Beyond Resistance to Privatization: Rebuilding and Reclaiming Public Education

• In Event: Who Profits From Public Education? The Role of Teachers' Unions in Resisting Privatization

Abstract

As schools look toward post-pandemic recovery, education union workers and researchers are at a crucial junction in the defense of public education. Schools are key public spaces of collective learning and community care. Privatization, in contrast, privileges individual and financial interests and undermines education as a public good. To better understand the issue of privatization from the perspective of teachers, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF) held a one-day “Think Tank” in May 2021. The aims of the research event were to (1) explore growing pressures and trends towards privatization of education within the province and globally, particularly within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) identify strategies for resisting privatization and defending public education as a public good.

The BCTF “Think Tank on Resisting Privatization in Education in BC” was conceptualized as an interactive research space enabling dialogue and connection between teachers, academic or community stakeholders, and the union. The “Think Tank” is a methodology used by the BCTF as a form of activist research. Following Jones (2018), activist research is a “framework for conducting collaborative research that makes explicit challenges to power through transformative action” (p. 27). As such, the day was structured to first identify key facets of privatization in British Columbia and then facilitate the development of strategies for action and resistance. The day’s conversations were interpreted in a visual mural, created by Sam Bradd of Drawing Change (see https://drawingchange.com/), a network of graphic recorders who listen, synthesize, and visually represent dialogue in real time.

The theoretical framing of the day was provided by Dr. Sam E. Abrams (2018), Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Dr. Abrams discussed how the “commercial mindset” underpins the privatization of education and allows private interests to drive the direction of public education. For Abrams, this mindset has four key dimensions. Firstly, the libertarian critique is premised on the need for small government and doing the “minimum” within public services. Secondly, the drive towards commercial profit allows business models to be introduced into the provision of public education services. Thirdly, a sense of crisis creates the need for solutions to “fix” public education. Finally, public services are mired in a bureaucratic pathology which opens the way for external “solutions” by private “experts.”

This paper presents the results of the “Think Tank,” highlighting the perspectives of 15 British Columbia teachers, as well as invited guests from the Institute for Public Education, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, BC Ed Access, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. This analysis is organized around the key facets of the commercial mindset, as proposed by Dr. Abrams, while recognizing that they are continually overlapping and building on one another. The paper concludes by offering, from the perspective of teachers, strategies not only to resist privatization, but also reclaim and rebuild public education.

Author

• Andree Elizabeth Gacoin, British Columbia Teachers' Federation