Proletarianization and Professionalization Politics of

Proletarianization and Professionalization Politics of Educational Reform in Alberta and Teacher's Struggle against Proletarianization In the 1990s, Canadian educational system went through a series of reforms. The province of Alberta, under the leadership of Premier Ralph Klein and the Progressive Conservatives, took a lead role in implementing these reforms. The reforms were rooted in neo-liberal and neo-conservative ideologies and aimed at reducing costs for public education, maximizing economic returns, adopting managerial structure of corporations for educational institutions and schools, and increased workload for teachers.

These reforms were introduced mostly as a top-down policy with little, if any, consultation with teachers and teacher associations. But Alberta's teacher associations -- Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA), in particular -- took a persistent stance, mobilizing teachers and struggling against new educational reforms. This paper argues that the Alberta government's attempts to restructure the educational system may be explained by the concept of proletarianization, while the ATA and teachers' stance against the reforms may be explained by the concept of professionalization.

Neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism are the ideologies that have much in common. These ideologies have become a guiding principle for the governments of the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, and Canada in the last three decades. For both neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism, market economy is the gospel that needs to be defended at all costs. Both advocate corporate tax cuts and oppose big governments as well as welfare states.

Neo-liberals and Neo-conservatives advocate the pursuit of rigid free-market policies at home and abroad though these policies are riddled with internal contradictions. For example, advocates of these two ideologies have often contradicted the principles they adhere to by pressuring the governments of the U.S., U.K., and Canada to interfere in internal affairs of many developing countries in order to introduce market economies to these countries -- the policies which mostly benefited foreign investors (Harvey, 2005).

The reforms that began in Alberta by the government of Ralph Klein should be understood within the context of the political environment in Canada at the time. Neo-liberal and neo-conservative thinkers in Canada saw a crisis in Canada's educational system and decided that the root cause of the problem was public education and the welfare state. Klein and other politicians argued that the cost of education in Canada was too high, while the Canadian students' performance was poor.

In order to improve Canada's global competitiveness, Klein and his political allies argued, Canadian and Albertan educational systems should adopt the business principle of "doing more with less." The educational restructuring in Alberta, as Harrison and Kachur (1999) point out, was "ideologically driven," allowing the government to centralize authority and decrease "equality of student opportunity while opening market niches for private entrepreneurs" (xiv).

Educational restructuring, for example, included adopting managerial practices of multinational corporations, greater fiscal austerity, and increased monitoring of school performance (Harrison & Kachur, 1999; Flower & Booi, 1999; Peters, 1999; Pocklington, 1999; Taylor, 2001). It should be noted that the Klein government's attack on public education was also an attack on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which upholds that children of Canadian citizens, including those of minority groups, have the right to receive education "provided out of public funds" (Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

The educational reforms adopted by the Alberta government, among other things, significantly increased the teacher workload and decreased the teachers' autonomy in the profession by introducing various control systems and fixed regulations. Such a policy directed against teachers may be described as proletarianization, which is defined as "a process in which workers lose control over core aspects of their work, or one in which self-sufficient workers are replaced by employees in subordinate positions" (Wotherspoon, 2004, p. 155).

Proletarianization occurs when workers are pressured by external forces to intensify their work, while being subjected to increased monitoring and control by supervisors and administrators. Proletarianization tries to codify the technical functions of teachers, "such as designing lesson plans, grading students, keeping records of student attendance and progress, and following rules and procedures regarding student discipline" (Wotherspoon, 2004, p. 148). Most teachers in Canada, of course, did not share the vision of the Klein government.

The Alberta Teachers' Association took a powerful stance against the government-led educational restructuring, spending half a million dollars and participating in roundtables aimed at mobilizing the public against the government's austere measures (Taylor, 2001; Flower & Booi, 1999). The teacher stance against educational restructuring may be called professionalization, which is described as "a trend in which a particular occupation gains status and recognition through specific credentials, specialized knowledge, or access to specified rights and privileges" (Wotherspoon, 2004, p. 155). Professionalization is struggle against external authority.

In educational institutions, it has been especially important for women as a form of "female resistance to male authority, since in the past and present, teachers have been predominantly female and administrators, predominantly male" (Taylor, 2001, p. 173). Professionalization is often used to describe recognized professions such as law and medicine, and in comparison to these professions, teaching is characterized as a "semi- or quasi-profession that remains constrained by external forces such as other professions and bureaucratic school authority structures" (Wotherspoon, 2004, p. 128).

But throughout the twentieth century, teachers in Canada struggled against external authorities by improving their professional status and successfully lobbying the governments to better protect teacher rights. The fact that external forces try to undermine teacher authority does not mean that professionalization cannot explain the teacher struggle against educational restructuring in Alberta. In fact, the authority of medicine as a profession has also been threatened recently by government attempts to restructure the healthcare system.

Therefore, professionalization is an ongoing process in which members of a designated profession are in constant struggle, trying to preserve their authority in the given profession. For example, in response to government-initiated reforms, the ATA in Alberta "has managed to maintain and even enhance its viability and vitality under particularly challenging political conditions," struggling "against oppression" and making "sense of what [was] happening' and 'work out ways of doing something about it'" (Bascia, 2001).

