Shanker Library. Visit our online archive of more than 1,300 'Where We Stand' New York Times columns by Albert Shanker. About Al Shanker. Shanker Dixit, MD, FAAN, Board Certified. Leading neurologist in the diagnosis and management of neurological disorders including Migraine, Epilepsy, Dementia, Parkinson's, Neuromuscular disorders, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke. EEG, EMG, Botox therapy & infusion center. Medico-legal & expert witness.

. Film director.

film producer. screenwriterYears active1993–presentSpouse(s)Easwari ShankarChildren3Shankar Shanmugam (born 17 August 1963), credited as S. Shankar or his mononym Shankar, is an who predominantly works in.

He made his debut as a director in the film (1993), for which he won the and the.Shankar's films typically deal with the contemporary social issues and vigilante themes. He is one of the highest paid film directors of India, particularly known for extensive use of visual effects, prosthetic makeup, and state-of-art technology in songs.He usually collaborates with composer, both having done over 10 films together. Two of his films, (1996) and (1998), were submitted.

He was awarded an. His movie (2018) is the and is the. Contents.Early life Shankar was born on 17 August 1963 in, to Muthulakshmi and Shanmugam. He completed his diploma in from Central Polytechnic College before entering the film industry. He was roped into the film industry as a screenwriter by, who accidentally saw the drama stage shows made by Shankar and his team. Though he wanted to be an actor, he chose to be a director instead and became one of the leading directors in Indian Cinema.

Career 1990s Shankar began his career as an assistant to film directors like. His first break in Hindi films was as an assistant director to in (1990) produced.

His final movie with was.In 1993, he made his directional debut through. Starring in the lead role, the film was made with a higher budget in during that time, won positive response and became a., the film's music composer continued to work with Shankar in his following 6 directorial ventures.His second film, a romantic-action film was released in the following year, had in the lead role. In 1996, he collaborated with for.

It was dubbed in Hindi as and as Bharateeyudu. The film was selected as the country's submission for the. Following Indian, Shankar began work on, which released in 1998 and became the most expensive film in Indian cinema at that time with a budget of ₹ 200 million. Upon release, it became one of the highest grossing Tamil films of the 1990s.

He made his production debut through (1999). Joined the project.2000s Shankar opted to remake Mudhalvan in as, thus making his debut. Nayak, released in September 2001, was declared a ' by due to the poor marketing, its high budget and distribution price. It went on to gain a cult status despite not doing well at the box office. Shankar started to work on his next film which was supposed to be a titled Robot that was slated to have Kamal Haasan in the lead, the project was stalled since Kamal Haasan was busy with other projects.

War for the overworld maps. Later, the project could not move forward due to budgeting problems.His musical entertainer film was released in 2003, which received mixed response from the critics and audience, prompting it to do only average business. His, featuring in three distinct characters (Ambi, Remo & Anniyan) was released in 2005 with as the composer for his film.

Anniyan turned out to become the second highest grossing Tamil film of 2005. Shortly after the release of Anniyan, it was reported that Shankar had teamed up with Rajinikanth and for a film. He renewed his association with with the film. Was made at a budget of ₹ 600, the most expensive Indian film at that time.

He was paid with a record salary of ₹100 million for the film. After two years of filming, the film released in 2007.

Ultimately it went on to become one of the highest grossing Tamil films of that time. 2010s Following Sivaji, Shankar revisited the possibilities of opinion regarding the script of Robot, he later decided to make the project in with. The film was produced by South Indian, was renamed as and was made on a budget of ₹1.32, the. Some reports also make it one of the highest grossing Tamil films of the time. After initial reports indicating that Shankar's next film is entitled to be with Siddharth, Shankar started to work on, the Tamil remake of the 2009 Hindi film starring,.

The film opened in January 2012. After Nanban, it was wrongly reported that Shankar's next film would be called Therdal. On 21 June 2012, Shankar announced his next film named. A romantic ting revenge upon the people who turned him into a. Played the lead role, collaborating with Shankar again after Anniyan (2005), while was the female lead. The film, made over a period of two and half years, released on 14 January 2015 to positive reviews earned almost ₹2 billion in 19 days.

Then he started working on, a sequel to which is released on 29 November 2018 and received mixed reviews leaving many fans disappointed after the long wait. He is currently working on the pre-production of, a sequel to with.Personal life S.Shankar family includes his father Shanmugam, mother Muthulakshmi and his wife Easwari. The couple have three children, a son Arjith and two daughters, Aishwarya and Aditi. Archived from on 24 March 2015. Retrieved 9 November 2011. 3 October 2010. Retrieved 2 January 2017.

