,
Unions, Race, and Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press).
The book traces Shanker’s
commitment to public education and trade unionism back to his experience
as the son of first-generation immigrants living in a poor New York City
neighborhood. There he encountered vicious anti-Semitism, but also
learned the value of public education to civic identity, expanding
intellectual horizons, and increasing economic opportunity. Shanker
began teaching in New York City’s public schools as a young man, as a
way to support himself while pursuing a PhD in philosophy at Columbia
University, where he studied with his intellectual hero, John Dewey. He
soon found himself outraged at working conditions. What struck him most
was the basic unfairness to teachers—the low pay, lack of dignity, and
lack of voice. Shanker’s dogged efforts at unionizing teachers, his
ability to lead his members—who, by the end of the 1960s, included
paraprofessionals—and his skills at negotiating with city officials,
gave rise to the country’s and the world’s largest local union, the
United Federation of Teachers. Nationally, his efforts brought about the
rapid transformation of education into the most organized sector in the
country.
As Kahlenberg points out, most leaders are satisfied with such
achievements, but Al clearly saw the increasing dangers to both public
education and the labor movement as a conservative political movement
swept America. He advocated transformational reforms and challenged his
union’s members. He urged a restructuring of the AFT into a broader
union of professionals and argued for expanded organizing efforts into
the fields of nursing, public service, higher education, and preschool.
He asked all these constituencies to re-shape their union’s priorities
to make it crystal clear that serving members meant serving students,
patients, clients, and the public too. He encouraged experiments in
practices previously dismissed out of hand (such as differential pay,
charter schools, and peer review), often urging new policy treatments
within a collective bargaining framework, but also at the state and
federal levels. As such, he became the “most influential figure” in
public education “in the last half of the 20th century” and a labor
leader to contend with in virtually every area of public policy.
Kahlenberg also describes Al Shanker’s efforts to promote democracy,
both at home and abroad, as central to his professional mission and
personal worldview. In foreign policy, he supported and defended labor’s
democratic internationalism—including its single-standard opposition to
both communism on the left and authoritarianism on the right—based on
the principles of freedom of association and workers’ right to organize.
Indeed, Kahlenberg argues that Al Shanker embodied a political tradition
of “tough liberalism”—one might call it union liberalism—with roots in
George Meany’s AFL-CIO and the Democratic Party of the World War II
period and its aftermath. In Kahlenberg’s view, this type of liberalism
may still represent the best hope of American political democracy.
Buy the book at a institute special price of $18, including shipping.
Read books
reviews on Tough Liberal.
See
other media hits.
Read other articles by the author, many about Al Shanker.
American Teacher Tribute
The
following essays, drawn from a special April 1997 issue of the AFT's American Teacher newspaper,
offer insight into Al's long career as a crusader for worker rights, civil rights, civic
society, quality public schools, and the life of the mind.
Always Setting
the Standard
Collective Bargaining: Laying the Foundation
Fighting for Freedom Around the World
Bridging the Worlds of Labor and Civil Rights
Building a Broader Union
Adding Rooms to the House of Labor
Where We Stand: 800 Words of Weekly Wisdom
On the Hill: The Great Persuader
A Passion for Life
Keeping Public Education Together
Photo Gallery
The Power of Ideas: Al in His Own
Words
Al Shanker was a man of many
ideas. And we were the beneficiaries of those ideas. From New York City to Corpus Christi,
Texas; from South Beach, Florida, to South Central, Los Angeles; from San Francisco and
Chicago to Santiago and Prague; to small groups in out-of-the-way hotels and to large
audiences in the corridors of power, Al was always there, talking to teachers and other
school staff, to administrators, to parents, to businessmen, to academics, to legislators,
to governors, to presidents. Brilliant, provocative, persuasive, funny, and never, ever
afraid to tell the truth as he saw it, he stirred countless audiences, rallied the troops,
won over many foes, and left a trail of debate opponents wishing they had accepted a
different engagement for the evening.
This special 1997 edition of the AFT's American
Educator magazine attempts to capture some of Al's most important ideas—the ones
that inspired his public life, the ones he lived by, the ones that left the most enduring
mark.
Requires Adobe Acrobat.
Introduction:
He Believed in the Power of Ideas
Building the Union
Building the Profession
Civil and Human Rights
Strengthening and Preserving Public Education
Also on the Internet
A number of other Web sites
contain materials on Albert Shanker.
'Where
We Stand' Archives Online
The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) has posted a free electronic archive of
more than 1,300 "Where We Stand" columns by the late AFT president Albert
Shanker. For 27 years Shanker's column in the New York Times offered 800 words of
common sense, keen analysis and no-nonsense ideas about how to improve schools. The
archive, produced with support from the Albert Shanker Institute, is comprehensive and completely searchable.
Remembering Al Shanker
Five years after his death, this moving tribute, written by Century Foundation scholar and
Shanker biographer Richard Kahlenberg, bemoans the loss of Al's "democratic
vision" and "tough liberalism" in the shaping of public policy.
The AFT
Web site also contains several articles, speeches, and other documents
by and about Shanker. Links to several articles and editorials by Al are also being
maintained on other sites, including "Why Schools Need
Standards and Innovation," "A
Call for Professionalism," "The Importance of
Civic Education," "An
American Revolution: A Common Curriculum," "A
Landmark Revisited," "Public
Schools and Preschool Programs: A Natural Connection," "Reflections
on Forty Years in the Profession," and "Quality
Assurance: What Must Be Done to Strengthen the Teaching Profession."
Articles about Shanker include several
from his biographer, including "Albert
Shanker and the Future of Teacher Unions," "Ocean
Hill-Brownsville: Unleashing American Liberalism," and "The
Charter School Idea Turns 20"; a 1996 Teacher Magazine profile,
"The Education of Al Shanker";
President Clinton's remarks at Shanker's memorial service; a
brief
biography and
chronology on the Web
site of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City local Shanker helped to
found; a profile in the PBS series, "School:
The Story of American Public Education"; several articles in Education Week that appeared shortly after Al's death,
including "The End
of an Era," "A Speech that Shook the Field," and "Al Shanker Remembered": and an article in that newspaper's retrospective of the 20th century, titled "The Paradoxical Teacher."
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