WGBH Journal; Boston Teacher Union

Good evening and welcome to GBH Journal. I'm Amy sands. Teacher strikes continue in cities as far apart as Fall River Cleveland and Tucson but not in Boston. Boston Teachers Union president Henry Robinson discusses the recent Boston teachers no strike vote in our first report. Then we'll hear a different perspective on education and schools from author John Hope those of you mourning over yesterday's Red Sox loss to the Yankees. You can join sports teacher Mark on a minute analyzing the team's Decline and Fall. And we'll close the show with author and illustrator of the book Walking Tours of old Boston. But first we take a look at the day's news. A superior court judge has given the go ahead to Boston mayor Kevin White's tax equalisation office lifting a four day restraining order that has prevented the city from mailing out its fall tax bills. The tax equalisation office was created in order to correct inequalities in Boston's assessing practices. But until yesterday it remained unfunded by the city council. Under pressure from Superior Court Judge Samuel Adams the council finally appropriated nearly three hundred and

fifty thousand dollars for the new office and the court order was lifted. That is not the end of Boston's tax problems however. The mayor and the state are still feuding over a cut in the current tax rate. The Dukakis administration has been pressing for the cut. But why does resisting claiming that any decrease this year will mean an increase next year. Vandals demolished a Roxbury school today causing an estimated twenty five thousand dollars in damage. A spokesperson for the Boston school department said the vandals must have been at work for several hours. Desks files and rooms had been ransacked and there was extensive damage due to fire and water. One hundred eighty nine students attending the Samuel Mason School will have to be reassigned until repairs are finished. Massachusetts new 15 mile Residency Law is apparently benefiting Boston police and firefighters who two months ago may have had to move closer to the city or quit their jobs. The law exempts workers who in July worked further than 15 miles from the community they served from complying with the previous ordinance requiring local residency and aid to Police Commissioner Joseph Jordan

explained the new law would force incoming officers to live in the city but would save older officers who have moved to the suburbs from selling their homes. Former U.S. ambassador and onetime governor of Massachusetts John Volpi has given his support to Republican congressional candidate John Buckley Buckley now Sheriff of Middlesex County will be running for the 5th Congressional seat vacated by Paul Tsongas and will oppose Democrat James Shannon and independent James Gaffney the third both Volpi and Henry Cabot Lodge had been raising money for Buckley's campaign along with other Republican stalwarts. Boston will be the host to a national debate on whether research leading to the conception of test tube babies should be resumed in the United States. The hearings will begin on Friday October 13th at the John F. Kennedy conference center and UW Secretary Joseph California says he expects the widest possible comment on the issue. Anyone wishing to speak at the Boston meeting is asked to send a written request to the Ethics Advisory Board. Westwood building room one twenty five West Bart Avenue Bethesda Maryland 2 0 0 0 1 6.

Ever since the beginning of the school year teacher strikes have dominated the news. The Fall River teachers strike enters its fourth week today with the negotiations resuming after a 10 day break off. Teachers in Tucson Arizona went on strike yesterday and Washington D.C. teachers plan to strike tomorrow. And Boston there was no strike although the issues raised here were similar to those being raised elsewhere such as the demand for a manageable teacher student ratio for salary increases and for limitations on the school committee's power to make decisions affecting teachers. The leadership of the Boston teachers union recommended a strike on these issues but in a vote revealing a serious split in the union rank and file teachers voted that recommendation down 13 53 to 17 0 8.

Tony Robinson union president sat down with reporter Greg Fitzgerald to analyze the final vote read happened between the time when the the original vote was taken by union members to give us strike authorization and the time when the union voted against your authorization or you actually your option your opinion to strike when school was in session provided we can have what happened in in terms of what we're going through the union members minds and what kind of differences were there. Well I think what happened basically between the 5th and the 13th is in the 13th we had more people attending the meeting teachers who didn't come to the September 5th meeting came up on the 13th and certainly voted the people that I called them once a year members at the first meeting there was an entirely different mood and it was not as great a crowd was about you know probably I would say half. The members that showed up on the 13th but it was a different mood. And these

members were probably the militant members who wanted to go out and strike. And it's seemed to me that you know what happened was you heard from the other half of your membership on the 13th they did not come out on that fifth figuring probably that there wouldn't be a strike for that particular day and then. Came out on the 13th of the secret ballot and voted not to go on strike. So if they knew that on the 5th then your opinion that there were that they were voting on a strike they would have come out on the fifth. Well I never would have come out if there were number one worst secret ballot on the fifth and two if they thought that the strike would have actually commenced on the 5th we have never had a strike on the first day of school with lots of ice strikes on the first day of school but the union membership has never rocked out on the first day of school this year for the first time people didn't want to rock out on the first day of school which was highly unusual and there was no way of getting that over the summer. There's no question in my

