Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity
Jonna Perrillo
Abstract
Almost fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, a wealth of research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists, examined fully in this book, which traces the tensions between the two groups in New York City from the Great Depression to the present. While movements for teachers' rights and civil rights were not always in conflict, this book uncovers the ways they have become so, brought about both by teachers who have come to see civil rig ... More
Almost fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, a wealth of research shows that minority students continue to receive an unequal education. At the heart of this inequality is a complex and often conflicted relationship between teachers and civil rights activists, examined fully in this book, which traces the tensions between the two groups in New York City from the Great Depression to the present. While movements for teachers' rights and civil rights were not always in conflict, this book uncovers the ways they have become so, brought about both by teachers who have come to see civil rights efforts as detracting from or competing with their own goals and by civil rights activists whose aims have de-professionalized the role of the educator. Focusing in particular on unionized teachers, the book finds a new vantage point from which to examine the relationship between school and community, showing how in this struggle, educators, activists, and especially our students have lost out.
Keywords:
unequal education,
minority students,
inequality,
civil rights activists,
New York City,
teachers' rights,
education
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2012 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226660714 |
Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226660738.001.0001 |