Why I Won't Strike

I wrote a while back about my struggles over the question of whether to join in a strike if it comes to that in my school district. Here's where I've landed after a lot of reflection, discussion, and prayer. This is a first draft, so I'd appreciate your input, especially since I'm thinking of reading this at our union general assembly where we're supposed to vote on whether to grant strike authorization to our negotiating team. (First of all, I think it's much too long, so I'd appreciate you letting me know what points seem worth making and what seems to just be repetitious or tangential. Any other feedback would be great, too!)

Education is not valued by our society. Everyone values their own education, and their own children's education, to be sure, but when it comes to funding the education of other people's children, our budget betrays our values; for a budget is surely a moral document, setting forth those things that we deem worth investing in and those we begrudgingly allow to pick up the crumbs which fall from the table. This relegation of education to the basement of our fiscal priorities is evident when we look at the budgets and policies of government at national, state, and local levels.

Funding education is the primary way in which we as a people collectively invest in our children. The woeful state of education funding is direct evidence of how little other people's children are valued at a political and economic level. Children are politically and economically weak and vulnerable, and the machine that drives our policy is at best indifferent (but more often hostile) to the needs of a demographic that doesn't vote, pay taxes, or contribute to political campaigns.

That is why I am a teacher. In a world where children receive a clear message that they are not valuable to society at large, I hope that my presence, my work, and my care for my students communicates to them that one person, at least, does value them and has chosen to link my life and my fortunes to theirs. We all know that the ethos of the teaching profession is not driven by economics: all of us have a degree of training and education that would qualify us for a substantially higher pay scale in the private sector. For us, our salary does not represent fair compensation for the services we render, for if it did, we would surely be paid far more. Instead, our salary allows us to spend our time in the classroom with our students rather than being forced to go out and find other employment to provide food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and our families. This stance makes us vulnerable, for the powers that be know that a people driven by compassion for those they serve will not readily forsake those served for their own economic self interest. Our willingness to forego a higher paying career for the sake of our vocation opens us up to be taken advantage of by those who are counting on our unwillingness to abandon our students.

So, what are we to do? One option is to call their bluff, and walk out on our position, forcing those who have the power to determine our financial fate to deal with us or lose our services. This option is an attempt to turn an inherently weak and vulnerable position into one of strength; to use threats and power to force others to our will. This brings us into the extended family of those who embrace force and power as the means to enforce our will on others. We make ourselves distant cousins to both those who set US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan on one side and with the leaders of the street gangs with whom we too often find ourselves in direct competition for the loyalties and future of our students on the other. We at once validate their methodology and deny our own better selves by declaring that yes, strength is the ultimate arbiter of truth and the arena for deciding our values.

I will not take this path. It is true that our children are not valued, and they are left weak and vulnerable to those mercenaries in power whose influence is available to the highest bidder. By virtue of my education and socio-economic status, I have access to the benefits that the system holds out to those as fortunate as I have been. My students do not have the options that I have. I choose, therefore, to throw in my lot with my students, to let their fortunes be mine, to give up the level of control over my own life that society offers to me and instead subject myself to the caprices of the powerful. I will raise my voice to decry the injustices that marginalize my students and their families, but I will not abandon my students when those same injustices throw my life into the same kind of uncertainty that is the daily reality my students live with. I am a teacher, and my professional life is lived for the sake of those I serve. Though they are despised by society, I honor them, and to the extent that I am able to join them in their suffering, I receive it as an honor that the world at large cannot recognize, but which is of greater value than any concessions that can be won by the threat of a strike.

- "If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don't have the strength to live in a world like that..."