2,000,000 Out There

Helen Dickerson Wise looked out the kitchen window of her 100-year-old white clapboard farmhouse one day last week and mulled over the riches that the summer would bring. "I helped my son Dirk plant 755 tomato plants a month ago," she remarked, "and found muscles that I haven't felt in years. By now the corn is about ready; we'll be having the first ears next week. We won't have any strawberries this year, but Til can and jam the peaches from our own trees in the early fall." Mrs. Wise also was keeping an eye on 30 head of polled beef cattle, 100 chickens and a collie named Pabby, but not on a rabbit that was hiding "around some place."

All this is fitting and proper for a housewife who helps manage a 175-acre farm in the bountiful Penns Valley not far from Harrisburg, Pa. (she also plays the organ at the Lutheran Church). But Mrs. Wise says she sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night and thinks: "My heavens, there are 2,000,000 teachers out there. Then I wonder about what 2,000,000 people could do if they had the right leadership." This, too, is fitting and proper, for Mrs. Wise has just assumed the presidency of the 1.4-mil-lion-member National Education Association. On her, therefore, falls the responsibility of trying to negotiate a merger during the coming year with the smaller but more militant American Federation of Teachers (375,000 members). If the negotiations with New York's Albert Shanker and other teacher-union leaders succeed, the combined union will be the second largest in the

U.S., exceeded only by the Teamsters.

Mrs. Wise, now 44, has been a schoolteacher for more than 20 years, as has her husband Howard, 49, but it was only ten years ago that she first got involved in politics. It was at a meeting in which the teachers were pressing the school board for raises. "People had been talking all night," she told TIME'S Marion Knox in her farmhouse kitchen.

"It was obvious that we weren't going anywhere. Howard nudged me and said, 'You talk.' I did and really blasted the board members. The next morning the teachers asked me to be salary chairman. We got the pay raise and a lot of other things out of that 32-member board. I tell you, when you can convince 32 people that what you want is reasonable, I think that I can handle Shanker."

Mrs. Wise says that her husband and three teen-age sons have always supported her endeavors. "I remember in 1968 when we led a demonstration of 20,000 teachers to the steps of the state capitol in Harrisburg for the salary appropriations. I thought I had left the kids safely at home and when we got to the steps I looked up and saw my three sitting in the tree above the Governor's head."

The organization that Mrs. Wise now heads has long been rather staid and traditional, but it has formidable potential--a full-time staff of 700 and an annual budget of $31 million. In this era of slashed budgets and job shortages, Mrs. Wise plans to use the N.E.A.

potential for maximum political power.

She wants presidential candidates to seek N.E.A. endorsement, and she promises to work "politically and legislatively" to "put a friend of education in the White House." Other plans:

-- Pushing a collective-bargaining bill for public employees, which was introduced in Congress in June.

-- More federal funds for education. "Our goal is one-third state funding, one-third local funding, and one-third federal funding."

-- Considering a constitutional amendment that would make equal education a basic right of all Americans.

-- Professional standards for teachers. "Nobody hates a bad teacher more than a good teacher does, because he or she demeans us," she says. "We are the only professionals who haven't anything to say about who gets into the profession. Even barbers and beauticians have their own standards boards. But there must also be due process if a teacher is fired."

The N.E.A. itself is a powerful force for all these causes, but its power would be greatly increased by merger with the A.FT. The A.FT. is strong in such cities as New York and Chicago, whereas the more rural N.E.A. is most effective in state capitals. The main obstacle is the A.FT.'s insistence that the unionized teachers join the AFL-CIO. Many N.E.A. members once opposed the AFL-CIO as too liberal; some still do, but others now oppose its conservatism.

"There are a great many reasons for the merger," says Mrs. Wise, "but if it means membership in the AFL-CIO, we would lose half our people. Those in California, the Southwest and the Southeast are violently opposed to joining it. In some cases, it's a fear of being dominated. In some cases the AFL-CIO represents the private sector, and they feel that the public sector [teachers] should band together outside of that.

Furthermore, many of the blacks and minorities feel that the A.FT. and the AFL-CIO have not been on the cutting edge of minority rights, that they haven't been given as fair a shake as the N.E.A. has given them.

"But we need the merger. We need the combined power. I remember John Kennedy said that if teachers didn't get into politics, there would be no one to speak for the kids or for education. I guess I'm a populist. I believe that we can make a difference."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.