AFT-Speeches

Al Shanker urges that behavioral and academic standards be implemented and enforced. He believes that experimentation can be useful and productive, and he thinks goals to educate all students are noble. The bottom line, he says, however, is that a few disruptive students can prevent entire classes from learning and that academic standards are not rigorous enough and carry too few consequences to encourage students to apply themselves.

Al Shanker and three professors discuss the state of the labor movement and its future in light of the recent AFL-CIO election which brought John Sweeney and Richard Trumka to the presidency and secretaryship respectively. The men discuss whether labor is truly in decline, citing a difference between public and private sector and whether the new AFL-CIO administration will really offer the changes it ran on during its campaign.

In this speech, Al Shanker addresses various polls of parents concerned with the state of education. The polls cite students who disrupt class and the failure to teach basic skills like reading and arithmetic before passing students to the next grade as primary concerns. Shanker says that teacher polls yield the same results. He points to education boards and superintendents as the only people in the chain who do not see these problems. Shanker calls on the audience to lobby that alternative schools be established for disruptive students.