Dear Editor
Dear Editor Shanker's Credo May I congratulate The New Leader for the splendid and sensitive manner in which it celebrated the life of my colleague and comrade for over 50 years—Al Shanker....
...Reading the reference to "Moctezuma's revenge" in your last issue ("A Crescendo of Inductive Logic," NL, March 10) sent me to my atlas, where I learned that the Libyans actually call Tripoli The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Democracy for AI was not merely a process...
...Many of us, however, savored the prospect of being in China to witness the fateful day...
...Only a week after I'd returned home—poor timing!—Deng died...
...Early on in the fledgling Teachers Guild, Al recognized that the vast division of teachers in a variety of competing organizations kept them too weak to effectuate change...
...Once, while teaching a class of 7th graders the word "leader," I asked, "Who is the leader of China...
...He and his colleagues developed a unifying program that had at its core a salary schedule which permitted teachers in every division to reach a maximum based on two masters degrees...
...They shouted gleefully, "Jiang Zemin...
...Tung was right: "Students seem more interested in computer games and getrich schemes" than protest...
...Living there, I found it hard to imagine droves of computer science and English students taking to the streets in their peach corduroy suits, their white high heels and their miniskirts, with beepers and cell phones in hand, demanding justice...
...To the disappointment of journalists around the globe, the Chinese students of 1997 are behaving as if nothing has happened...
...Falls Church, Va...
...George P. McLintock USMC Ret...
...founding president, United Federation of College Teachers, AFT...
...They soon catapulted him to the position of a professional educator who played a leading role not only in defending public education, but in seeking to improve it by strongly advocating higher standards for measuring student achievement...
...When I asked people (students, teachers, businessmen, shopkeepers, taxi drivers) if they thought Deng might already be dead, they'd shrug and laugh...
...Send in the Marines...
...From the halls of what to the shores of where...
...Then another...
...The Chinese people didn't seem anxious...
...Who cares...
...Deng's Demise Likemostjournalistswritingrecently on Deng's death, Timothy Tung ("China After Deng Xiaoping," NL, March 10) nods to the "most urgent question raised by Deng's passing": whether students would be stirred to demonstrate...
...Tarabulus...
...We should be prepared to flee the country in that case, we Americans were told...
...Then a joker in the back shouted, "Deng Xiaoping...
...Moctezuma's Revenge When I joined the Marine Corps in 1952, the phrase "The Marines have the situation well in hand" was still remembered, if not current, and the Corps had a glorious history of doing battle in far-flung areas of the globe such as Mexico (in 1847 we hit the beach at Veracruz and later entered Mexico City with General Winfield Scott), and Libya (we fought the Barbary Coast pirates...
...We wondered (as did many in the U S. ) if he hadn't died long ago, and if the Chinese government wasn't waiting indefinitely for the opportune moment to make it public...
...An American colleague predicted that the announcement would come in the spring, during the final exams, when students wouldn't have time to revolt...
...Yet there were no demonstrations...
...The directors of the program warned of possible—if not probable— spontaneous and dramatic social reaction when Deng died...
...Al then used his base in New York City and his reputation as a militant to win the presidency of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)—a post he was elected to every two years from 1974 until his untimely death...
...It wasn't during final exams...
...it was a value he promoted within the union, our nation, and indeed the entire world...
...I was reminded of a three-day orientation I underwent before going to teach English in Wuhan in 1995...
...Still he didn't die...
...They were too content with the present, too optimistic about the future...
...The city of 7 million people in easterncentral China has 33 colleges and was the scene of massive protests in 1989...
...That urgency has been mocked by the placidity of the response...
...Diane Ravitch's article ("Albert Shanker—1928-1997," NL, February 24) and Angela Knightley's cover drawing really captured his spirit...
...The motto of the AFT, coined by John Dewey— "Democracy in Education...
...The next step was to acquire the power to bargain collectively, and it took both a referendum and a strike to get the Board of Education to recognize the United Federation of Teachers...
...one boy said "Li Peng" and was promptly hit by a flying pencil case...
...A year passed...
...Long Island City, N. Y. Israel Kitgler, Professor Emeritus in Social Science, City University of New York...
...Education for Democracy"—was also Al's credo...
...He waded into the deep South, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and school classrooms wherever he happened to be to further that value...
...Princeton, N.I...
...Al was a social democrat who carefully planned Ins strategy and tactics...
...Laura Burt...
...and the entire class fell into uproarious, knee-slapping, desk-pounding laughter...
...Who knows...
...My colleagues weren't airlifted out...
Vol. 80 • March 1997 • No. 5
