The positioning of teachers in terms of class is not merely a sociological question, nor is it a matter of economic stratification. While those factors are contributors, at its heart the matter is political. This articles suggest why teachers would benefit from organising themselves as workers.
IDEALISM VS MATERIALISM
In grappling with the matter of the class position of teachers, it is necessary to frame the question through the appropriate lens. Too often, such matters are framed by philosophies that can be described as idealist. Idealism suggest, reality is the product of consciousness. If teachers consider themselves professionals, comport themselves in such a fashion, this will define their class status as professionals.
Conversely, materialist thinking asserts that reality is fundamentally material or physical. A materialist analysis attempts to grapple with the material and physical to make sense of reality and from there draw consciousness. In this thinking, the essence is not determined by a label or the status but rather the conditions and nature of their work.
This article is very much written from a perspective sympathetic to such a materialist understanding.
Arguably one of the most significant contribution to materialist thinking is Marx’s application of historical materialism. Through studying the present state of things by examining the formations of the past which birthed the new, Marx located class as the fundamental social relationship that defined the social order in any given moment. This is how he conceived of the class relationships in capitalism to be essential to nature. Far from deterministic, Marx identified that class was both an objective fact, but also a social category that could display a subjectivity through consciousness. To Marx, the working class’ experience was defined by its relationship to the means of production. The relationship to the means of production, both defines the class, but also locates its revolutionary potential for change. For Marx, the working class was the only class capable of making real change and transforming social relationships in a lasting fashion. For this to be realised, the working class needed to develop a consciousness that reflected their material reality.
IDEAS CONTESTED
The class character of teachers is the subject of ongoing debate and this is revealed in the life and experience of every teacher.
On the surface, it seems natural to define teachers as professionals. Teachers are academically qualified, have specialty skills, seem largely self-directed, engage in professional bodies and in relative terms earn a high salary. However, there is also a tension in the fact that, unlike other professionals such as lawyers, doctors, or accountants; teachers do not get to set their income individually as fees in the marketplace nor do they perform their work as individuals delivering a service to clients. Furthermore, teachers’ experience of very low job control, smothered by managerialism.
Importantly, and much to the ire of the various forces that wish to ‘reform’ education, teachers have continued to compose themselves as members of trade unions. Unions are very obviously working-class organs which seek to advance industrial conditions of their members through leveraging the collective strength associated with being in a union. Herein lies some of the clue that asserting teachers as professionals is not a settled matter.
If we identify that there is dispute in defining the class character of teachers, we need to assess who would benefit from either conception.
PROFESSIONALISM – THE SHIELD AND THE SWORD
The Shield – From time to time, it has been argued a tactical need arises to publicly defend teachers as professionals. This is particularly the case with neoliberal trends which emerged in the late 20th and early 21st-century, and persist around the globe. As part of a concerted effort to colonise public education as a site for capitalist accumulation through marketisation and ultimately privatisation. A recurring aim in these initiatives is to “de-skill” teachers and have much of the work of teaching replaced by lower-paid workers or, as technology may allow, by machines.
In such instances, the response of trade unions, including New South Wales Teachers Federation has been to elevate the notion of teachers as professionals. It was the reason why the drive to create the New South Wales Institute of Teachers and the development of teaching standards was supported by the Federation. At the time there was some internal contestation of Federation’s support for the initiative, but ultimately the position of support for the Institute, accreditation and standards was adopted. As many know, initially it was only applied to new graduates but as predicted by many at the time, the whole teacher workforce has been integrated into the apparatus of accreditation, institute membership and so forth. This change created the conditions for the constitution of a professional body which mimics that of doctors, psychologists or lawyers, but also gave standing to teachers as a profession. This was coupled with legislation in New South Wales precluding governments from engaging so-called paraprofessionals or others to do the work of teachers in schools. For the Federation leadership this was perceived as a cornerstone of the neoliberal threat averted. A fact emphasised by NSW being the only state with such legislation.
The Sword – Defining teachers as professionals has also been used as a weapon against teachers. In many instances, whether at a school level or system level, the most common argument to justify the exploitation of teachers is to invoke that they are “professionals”. Teachers are expected to commit themselves as professionals to tasks that have little bearing on the immediate work in the classroom. It’s considered professional conduct to go the extra mile and work hard out of hours to complete duties above and beyond stipulated requirements. Corporate-speak such as ‘best practice’ or ‘growth mindsets’ conspire to establish a culture of continual exploitation and managerial control. Boundless imposition of work, compliance activities, and involvement in management’s concerns define the core reasons for teacher burnout and breakdown. Coupled with the imposed managerialism that was not averted in the resistance to neoliberalism, the last decade has seen a crisis in teacher staffing levels marked by significant recruitment and retention challenges.
It is therefore evident that identifying teachers as professionals suits certain ideological, political and economic interests. Moreover, the pattern of work under the guise of professionalism serves as an impediment to the development of a working-class consciousness by teachers. Teachers are increasingly time-poor, overworked and are rarely afforded the opportunity to come together at their own volition. They are atomized and individualized.
DISRUPTION – More Than Thanks
If we examine the recent history of the More Than Thanks campaign set against decade of wage freeze by the conservative New South Wales state government, the Federation commenced what amounted to an industrial campaign of three significant strikes. The work to successfully build and execute three sector-wide strikes was clearly a challenge given the decade of industrial inaction by the union. Through the building of those centerpiece actions and the challenging work of organizing and mobilizing teachers, a working-class character was revealed. The collective action of teachers precipitated a political crisis for the Perrottet Government and played a pivotal role in their downfall.
The actions of teachers signaled to the incoming Labour government, that the Federation was not only a union still capable of mobilising its members but in doing so could also impact the consciousness of other workers. The actions of teachers put obvious pressure on the leaders of other public sector unions to do more to directly confront the challenge of stagnating wages which had characterised the decade of conservative state government. It could be suggested that the settlement of the teachers’ salary issue went some way to blunting the emergent public sector-wide movement.
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
Often, teachers are dissuaded from considering themselves as workers because there is a confused class consciousness. The general hegemonic understanding suggests that to be a worker is seen as lowly, menial and without status. A manual labourer or a drone at a hot desk or cubicle. This is compounded in the culture of teachers whereby they constantly feel like their status as important contributors to our society is under persistent attack. Whether this is the denigration often experienced at the hands of the media or poor treatment by the political class.
One of the missions of the PEWA must be to circulate and generalise the notion amongst the people we work with that we are indeed workers and we should act as workers if we want to win. Significant work needs to be done to elevate such consciousness of well-meaning people amongst us. There is a polluted contemporary presentation of how we make change – a middle class, individualistic notion of the performative activist; social media poster; the podcast influencer.
We have a role to play in leaning into opportunities amongst colleagues or friends to help elucidate the class nature of teachers. More importantly, to demonstrate that collective working-class struggle is the only useful pathway to pursue our interests.
It’s only a materialist analysis, which can adequately point out contradictions of idealist notions of teachers as professionals.
Marx made a distinction between the idea that one understands themselves as part of a stratum of society which shares common grievance and perspective – a class in itself; as opposed to a class for itself whereby the class is organised in the pursuits of its own interests.
A core objective of PEWA is to elevate class consciousness because when one understands their relationship to the rest of the class and the class’s relationship to society, we start to identify the opportunities for expressing ourselves as a class for ourselves and making real social change.