mind that more teachers came out on the 13th of the actual strike that was there and even people who didn't attend the 13th meeting when the secret ballot was called a few hours in between. They came out and voted not to go on strike on a secret ballot and the people came down the quiet street. There are people who came down didn't go to any of the meetings and came down to vote not to go on strike and it was a different said the silent member the 28 member who really doesn't understand the issues and doesn't understand what the mainstream of union activity has and doesn't understand what a union is all about and what a union is all about as if one person has a disastrous issue that's facing them. For example the class size in this case then Union moves that everyone goes and supports that person. That didn't happen here. That means for the union the future is that you have an education process that somehow or other you've got to get out to those teachers that don't come to meetings and explain and get them grabbed in the mainstream. Now

one of the things we try to do along this line is we have building reps and we're building up meetings and try to get the feeling of the membership from the building reps or the building reps gave us the impression at least on the Friday before the 13th that there was a very very strong feeling for class size and a very strong feeling for strike among the membership. And you know this feeling was taken back to the negotiating team and negotiating team had that as it were as it always has been a top priority issue and the top priority was to have the fixed ratio be the contract that is the split when you split the class. Apparently there was either a lack of communication between building up and teacher in between the central office of the teacher and this is what happens in a large union like ours where we have six over 6000 members and somehow or other you've got to decentralize the office

here and trying to get more interactive with the main stream of activity to try to get the teachers involved with the main stream of activity. You mentioned an education process. Rob is the relationship between the executive board and yourself and union members. How do you see your role as the president of the Union and the executive boards rolled into trying to bring the union membership closer to your point of view. Well I obviously would have to make some policy decision something along the lines that I said of somebody else had different ideas. On the board they could do that but that correct when you said the bride and myself would have to make some kind of impetus to the membership so that they could get moving we talked about last year even making the building reps or salaried individual in the union and that was rejected by the membership. What do you think the vote portends for future

negotiations in future contracts with the school committee. Oh I think it you know what starts us off in a weaker position. You know there's no sense and beating around the bush on that. It really does. It depends. Two years from now will we stand and you know who's on the school committee whether there be a change in members in the committee and on it it depends on the economic condition of the city and the rising inflation and the cost of living for the teachers and it depends how or you know if both sides are paralyzed. I mean I've These are all questions that have to be answered next year two years from now. Negotiations could go very smoothly and no one would know the difference but whether it could mean if we had the similar situations that we have now now could mean a strike in two years for the union because I think that the school committee wants to play highbrow. The union is going to have to play hardball right back and it seems to me that you know if they do that then that's going to force a strike two

years from now the teachers will have to. To get what I want to warm toward. Reporter Greg Fitzgerald talking with Boston Teachers Union president Henry Robinson. The latest news on that Fall River teachers strike is that superintendent Robert Nagle is predicting the strike could be resolved as early as tomorrow according to Nagel. There was substantial movement by both sides during last night's session. The union says however that major differences between the union and the school committee still exist. Well the Boston Public Schools are open and conducting their normal business. But if a growing number of critics had their way no one would have to attend school at all. Instead learning would occur on the job at voluntary schools. And just from life experience John Hope the author an educational theorist has long rejected traditional schooling ideas and now he's putting out a magazine entitled growing without schooling. Its purpose is to help a small network of parents and children around the country to stay in touch and their attempts to circumvent the public school structure. Tapping into his own high school memories reporter David Friedberg recently spoke with John Holt.

What I'm against is the very idea. If you want to learn something you have to go to a school that a school is the best place for learning things or even a very good place. Most of what I know most of what you know most of what most people know they didn't learn in school. We could run some kind of a tracer in our minds and see where the this information whatever information we have about the world and where it came from didn't come from school. Most people wouldn't wouldn't be able to remember 5 percent of what they learned in school. Most people forget it within a year. I wish I was a good student. I studied the past to get A's on the tests after the tests were gone. Who bothered to remember the junk. However that I'm not saying schools would be better if they taught better things. I'm saying that the idea of learning abstracted from any context of life is a bad idea in

