ABSTRACT
Wayne Urban (1982) has provided one of the few analyses that include the voices of teachers, arguing that teachers formed unions and professional associations to gain material advances and to protect their seniority. His analysis portrays the teaching profession as an interest group which, like any other, acted to protect its own needs. This dispels any notion that teachers’ organizations, union or professional, organized to improve conditions for the students or any other altruistic purpose. If teachers organized themselves to protect their power and material interests, then one would assume the National Education Association (NEA) became more popular with teachers than the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) because it was seen as better able to protect those interests. But Urban, like Tyack, shows very clearly that the NEA was primarily an organization of administrators, not teachers, and worked more against than for the interests of teachers.
