Where We Stand: 800 Words of Weekly Wisdom
When Al Shanker died, he was remembered as an eloquent and thoughtful spokesman for school reform, an elder statesman of education. But in 1970, his public image was far different. In fact, Shanker recalled last year, he was seen by many as more of a madman bent on using brute force to help New York City’s teachers get what they wanted. He had urged teachers to strike, gone to jail and helped shut down the city’s schools. And he hadn’t paid much attention to what the public thought.
"I became convinced that I had been wrong in believing that the public’s opinion of me didn’t matter," he once wrote. "Public schools depend on public support. And the public was not likely to support the schools for long if they thought the teachers were led by a powerful madman."
But how was a militant union leader to change public attitudes about him and his organization? Shanker approached some newspapers and magazines about writing articles—he was, after all, an articulate and widely read man who had completed his coursework toward a Ph.D. in philosophy at Columbia University. But no one was interested. Arnold Beichman, a friend of Shanker’s who’s now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, had a different idea: Why not buy space for a weekly column in the New York Times? That would give Shanker a forum for getting out his many ideas—in his own words.
A Sunday institution
The rest is history. Twenty-six years and some 1,300 columns later, Shanker’s "Where We Stand" column had become an institution in the Sunday Times, even if it was a paid advertisement. Each week, it offered an 800-word dose of straightforward common sense, reaching an audience far beyond the educational establishment.
The column stands as a wonderful archive of Shanker’s far-ranging intellect, keen analytical abilities and no-nonsense ideas about how to improve schools. His Feb. 23 column, which appeared the same day as a front-page Times obituary, was vintage Shanker. Titled "Love Ya!" it skewers what he called "the smiley-face approach" to school improvement advocated by self-esteem enthusiasts. "If you tell students they are terrific no matter what they do," he wrote, "either they won’t believe you or they will see no reason for doing the hard work necessary to learn. But if you help them to achieve in real ways, you will be giving them a solid basis for self-esteem."
In a 1995 column marking the 25th anniversary of "Where We Stand," Shanker talked about its wide audience, as well as its impact on helping him refine his own thinking: "It has readers all over the world, and thousands of people have written to express their appreciation—or tell me I should shut up.... It requires that I summarize complex ideas accurately and deal with them in a limited space. I’m sure that my own ideas about education and politics are clearer and more coherent because I have to figure out how to present them to the public in 800-word essays."
Most people would have run out of things to write about every week, but not Shanker. "He had so many ideas and so much to say," recalls Marcia Reecer, who helped Shanker write the column for the past eight years. Shanker’s fort?, Reecer notes, was pulling together ideas from various domains and making connections that no one else had thought of doing.
Recipe for reform
When Shanker told Reecer he wanted to write a column about a New York Times article describing how to make a perfect loaf of French bread—baking was one of his passions in life—she responded with a combination of skepticism and curiosity. But "A Recipe for School Reform" turned out to be one of his most popular columns. In it, Shanker relates his delight in the recipe, which told how to make French bread with a food processor. He had his doubts but tried the recipe for Thanksgiving and "it was terrific!"
"He had made the connection between the recipe and school reform," Reecer says. "And he used it to make an important point." Shanker went on to explain how the chef who developed the simple recipe had undoubtedly spent years perfecting it, experimenting with different variations. What would have happened if the chef had proceeded like some school reformers instead of a baker? Shanker wondered. "He might have rejected the idea of adapting French bread for a food processor in the first place. Too traditional. Not innovative enough. And not American, anyway. Never mind the fact that French people have been enjoying it for years, and it is admired as a standard all over the world."
Reecer put together one last "Where We Stand" column, which ran March 2 in the Times. (The column also appears later in this publication.) Taken from an autobiographical essay published in 1990, Shanker talks about why he kept working for high standards and against the "fads and follies that threaten to destroy public education."
"When the problems connected with school reform seem especially tough," Shanker wrote, "I think about this. I think about what public education gave me—a kid who couldn’t even speak English when I entered first grade. I think about what it has given me and can give to countless numbers of other kids like me. And I know that keeping public education together is worth whatever effort it takes."