itself. If young people did not attend schools with their cultural input be restricted with the diversity of personalities they can learn from. We limit it. Let's talk about what happens in most schools. The rule in 95 98 percent of the schools is that the kids can't talk to each other. Where's the social life that people talk about. I get letters I get phone calls all the time from people who write here in the year 1978 say. My children my child can't talk to other children in that school except at recess Well nobody's talking at recess they're running out in the yard screaming and shouting probably fighting trying to burn off a little bit of the steam that's been building up in them all day long. I don't know what the social life is there very very few schools in which children are allowed to talk to each other even as much as 15 or 20 minutes a day. As for the

social life of school I speak as if I remember what I saw as a student I remember what I saw as a teacher. I said it in the first issue of my magazine that if I had no other reason for wanting to take children out of school a social life would be reason enough. I think the peer group as an institution is just about as destructive in tyrannical as the school. It seems to me very important to children grow up. Surrounded by people in contact with people of a great many different ages can you mention any form of school that would not oppress or repress the students. Yeah I can look down I mean within a block of where we're sitting. I can find two schools of ballet school of martial arts Arthur Murray Dance School. Look up in the phone book we could probably find cooking schools driving schools.

I have no objection to the idea of a school. Provided. Very big gifts. Providing nobody is compelled to go there either by law or by some kind of threat that if you don't go there you can't get some sort of a job that you might want to get. That we not have a situation in which if you want to do something you have to go through a school first. A lot of people would ask if you have no system of credentials how can you establish the competency of a person seeking work in the first place the credentials don't establish that and it's very important to understand that. And most people do understand it a man named Eve R. Berger wrote a book called The Great training robbery and pointed out of considerable with considerable length that there's no evidence whatever that sufficient additional schooling increases people's confidence to do any one of a number of kinds of

work. Schooling can be seen as a kind of it's a job tax. I mean what is one way to look at it. It costs you. I don't these days I don't know I guess it costs you 50 or 60 or 70 thousand dollars to become a doctor. It was very handy because it it. It assures that large numbers of people are just not going to be able to be doctors. And it also assures you that most of the doctors you get are going to have a certain kind of mindset I mean if you've paid $70000 to be a doctor you're very likely to be a certain kind of a doctor if you see my point or lawyer or whatever. It's a myth that these places create confidence and give us a sort of accurate way of measuring competence. Thank you very much talking with author and educational theorist John Holt. This is David Freud Burke in Boston. For those of us who are avid Red Sox fans today marks the day that we start to heal our wounds.

Who would ever have guessed it two months ago our team led the New York Yankees by 14 games in the race in the eastern division of baseball's American League. Three weeks ago our Red Sox trailed the Yankees by four games after a valiant catchup attempt in which the Sox won eight of their last eight games. The team tied the Yankees for first place requiring yesterday's extra playoff game but the season is really over now. The Yankees beat the Sox so Boston fans will have to decide who to root for. Among alien teams reporter Marcia Hirtz commiserated today with Mark Ana Gman who teaches sports history at Northeastern University. Well the Red Sox almost caught up. They won eight out of their last nine games necessitating a playoff game which happened yesterday here in Boston at Fenway Park. And they played the Yankees and lost. Is there some irony to the fact that as with the two best records in baseball in both leagues how to play each other off before even getting into the American League playoffs I think that there certainly is some irony in that.

It turns out that the Red Sox have a better record than any of the other three division winners and they they won't be there. It could very well be that teams with the third and fourth and fifth best records in baseball will be in the World Series and that there is irony in a little bit of injustice in that I think. Well if we can delve in philosophy a little bit. Should the Red Sox have won. Yankees were 14 games behind the Red Sox so we should say the Red Sox were 14 games in front of the Yankees and the Red Sox blew the lead completely to the point that they needed to catch up in the last couple of weeks of the season. Should a team that goes into such a terrible slump win. Probably not if you look at just the slump period the way the Red Sox were playing during the time that their lead evaporated and nothing was done about it. If you look at the team then in their performance then you would say that this team doesn't deserve to be in the playoffs the World Series or maybe even in the American League East. But the way they played the last week the last two weeks of the season they played inspired baseball some individuals in particular and based on their performance they did deserve. So it depends on what slice of the season you look at.

