COMPARATIVE BOOK REVIEWASSIGNMENT 2

6/17/2012MAIS 650 JOHN ALAN SUTHERLAND 2980775

DR, INGO SCHMIDT

1

Thinking Union : Activism and Education in Canada’s Labour Movement. By D’Arcy Martin, Toronto, Canada: Between The Lines, 1995. ISBN #0921284969. 161 pp. $24.95 paper.

The Third Contract: Theory and Practice in Trade Union Training. By Michael Newman, Sydney, Australia: Centre for Popular Education, 2002. ASIN B003CTDKTE. 280 pp. $39 A paper.

These two well written books describe the profession of labour education from different

perspectives yet both draw upon the personal experiences of the authors working in the field as

labour educators. Thinking Union describes in a narrative form the everyday issues involving

unions and union members which the author dealt with in his role as a labour educator (Berry &

Worthen, 2003) during his twenty years working in Canada for two large international unions.

He uses these events to illustrate the techniques which he used in teaching union members how

to deal with issues between co- workers, with their union leadership and with management.

Many of his methods were developed as a result of his interaction with those he was teaching

both in the classroom and in the field. While in The Third Contract (2002) Newman draws

upon his personal experiences in support of his views on how “to approach the teaching of adults

from within the field of labor education and to place this particular form of adult education

within the broader framework of progressive adult education” (Schied, 1994). The approach he

takes to teaching adult workers is “from the standpoint of a progressive adult educator located

within the trade union movement” (Schied, 1994). In the introduction he states that his book is in

response to requests to make adult learning more relevant to workers and unionists (Newman, p.

vii).

D’Arcy Martin was raised in a middle class home which had no ties to unions. He turned to

activism during his university years where his involvement in the student movement “anchored a

personal conviction that education can and should be part of a broad popular movement for

2

social and political change” (Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's Labour

Movement, p. 4). It was also a period of time when he was personally exposed to the great

Brazilian teacher and philosopher Paulo Freire who was living in exile in Canada (Martin,

Learning from the South, 1998). This relationship shaped many of his opinions about the course

of adult and union education. After university he spent six years building, with others, the

Development Education Centre, a collective of adult educators that ran a library, bookstore and

film distribution service, did educational work in high schools and communities and produced

documentary films, books and pamphlets (Gonick, 1996). Whether in or out of this union career

Martin is an adult educator. To him “informal learning and social movement” (Martin, 2004) are

central to the discussion of education and work.

Martin’s first experience as a labour educator came with his employment in that

capacity with the Steelworkers international union with headquarters in the United States.

Coming from a background of activism outside unions he believed naively that he had all the

technical skills he needed to do his job as a labour educator; that he could easily learn about

contract language, grievance procedure and other union matters and bring a fresh perspective to

deal with union issues. He found however that the hardest part of his work lay outside the

conventional tasks of education. He learned that he had to learn a “new set of political skills:

reading the balance of power among factions; understanding what moves union people to fight;

balancing the democratic and authoritarian currents within the union” (Gonick, 1996). He

learned that to be an effective and productive union educator requires a lot more than putting

together manuals and delivering courses. It also means “researching the political subtexts of the

local situation, avoiding getting drawn into personal feuds, discovering if there is resistance to a

3

union policy on environmental issues or Native rights or gender equity and working with local

leaders to work out ways of dealing with this resistances” (Gonick, 1996).

Martin recognized early in his career that industrial workers often harbor a bitter

resentment of the way they were treated in school which affects their ability to learn in a union

classroom. Coming from a non union background meant that he had to first break down initial

suspicions and resentments toward himself. He had to convince union members of his right to

respect as well as theirs. He learned that union members expected their instructor to stand with

them on the issues and not be neutral in his presentation. Union members wanted to know how to

understand the world from their class perspective and to learn the language and the tools to fight

back against management. He learned that “power” is involved in all union education as the

labour movement’s purpose is to win more power for its members. Martin learned that the role of

an educator in union education is as much facilitative (Newman, p. 23) as it is instructional.

Realizing these needs in labour education Martin developed a course “Facing

Management’ in which participants looked at their workplaces through the eyes of management

each morning and then spent the afternoon devising strategies for responding to management

control. He found that this opened the debate between “business unionism” (sticking with

workplace issues) and “social unionism” which relates to workers questions of ownership,

wealth, social and political power. Martin attempted to help the discussion along without

entering the fray. “By respecting the participants’ starting points and encouraging radical

reflection on them the course leader accomplished more than by lecturing and arguing” (Martin,

Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's Labour Movement, 1995).

