In 1995, after five years of startling policy reversals, a spate of scandals and resignations, a global recession, high interest rates, a mounting deficit, Bob Rae's NDP government in Ontario was swept from power after a single term.
The biggest factor in the defeat was the Social Contract of 1993, a program of financial cuts that alienated teachers and public sector unions, the very people who brought Rae to power in 1990. George Martell, one of Canada's leading education writer-activists, here presents a detailed history of the Social Contract negotiations, and the pivotal role the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation (OSSTF) played in this dramatic struggle.
A New Education Politics anatomizes the corporate agenda of public sector downsizing and education reform, examining how this agenda overtook Bob Rae's NDP government.
An Our Schools/Our Selves book.

GEORGE MARTELL teaches is in the Social Science Department of Atkinson College, York University. He is one of the founders of This Magazine and Our Schools/Our Selves.

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"Readable and straightforward... this book has much to offer students, parents, and teachers who are either involved in public education or the labor movement."

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