To see how proletarianization and professionalization were at work during 1990s in Alberta, we need to analyze the report prepared by the ATA in 1993, which discussed through collaboration with teachers, educators, superintendents, and other administrators eight major proposals made by the Department of Education (and at the initiative of the Klein Administration). The ATA report pointed out that most teachers were really dismayed at the fact that almost "everyone but the teachers had a hand in redesigning the education system" (ATA, 1993).

The report was based on submissions by teachers and education administrators who offered variety of views on educational restructuring, many of them in passionate and angry tones, but also expressing dedication and concern for their profession and children. Some of the submissions agreed with the proposed restructuring of the educational system, but many suggested that the reforms were motivated not by the desire to improve the educational system but by political goals of those who did not really understand the value of education.

One of the government proposals that teachers discussed was integration. The ATA Special Education Council defines integration as "the practice of educating children with special needs in the regular classroom in their neighborhood school with their non-handicapped same-aged peers" (ATA, 1993). Teachers mostly expressed support for this policy as a principle but doubted that the proposal was workable unless the government was willing to allocate more resources for that. But it was precisely the purpose of cutting costs that motivated the local authorities to propose integration.

Some teachers understood that the real motivation was to intensify the teacher workload, while reducing the costs of educating students with special needs. "The idea of integrating special needs students into the regular classroom seems to be motivated by economics rather than by any real concern for meeting the educational needs of the majority of students in the classroom," one teacher wrote. "Certainly, placing special needs students into regular classrooms is cost effective in that special classes for these students are no longer necessary.

The real costs of placing such students into the classroom, however, cannot be measured in monetary terms" (ATA, 1993). Another proposal the teachers discussed was the results-based curriculum. Results-based curriculum, which places heavy emphasis on educational results (student performance, high grades, achievements, and other "measurable" and "observable" factors), was obviously derived from a business concept that tries to maximize profit, while exploiting the labor force to the maximum. One teacher pointed out that integration of students with special needs was incompatible with the pursuit of results-based curriculum.

"The danger comes in assuming that the worth and the depth of an individual can be measured by comparing to a list of desired 'results,'" another teacher commented. "Results-based evaluation works quite well in measuring the value of a mechanical process, like an assembly line.

If we are wise, we will leave it there; and not try to fit our wonderfully gifted, talented and varied children into such a simplistic pattern!" The ATA report summed up the concern of teachers who believed that "results-based curriculum was part of a larger process whose goal seemed to be to make education 'teacher proof,' to turn teachers into 'technicians,' and to deny them the right to make professional decisions in the light of their training, experiences and the needs of their students" (ATA, 1993).

Neo-liberal and neo-conservative thinkers in Alberta were so focused in the end results of educational policies that they proposed two other programs that differed little from results-based curriculum: program continuity and continuous progress. Many teachers could not really understand what these programs were about. The Department of Education, for example, placed program continuity together with "results-based, levels-organized curriculum." Program continuity envisioned that students knew what they needed to learn and what they could accomplish, and the curriculum accordingly was supposed to gear towards achieving those goals.

Teachers pointed out that imposing such expectations on students was at odds with the philosophy of letting students find their own comfort zones and levels of learning. Teachers also pointed out that these additional requirements forced them to work more, effectively turning them into working machines. What teachers resented most, however, was the "erosion of professionalism": "What I resent is that some are trying to take away my professional decision-making as to my philosophy, teaching style and even content" (ATA, 1993).

Another theme teachers discussed was the government proposal instructing teachers to design individual educational plans. Teachers were expected to work more with students individually. This was again an attempt to increase the teacher workload, intended to improve the student performance. In other words, the principles of running a large business company were being applied to administering schools again. This program also required that teachers prepare individual reports so that external forces could better monitor teacher activity and student performance.

One teacher expressed her frustration: "The individual educational plans are very time consuming and present another cause of frustration to the classroom teacher, not only does she have to do reporting on a large class, but she has to do three, four or more individual reports," while another teacher pointed out that the program was essentially unworkable and unhelpful to students: "One teacher cannot provide material, counseling and motivation for 30 students with skills ranging over five or six grades.

One teacher cannot have the skills to handle a Cerebral Palsy student, a student who lives in a correctional facility, a student who is facing death and a near blind student -- and this is all in one day." Another teacher stated: "With constant supervision and a stress on produce, produce, produce you'd think we were dealing with a business product" (ATA, 1993). The government's most blatant attempt at proletarianization was the introduction of more external tests to evaluate the performance of students.

Politicians and the media often referred to the successes of Japan, South Korea, and Germany, and argued that Canada's "failures" could be rectified by more external control. Teachers raised several issues with this proposal. Some of them argued that there were already too many tests in place, and others argued that additional tests would increase the teacher workload and stress even further. Most teachers, however, expressed dismay at attempts to diminish the role of a teacher as a professional.

"Policy makers have changed the way we are able to instruct children," one teacher wrote. "Teachers have gradually lost legitimized control over classroom standards. External assessment measures are the same as saying 'something's wrong' and by testing, we will find solutions" (ATA, 1993). Teachers were passionately upset about other such proposals. The Ministry of Education proposed preparing portfolio assessment for each student to identify individual needs of students in order to develop more efficient ways of addressing their demands and needs.

This proposal certainly placed more time constraints and increased the teacher workload. One teacher responded: "There are only 24 hours in the day, the last time I heard. Where is the time for us to do all that is being demanded of us?" (ATA, 1993). Similarly, the vision statements proposal by the Ministry was, in the eyes of teachers, a top-down.