Power Play for Teachers

"Why is education lost in a Sargasso Sea?" The question is asked by outspoken Myron Lieberman, 41, director of basic research for the Educational Research Council of Greater Cleveland, in The Future of Public Education (University of Chicago; $5). Lieberman's crackling answer: the "great debate" over improving U.S. schools is mired in "irrelevant" controversies, e.g., progressive v. basic education. What no one talks about is the No. 1 problem: correcting U.S. education's "anachronistic and dysfunctional power structure."

Published this week, Lieberman's provocative book argues that the "strategic problem lies with the teachers, their bumbling organizations and their ineffectual leadership." In fact, "school administration is degenerating precisely because school administrators ask instead of tell the public what should be taught in the schools." As Lieberman sees it, "teachers have miseducated the public very effectively, by their spineless abdication of professional autonomy, by their failure to enforce high standards for entry and performance, by their political impotence and by their moral evasion."

By Lieberman's reckoning, U.S. schools will improve only when the teachers take charge. His plan: a single powerful professional organization with full responsibility for educational policy on a nation wide scale. His model: the American Medical Association, which keeps a sharp eye on the certification and standards of physicians throughout the nation. "We must see to it," says Lieberman, "that nonprofessional determination of the curriculum is as unthinkable as nonprofessional determination of the techniques of brain surgery."

A onetime education professor (Yeshiva University), maverick Critic Lieberman bases his argument on the firm conviction that "appeals to 'the public' to solve the problems of education ordinarily result in more harm than good." He feels that "local control has clearly outlived its usefulness," not only because of antiquated taxation and uneven standards, but because it is less democratic than national control. Reason: local control often falls to local bullies and "assorted interests with axes to grind." Not so national control--if it is "in the hands of teachers, where it belongs."

What Lieberman proposes is a merger of the 600,000 National Education Association and the 55,000-member American Federation of Teachers. In present form, he argues, neither group serves teachers or the public. It is "a national tragedy" that the N.E.A. ("low in aim and weak in execution") is dominated by school administrators, that the A.F.T. is fruitlessly tied to labor unions. Merged, one dynamic organization could really tackle such tasks as collective bargaining for teachers--first locally, later on a national scale.

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