Disposable Teachers: Neoliberal Flexploitation and the Proletarianization of North Carolina's Educators

• In Event: 70.065 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 70.065-3 - Teachers and Teaching in the United States Today: Illustrations From K–12 and Higher Education

Abstract

Employing theoretical concepts provided by Marx and Bourdieu, this paper describes how North Carolina’s teachers have been proletarianized through a process of deskilling, degradation, and immiseration, as well as the mobilization of a reserve army of surplus population teachers. Furthermore, borrowing from Harvey’s theory of accumulation by dispossession, I provide evidence that the proletarianization of North Carolina’s teachers is indicative of a wider neoliberal project aimed at the privatization of public education. North Carolina’s status as one of only five states where teacher unions are prohibited has rendered educators vulnerable to extremists in state government. Current events in North Carolina serves as evidence that teacher unions continue to offer the most powerful defense of public education.

Author

• Mark Johnson, The Learning Partnership