Barriers of Individualism

Consider the teachers’ strikes which have become a familiar part of the opening of the school year around the United States every September. Negotiations stall. The union sets a strike date. The school superintendent places a notice in the local press for substitutes. There is never any lack of applicants. School remains at least formally open while the teachers picket outside. And then there is a settlement and they go back to work.

To relate this scenario to an Australian audience, as I had occasion to do several times during a recent semester at Sydney University, is invariably to evoke titters of laughter or a shocked silence, followed by a flood of questions. How was it possible for a public official to try to break a s...