Every public educator refuses to come back to their schools in the fall unless... by Dr. David Berliner

Now here's a proposal put out by my dear friend and colleague, Dr. David Berliner, writing for the Horace Mann League Newsletter. According to Texas AFT, citing Texas Digital Reporter, Chandler France, 

"Over the last 22 years, Texas has had about 5 school shootings per year — for a total of 103 school shootings. We can’t tolerate this for a single moment longer."

My only amendment here is that our community-based organizations and coalitions are poised to stand with our teachers. Yes, all teachers should absolutely join our unions and teacher associations so that their voices can get heard. In addition, they should partner with community as we have the long-term, reciprocal relationships that allow us to catalyze an issue of great concern that goes against our values, enabling effective action.

So teachers, yes mobilize, and know that we in the community are here to help and stand by you.

Thanks, David, for sharing this and for always pushing the envelope. And thanks to the Texas AFT, Texas State Teachers Association, and Education Austin, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers for their bold and courageous leadership on behalf of our children, teachers, and schools against senseless violence impacting our children, youth, and teachers throughout our state and nation's schools.

Peace/paz,

-Angela Valenzuela

#guncontrol #gunsense #nra #Uvalde @txstateteachers @NEAToday 

@TexasAFT #Uvalde #UvaldeStrong

 

Every public educator refuses to come back to their schools in the fall unless . . by 

David C. Berliner

ASU Professor Emeritus and HML Board Member

 

Educators are not nearly as politically active as they should be, though most have communitarian values and want good things for their communities, especially for the parents and the kids they serve. 

1.      Teachers often lobby for food programs, housing programs, increased counseling programs, and the like. But it’s now time to lobby for something bigger and more fundamental: It’s time to lobby for their lives.

2.      Teachers, and the children they work so hard to shape into productive citizens, deserve protection as well as our praise and sympathy. To get that protection they need to play a more active role in politics than they have in the past. 

3.      Teachers need to get political! Since we have leaders who won’t do what most people want, namely, to give America some sensible gun laws. There is a simple and perhaps foolproof way they can do that. 

4.      My proposal is this: Every school administrator and every teacher in the USA should refuse to come back to their schools in the fall unless their states’ two senators have agreed on the framework for a strong national gun control bill, and better funding and oversight of mental health programs for their state. 

5.      Further, their senators need to promise a vote on these issues before Christmas 2022—or the schools get closed again! 

6.      Here is the nub of my proposal: No safety for our pupils and our teachers, no public schooling!

7.      The pandemic showed how important teachers are in the lives of the 50 million public school students they serve. 

8.      As important, valued, and among the best-educated members of our democracy, we educators need to express our values. We simply cannot nurture student academic and social growth in institutions where we and our students are attacked and killed because too many deranged people have access to guns. 

9.      We need immediate legislation to control who can get weapons, and we need funding to build better programs for mental health. We need, as well, buy-back programs offering considerably more than the retail price of any weapon that is turned into law officers. 

10.  And let’s not forget that our law officers also deserve a society where weapons are not so easily available. If good people do not join the professions of law enforcement and teaching because they are worried about being shot, the democracy we educators build, and law enforcement personnel have sworn to protect, will be in much greater danger than it is right now. 

11.  So, it’s simple. Educators in large numbers must agree: No one goes back to school in any state unless those states’ senators agree to make childhood and teaching safer. It’s time to actually Make America Great Again, which we can begin to do by protecting the lives of our children and ourselves.

David Berliner is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Education at Arizona State University.  He has taught at the University of Arizona, University of Massachusetts, Teachers College, and Stanford University, as well as universities in Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland.

Dr. Berliner is a member of the National Academy of Education (NEA), the International Education Academy (IEA), a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a past president of both the American Educational Research Association (AERA), The Horace Mann League (HML), and the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA).  He is the recipient of awards for distinguished contributions from APA, AERA, HML, and the National Education Association (NEA).