Long read, but worth it.

This article from reader Pat Visser is really interesting.

Teachers, Education Reform, and Mexico’s Left by Benjamin T. Smith ▪ October 7, 2013

n early September Mexico’s Senate passed a series of sweeping reforms of the country’s education system, introducing standardized testing for the hiring and promotion of teachers and undermining the power of the teachers’ unions. Although the government bowed to certain union demands, teachers throughout southern Mexico remain on strike. Children in the states of Michoacán, Oaxaca, and Guerrero have yet to begin classes this academic year. The striking teachers claim that the reforms discriminate against teachers from poorer, more indigenous regions, and are designed to start the gradual privatization of the Mexican education system... snip

At the heart of the left’s total inability to generate popular enthusiasm for the strike is the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE). Dissident teachers, predominantly from the heavily indigenous southern states of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas, formed the confederation in 1979 to challenge the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE), the official teachers’ union closely aligned with the government’s single-party corporatism. For over a decade, the CNTE struggled against SNTE leadership, eventually ejecting the union’s head during a national strike in 1989. Behind contemporary hostility to the CNTE, many older parents retain sympathy and respect for the teachers of the 1980s. The CNTE was at the forefront of the democratization movement and often allied with other social groups to push for broader reforms.