Well this is been much discussed in the past couple of months the reasons for the Red Sox. Have you got any different ideas about that. Well I think one thing that has failed to be mentioned so far. It may come up in the next couple of days is where the blame lies. People the media in this town are very reluctant to point fingers at managers or coaches or management. There is an unhealthy unhealthy relationship between the media and management there is a close knit relationship. And I'm talking about the media as a group. The people who travel with the team who lodge with the team who go out at night with the team become very friendly. I think that it would get to a point where it would be difficult to criticize close friends. And so far no one is pointing the finger at them beyond who I think is most responsible for the manager. There are a number of things that he did and did not do during the year. I challenge anyone to point out to me or to to us.

One game that you went home and you said to yourself the manager won that game. I can't think of an instance during the season where you went home and said Zimmer won the game. I can think of scores of games some of them very recent going back even to maybe yesterday or Sunday where there were things that he did or did not do that cost them a win. And in this case one win would have been the difference. Well this leads into another question. For the past few months probably on the minds of many people who follow sports particularly the Red Sox one might ask whether there aren't internal political divisions that are taking place and maybe could have affected the team. This became a fairly big front page news doesn't take much to get sports on the front page of the US does it. But believe me a few months ago came out criticizing the management and the owners of the Red Sox and quit and the next day came back to the team etc. etc. but it certainly did make a general public aware of the fact that there were political divisions within within the team. How do you think that might have affected the way the team played.

I think it affected the way the team played to a large extent. I think you would have to say that other things being equal the manager tended to select people for the team on the basis not of their talent which you would hope that a manager would do. But on how they would fit into the picture whether they would be boat rockers whether they would cause trouble. But then there were political divisions going last year. There were there was one significant camp of people who were let's say anti Zimmer and they were cleaned out sort of an authoritarian regime authoritarian method to just clean them out instead of killing them you traded them away. Well for the season that's about it for the Red Sox How do you think the end of a season such as this one might affect the team. Or will it affect the team for next year. The impossible nightmare. I don't think there will be many changes the manager will be back up but be the same kind of baseball being played the same kind of political divisions it's going to be a one party

team. Pretty soon they'll get rid of Bill Lee and they'll all be Zimmer Yes man. And I don't know whether that's good or not but I guess we'll be here next year. There will be baseball next year. The Yankees will be in the eastern division next year. It's sort of a determinism predeterminism. That's difficult to deal with at this point. And I guess the question now is who we root for in the playoffs. I don't know. All right well we will be back next year and thank you for coming. With. With. Boston said Englishman Paul Hogan is one of the most personable cities in this country. Hogarth has illustrated in words and pictures some of his favorite buildings and neighborhoods. In a book called walking tours of old Boston. The book includes tours through the north then downtown Beacon Hill Charles Town Cambridge and the Back Bay.

On a recent visit to Boston Paul Hogarth spoke with Becky ror travelling about the world as I have done during the last 20 years. I've seen so much there's been too and I felt Boston had such a rich historic fabric. I wanted to make people more aware of it. You say in the preface of the book that so much of old Boston has remained. Yes. Well I find that unique. Only in America do I find that the past is being restored and. And made into a you know viable historic neighborhoods and I wanted to celebrate this. The book is profusely illustrated and you are. Do you consider yourself primarily and illustrator Yes yes I like drawing architecture. I like the sense of history that one gets to doing it. One other thing which I really liked about your illustrations are the people that are

in the illustrations and small human figures that scurry about and I'm always on the lookout for characters. I mean if you want to down in the streets somehow there will be characters that belong to that street that reflect it you know reflect its flavor its social makeup. The city is quite unique in its assortment of characters. Well back to buildings. What is was your favorite building when you were wandering around Boston drawing all of these. Well I'm torn between the mansion. It's like you see on Mount Vernon Street and these extraordinary Victorian buildings like the Exodus street which. I love that kind of building. That just carries off a set eccentricity.

And here's another one. It's that it's they that use extraordinary because there is a tiny moat around it and as you would if you did you realize that you're sort of the I think it's a building that people miss Mass just ran across that building one day and I didn't know it was there. Exactly where is it because I was in street in Columbus Avenue you know that is it is it is an extraordinary building. It's as big as a medieval castle. Let me ask you one other question about the modern architecture do you have a favorite style of modern architecture or favorite building in Boston. I was just curious to compare with the favorite older style and I like city hall very much too I thought that was really that whole the whole square as has been exciting. I included it in my book because I like the.

You know the the contrast between the old and in the back of that drawing I made of city hall I had family and somehow the two worked very well together. You know there was a there was a tension which which came off. And that's GBH gentlefolk is Tuesday producer for today show was Marsha Hertz the engineer was Steve Colby. The production assistants were like your new walker and Diane Swank. I made the stand have a good evening.