"Why don't you become a columnist for the New York Times?"
Last Wednesday, this column celebrated its 25th anniversary. Where We Stand first appeared in the New York Times on December 13, 1970, and, except for one summer break, it has come out every week since then-- a total of nearly 1,300 columns. Why did I start Where We Stand? I answered this question in a column I wrote in 1990.
Before teachers were unionized and gained the right to bargain collectively, they were poorly paid and badly treated. But they usually got plenty of sympathy from the press. All that changed with unionization. Teachers who could shut down the schools were no longer powerless, so they -- and their unions -- got plenty of criticism from the press.
Like many other labor leaders, I didn't pay much attention to the harsh words. Union members were the ones who elected me, and as long as what I said and did satisfied my constituency, I figured that's what counted.
In 1967 I led New York City teachers in a 14-day strike, and in 1968 we engaged in the longest teacher strike in U.S. history. We had substantial public support, but it seemed to me that people were more and more seeing the teachers' union primarily as a group that used brute force to get what it wanted. Sure, many teachers joined to improve their salaries and working conditions. But they also joined to change a system that wasn't working for kids or teachers, a system that thousands of idealistic teachers left each year because they were convinced it was hopeless.
During these strikes, I became one of the best-known figures in New York City, but people saw me only as a militant union leader -- urging teachers to strike, refusing to settle, going to jail. I became convinced that I had been wrong in believing that the public's opinion of me didn't matter. Public schools depend on public support. And the public was not likely to support the schools for long if they thought teachers were led by a powerful madman. The joke in the movie "Sleeper" where the Woody Allen character hears the world was destroyed when "a man by the name of Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead" was a fair reflection of this view.
I decided to devote some time and energy to letting the public know that the union's president was someone who read books and had ideals and ideas about how to fix the schools. I approached some magazines with ideas for articles but was rebuffed with comments like "Who's going to write your stuff?" as if a union leader would be unable to write for himself.
I asked for advice from Arnold Beichman, who is now a distinguished writer and fellow at the Hoover Institution. Beichman agreed with my analysis, and after suggesting things I had already tried, he said, "Why don't you become a columnist for the New York Times?" I objected that the Times would rather give me a punch in the nose than editorial space. Beichman' s answer was, "Buy it. Buy space for a weekly column in the same spot every week. You'll be able to respond to Times editorials and give readers a different slant on things. You'll be able to criticize shoddy coverage of education issues there and in other papers. You can review books on education; before long, authors will be sending you manuscripts. Last but not least, you can use the column to endorse good candidates for political office. If you build a following, those endorsements will be worth a lot.
"Just one more thing," Beichman said. "Don't bother if the column is going to sound like organization boilerplate. It will be effective only if you are free to explore and advance ideas, even if they are not union policy and are controversial."
I think the column has done what Beichman predicted. 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 has also provided a discipline for me -- 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 general public in 800-word essays.
Why do I continue writing the column? The weekly deadlines do not get any easier, and advertising costs continue to climb. The short answer is because of the response I get from readers. Whenever I consider stopping, I get a well-reasoned critique of a recent column or an excellent manuscript or I meet somebody in an airport halfway across the world who says he looks forward to reading the column even though he gets it two weeks late -- and I'm ready to go again.