ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the realities that face teachers should and can be changed, but that such change only come about when teachers are the primary, collective agents responsible for educational initiatives—not businesspeople and legislators. A central focus for teachers must be in developing an expanded world view in which schooling is seen as a pluralistic form of democracy. Democracy is used so frequently in popular discourse that it suffers from overgeneralization. The pessimist may claim that American teachers, because they are marginalized from substantive decision making and are perpetually subjected to corporate goals expectations, to testing, and measurement, and to nondemocratic representation, are at the intransitive stage. Changing the roles of teachers requires not only critical transitivity, but a collective autonomy that can best result from teachers-as-intellectuals building teacher-to-teacher coalitions. One way to combat such intimidation is, again, to build teacher coalitions that demonstrate collective autonomy and reveal the inadequacy of science as the primary means of evaluating schooling.
