Paul Snyder

paul.snyder@dailyreporter.com



Wisconsin school board leaders are bristling over a proposed bill that would force teachers to include in curriculums a history of organized labor and collective bargaining.

“The state’s already required certain financial courses and civics in government, which I don’t think is a bad thing,” said Robert Roy, president of the Milton School District Board of Education. “But at some point, you have to draw the line because with everything they say we have to teach, something else has to come out of the curriculum.”

Nevertheless, several Democratic lawmakers are pushing the bill.

“It’s important that the new generation knows the history of unions,” said bill author Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay. “This was the first state to introduce workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.

“We teach about almost everything else, why wouldn’t we teach about this?”

Hansen said lawmakers tried many times without luck since 1995 to pass the labor bill. In 2001, Hansen led a charge for the bill only to watch it pass the Senate and die in the Assembly.

Now the role is reversed. The Assembly passed the bill in April, and the Senate Committee on Education on Thursday held a public hearing on the proposal.

“Nobody spoke against it,” Hansen said.

But the Wisconsin Association of School Boards registered in opposition.

“Teaching decisions should be left in the hands of those closest to the students,” said John Ashley, WASB’s executive director. “It’s a very slippery slope when we let the Legislature start deciding what is best for us to teach.”

There is sound reasoning behind the union bill because it prepares students for the working world, said Hansen, who said he is considering other school-related bills, such as one that would force Wisconsin schools to teach financial literacy.

Scott Vaughn, executive director of the Building and Construction Trades Council of South Central Wisconsin, said the history of unions should be a subject in classrooms.

“It’s been ignored,” he said. “People coming into the unions should know that people died for what we have and that laws that are now all over the country were first passed here.”

But Roy, who taught social studies at Portage High School before taking over as board president in Milton, said several schools already weave some unions into American or Wisconsin history courses.

“If you’re interested in it, then it’s good knowledge to have and interesting to learn about,” he said. “But I never had it in high school, and I think I’ve done fine.”

Hansen said the bill does not propose penalties for teachers who choose not to teach labor history.

“Maybe that’s something we’ll do later on,” he said. “At this point, we’re just saying, ‘At least present this to kids.’”

Still, a recommendation is different from a mandate, Roy said.

“(Labor history) is out there for people to learn about,” he said. “But if you’re going to tell me that making kids learn it makes them better citizens or better workers, well, I think that’s questionable.”