4

Thinking Union describes “a loving yet credible portrait of union culture in Canada over

nearly two decades” (Berry & Worthen, p. 84). From his first job as Canadian education director

of the Steelworkers (USWA) in Toronto in 1978 the book takes us through his firing by that

union to his eventual holding a similar position with the Communication and Electrical Workers

of Canada(CWC) which then became the merged union Communications, Energy and

Paperworkers (Canada) (Martin, Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's Labour

Movement, 1995). The book is a personal story of Martin as he learns his job and tries to solve

the problems confronting the union and its members. On a broader basis it puts him in contact

with other unions and their members and officials throughout the Canadian labour movement. It

is an enjoyable read as he gives us his perception of different events such as the “thoughtless

remark by a manager” and what that triggers off in terms of union reaction; “the way a comment

dropped in a chance meeting on a plane (p. 27) or at a lunch counter resonates later in another

context” (Gonick); the calm mood of a small group of rank and file members after a vote; the

choices made by union leaders as they approach a contested election. All these events are

described by the author through his interpretation as a labour educator who is both a “radical

democrat” and a “conscious romantic” (Gonick). For martin labour education must be taught

within the parameters of “union culture” (p. 29).

But Martin does set his compass in dealing with these events by laying out ten “dynamics

or cross-currents’ that he uses to locate his work in the union movement. The book is a

“reflective and philosophical” (Gonick, 1996) portrait of the labour educator in today’s labour

movement. “He also elaborates three metaphors for the flow of communication (and power)

within unions: staircase, web and channel” (p. 84). He illustrates these with brief stories which

“let the reader in on the kind of analytic structure that underpins his reflections” (p. 84). The

5

book ends in a unique way with a collection of revealing reactions to the book as it is circulated

in manuscript among his friends and colleagues, many of whom are in the union movement.

Martin emphasizes in his book that labour education is “interactive’ as workers taking

union courses have a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. A good instructor does not

withdraw from the learning process when students begin to test their knowledge in action.

Instead he or she uses that experience to enrich and deepen the learning process and allow it to

feed back on it. In this way educators learn alongside students. The other key actor in the labour

education process is the sponsor or the union itself. The labour educator who is an employee of

the union is obliged to support the policies of the union and its democratic process. But he is in

no way obligated to support the policies of the leader. Martin stresses that “to be fully effective

educational leadership should remain distinct from political leadership since both are required for

a healthy and effective social movement” (Martin, Thinking Union: Activism and Education in

Canada's Labour Movement, 1995). In sticking with this principle Martin pays a heavy price and

loses his job with the Steelworkers union. He is fired for refusing to join in a campaign to

undermine the Ontario director because he saw the campaign to scapegoat, isolate and undermine

the director as a “betrayal of union democracy” (p. 76).

In the Third Contract Newman has managed to provide fresh insight into how the teacher

can adopt, respond to and use theoretical insights derived from a variety of sources “but always

located within the progressive adult education tradition” (Schied, p. 248). He builds upon the

research of others who have noted that “ the roots of much of the progressive tradition of adult

education lie within early workers’ education movement” (Schied, p. 245). He addresses the

book to the teacher of adults rather than to theorizers although he clearly does not want his

audience to assume that practice and theory are separate realms of activity (Newman, p. vii). He

6

seeks to place teaching in historical, social and intellectual context not in an abstract way but to

show how we go about teaching in our daily life. He uses his personal experiences as a labour

educator to illustrate this but like martin he is not from a union background but instead from the

field of adult education (p. 21).

In Part One Newman describes his experiences within the Australian Trade union Training

Authority. He personalizes his argument by describing and reflecting on his own and his fellow

union educator’s classroom experiences to show the reader that wherever they are in the world

the experiences in Australia reflect worldwide issues for unions and labour. He develops the

description of labour education within unions as consisting of three contracts (p. 25). The first is

between the learner and the teacher ; the second between the teacher and the union; and the third

is between the union and the union member participating in the education. This third contract

which is indirect and in which the teacher does not participate is to the author the most important

(p. 39). Newman centres union teaching within the context of social commitment and the

nonneutrality of teaching which is similar to what Martin discovered. For Newman the most

important role of the labour educator is “to assist union members in becoming actively involved

in their union and to encourage democratic union processes” (Schied, p. 246) . “Irrespective of

the objectives of a particular training course, these ideals of democracy should be demonstrated

in the way the course is conducted, in the choice of the methods, in the nature of the exercises

written and conducted, in the use of discussion and dialogue, and in the content” (Newman, p.

270).

The second part of the book supports Newman’s argument that the Anglo-Australian adult

education draws from four traditions (p. 45). These are : liberal; mechanistic; psychotherapeutic;

and community development. These are discussed within the historical and social contexts in

7

which they emerged (p. 45). Parts Three, four, and five expand on each of these traditions and

attempt to draw out their implications for teaching. Newman stresses the importance of Richard

Johnson’s work (p. 58) on nineteenth century radical adult education and how it brings to life the

significance of the liberal tradition to union education in particular and to adult education in

general. While “useful knowledge” was more related to the mechanistic tradition “really useful

knowledge” (p. 59)was developed by working class radicals. They had pointed out (according to

Johnson as described by Newman) that useful knowledge was “really meant to make people

better servants and better workers and thus served as a means of social control” (Schied, p. 246).

