As a Canadian, I suffer a traditional genre of histories written of our own provincial teacher unions. First, they are invariably authored by retired executive members or staffers, and unfortunately often lack perspective, either from the “rank and file” or from the “outside”. Second, they are clearly written for the purpose of “showcasing” their beloved organizations, and thus eschew most, if not all, critique. Third, they follow a traditional Whig approach to their historical narrative of union (not to mention, state schooling) “progress” over time – often positioned as visionary union leaders dragging their backward members along. Finally, much of the content of these volumes is invariably allocated to lengthy descriptions of these select leaders, the offices they held, and their “brilliant” contributions.
Thankfully, Denis Fitzgerald's treatment of the recent history of the New South Wales Teachers Federation (NSWTF) (from mid 1970s to about 2010) provides a very different perspective indeed. Although an insider himself (including serving as president in the mid‐1990s), his narrative avoids the “worthy leader” and “continual progress” syndrome. Rather, he takes the approach of exploring teachers’ engagement and struggle over the years with a number of significant schooling themes, ones which often involved students, parents, schooling administrators and/or politicians as well – a true exploration of “Teachers and their Times”. In places where he does laud the NSWTF, it is in the context of teachers representing a “diverse array of forces within its federated structure” (p. 211), and an organization which he believes “celebrates diversity, scepticism, pluralism and dissent” (p. 231) within its midst.
To be sure, these differences are sure to arise among teachers in the context of addressing any union's primary mandate – maintaining and enhancing the material conditions of work. Fitzgerald certainly does a more than adequate job of covering these, often very conflicting, discussions, decisions and actions relating to goals, strategies and tactics. However, he is at his best, I would argue, in examining the union's role in the struggle over what I would call the larger educational issues; further, in doing so, he is also careful to make clear his own values and perspectives, as they pertain to these matters.
First and foremost, he places himself firmly on the side of “public education” – “high quality public education for all based on the principles of inclusiveness, community, social cohesion and the highest possible academic achievement” (p. 160). This translates into at least two main, interrelated themes among the many which dominate the history of struggle inside and outside the NSWTF – first, opposition to funding for any schools not part of a universal public system (whether Catholic or independent); and second, engagement with issues of equal access and treatment for all students (and teachers) regardless of gender, class, ethnicity and race (among other areas of social difference). Prime among this latter domain is the question of whether public schools should provide a comprehensive education for all students, as compared to a “streamed” or “tracked” structure within and between schools, based on measures of so‐called student “aptitude” or achievement. From my experience, teachers and teacher unions everywhere continue to wrestle with this question, and Fitzgerald has been very insightful in the ways he has described and analysed these complex matters in the New South Wales context.
He is equally comprehensive, and sensitive, in his treatment of a related matter of inclusivity – the status of female, Aboriginal and sexual minority teachers – and the resultant conflicts within the union structures, as well as within the larger state schooling system. He devotes an entire chapter to an examination of Aboriginal education – its “dire” statistics (p. 252), the slow progress of the State in effecting change, and what he suggests has been a number of initiatives taken by the NSWTF – but at the same time quoting a teacher‐activist that “the union will still have to be pushed and reminded to continue its commitment as new generations take hold” (p. 265).
Teacher “professionalism” remains a perpetual topic among teacher unions everywhere. While this concept, more recently at least, rarely interrupts decisions about engaging in industrial action when deemed necessary, it often appears in relation to discussions about alliances with the larger union movement. As a former insider, Fitzgerald's reflections on the internal NSWTF debates regarding relations with other workers’ unions, and the Australian Labor Party, are informative indeed, and provide considerable insight into the Federation's reluctance to countenance formal relations with either group. Indeed, as he points out, the Federation was for a long time a rather wary member even of the national Australian Education Union; certainly it opposed (albeit after some debate) the latter's interest in drawing in private‐school teachers as members, suggesting that his Federation would not “take the central locus of union activity further away from its membership and from the principles of public education” (p. 247). Ironically, however, Fitzgerald also provides evidence to show that, on at least one occasion, more conservative candidates in NSWTF executive elections were heavily supported, not only by officials of the Labor Council and the Australian Labor Party (who, among other things, favoured state aid to Catholic schools), but also indirectly from CIA funds which had been channelled “for decades in the postwar period” (p. 65) through the US embassy's labour attaché (a practice, based on my own research, not unknown among teacher unions in other nations).
As Fitzgerald himself notes in his Introduction, those wishing more detail about the inner workings of the NSWTF, “judgement on leaderships of the union” and “internecine matters” will have to wait “for others to assess […] [i]n the sweep of time” (p. vii). In the meantime, however, he has written an exemplary history of the larger educational issues facing, and engaging, NSW teachers and their union, over the past three or four decades.