But really useful knowledge was concerned “with defining and protecting natural rights,

extending democracy, critically examining the propertied nature of the state , promoting concepts

of community and cooperation, explaining the existence of poverty amidst the production of

wealth, and combatting the exploitation that led to it” (Newman, p. 59). It was out of this

tradition of critical liberal education that sread from England to Australia that Newman says

union education grew.

Part four evaluates what Newman calls the “mechanistic” tradition (p. 80) with which

he disagrees because of “the political values implicit in them” (p. 81). He agrees that its models

can be adapted and applied in union training (p. 81) provided they are recognized for their

confining nature of their use in “organizational and industrial training” (p. 108). Critics say that

he fails to assess “the inherent structural processes by which scientific management was

translated into educational practice” (Schied, p. 248).

Newman moves on in Part 5 to discuss the psychotherapeutic tradition and the concept

of an educational tradition rooted in psychological concepts of self-growth and group dynamics

(p. 137). He refers to Jack Mezirow (p. 146)within this tradition and relates his work to

8

Newman’s use of union training sessions at which the bosses make a presentation to workers to

further worker-management cooperation. Newman describes this as transformative learning. This

to Newman illustrates the usefulness and limitation of Mezirov’s work. These training sessions

were originally planned to operate within Mezirow’s first two domains of learning: instrumental

learning and learning for interpersonal understanding (p. 169). The aim was to equip participants

with information and with communication and interpersonal skills to enable them to work

effectively on worker-management consultative teams. Particpants were encouraged to focus on

how their attitudes to the bosses changed after worker management meetings as compared to

those held before the meetings. Thus the participants examined their attitudes and the meaning

perspectives that controlled and formed those attitudes (pp. 180-181). Critics say that Newman

fails to address how the psychologization of the field of adult education has served to disable

certain groups by creating a small group of experts who create and control knowledge and a

larger group of clients who turn to those experts for help (Schied, p. 248).

The longest part of the book Part 6 deals with the community development and social

action tradition (p. 190). Newman locates union education squarely within this tradition. Here

Newman calls upon the significance of thinkers and adult educators such as Myles Horton, Paulo

Freire, Jane Thompson and Fathers Coady and Tomkins of the Antigonish Movement. He

illustrates their usefulness in focusing education for social change (p. 192) with instances from

his own experiences. One such example is how a course for Aboriginal unionists was

transformed into “an Aboriginal course for Aboriginal unionists” (pp. 215-217). Later after a

cogent overview of feminist adult education focusing on the work of Jane Thompson (p. 244)he

links feminism and trade union training using an example taken from a women only nurses

training conference. The result is an interesting and important portrayal of how class and gender

9

can be linked in practice. Like Martin, Newman believes the thinking of Pablo Freire “has a

direct relevance to union training” (p. 219) by giving it a philosophy and offering a way of

thinking about the world and man’s place in the world.

Newman closes his book by arguing for the importance of unions and union based

education for the creation of a democratic state. He cites Noam Chomsky and Myles Horton (p.

271) and concludes that unions play a fundamental role in preserving and expanding notions of

political and economic democracy. Newman can be criticized for his oversimplification of

complex ideas as for example his brief and incomplete overview of critical theory. Despite this

criticism Newman has managed to provide fresh insights derived from a variety of sources but

always located within the progressive adult education tradition. This book is valuable as a

consistent theoretical and political framework for the labour educator, explicitly expressed.

Popular education in the labour movement must include six threads; community, democracy,

equity, class consciousness, organization building and the greater good.

Both of these books are a must read for those wishing to work within the fields of labour

education within the broader field of adult education and for those wishing to know more about

the evolvement of these professions.

10

BibliographyBerry, J., & Worthen, H. (2003). Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's Labour Movement

and: Education for Changing Unions (review). Labor Studies Journal Vol 28 Number 2 Summer, 84-85.

Gonick, C. (1996). Life of a Union Educator. Canadian Dimension Vol 30 Issue 5 Sep/Oct, 49-50.

Martin, D. (1995). Thinking Union: Activism and Education in Canada's Labour Movement. Toronto: Between The Lines.

Martin, D. (1998). Learning from the South. Convergence Vol 31 Issue1/2, 117-127.

Martin, D. (2004). Widening Gaps and The Need for Fresh Thinking. Convergence vol 37 Issue 1, 31-35.

Newman, M. (2002). The Third Contract: Theory and practice in trade union training. Sydney: Centre for Popular Education.

Schied, F. M. (1994). Book Review. Adult Education Quarterly Vol 44, 245-248.