^ Pavithra Srinivasan (4 April 1997). Retrieved 29 May 2018. 20 January 2005. Retrieved 9 November 2011. Box Office India. Retrieved 29 May 2018. Devika Sahni (7 September 2016).

Retrieved 29 May 2018. 5 August 2017. Retrieved 29 May 2018.

Rajitha (5 November 2001). Retrieved 29 May 2018. 18 June 2007.

Archived from on 4 January 2010. Made on a budget of about Rs. 75 Crores. 13 July 2007.

Archived from on 3 September 2011. Retrieved 9 November 2011. 31 January 2011.

Bennett, Coleman & Co. 16 June 2012. Retrieved 23 August 2012. 26 June 2012. Prakash, Upadhyaya (3 February 2015). Retrieved 2 January 2017. 27 April 2018.External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to.

on.

SHANKER, ALBERT (1928 –1997)President of the (AFT), the nation's second largest teachers' union, was born in City in 1928 to Russian working-class immigrant parents. He grew up during the depression on the Lower East Side of, his father a newspaper deliveryman, his mother a operator. Shanker was reared in a union home where, he said, 'Unions were just below ' (Swerdlow and Weiner Internet site). When he began school, he spoke no English and endured beatings and anti-Semitic taunts in his mostly non-Jewish neighborhood.Shanker excelled academically. After completing high school he earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of, Champaign-Urbana, and, in 1949, entered the Ph.D. Having completed all requirements but a dissertation, Shanker began teaching elementary and junior high school mathematics in City in 1952.He left teaching in 1959 to become a full-time organizer for the Teachers Guild, New York City's AFT affiliate. The guild was just one of 106 small New York City teacher organizations.

Founded in 1917 with as a charter member, the guild was the only New York City teacher organization to support, in which teachers elect a single organization to represent them in contract negotiations with their employer. In 1960 the Teachers Guild merged with New York City's High School Teachers Association to form the United Federation of Teachers. Shanker was elected president in 1964.In the early 1960s Shanker helped New York City teachers gain rights and achieve the first contract in any major city in the. A supporter of the movement (Shanker marched in nearly every major demonstration in the country), his tenure as UFT president was partially defined by the Oceanhill-Brownsville events of 1968.The city had divided the school district into multiple subdistricts, each with a community-based governing board.

Oceanhill-Brownsville was a predominantly African-American district staffed by a largely white, largely Jewish teaching population. In 1968 the district superintendent, Rhody McCoy, removed the white teachers from the black community schools and Shanker called a strike. Before matters were settled (the teachers were returned to their jobs), there would be three strikes, all illegal under New York State's collective bargaining law, and Shanker would spend fifteen days in jail. Even when the issue seemed to be put to rest, critics continued to label Shanker a racist.Shanker was concerned that Oceanhill-Brownsville would label him for life. He wanted educators and New Yorkers in general to better under-stand his principles and ideas, even if they did not always agree with him. Unable to get op-ed pieces placed in New York newspapers, he bought a paid ad in the December 13, 1970 edition of the Sunday New York Times.

That ad would become his 'Where We Stand' column, a weekly opportunity for Shanker to put forth his ideas about education, the union, and social and political issues to a large public audience. He would write the column for twenty-seven years.Shanker continued to gather supporters and critics. Under his leadership, the New York City teacher union grew into a large and politically powerful organization, which in 1975 pulled New York City back from the brink of bankruptcy when Shanker placed teacher pension funds in city bonds. Although he was approached to run for mayor (he declined), there were those who believed he wielded too much power. In 's 1973 movie, Sleeper, Allen's character, frozen, awakens in the year 2173 and is asked how civilization was destroyed. 'A man named Al Shanker got the bomb,' he replies.In 1974 Shanker became president of the (AFT), a post to which he was re-elected every two years until his death.

He remained president of the AFT and UFT for twelve years, relinquishing the UFT presidency in 1986.When Shanker became AFT president, the organization was relatively small, particularly in comparison to its national rival, the (NEA). The AFT, founded in in the early 1900s, was a union, a member of the AFLCIO, and an adherent to trade union principles. Shanker had an unshakable faith in unionism, but in the early 1980s, he would set the AFT on a different, and unexpected, path.In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education released its landmark education reform report, A Nation at Risk. Shanker expected that this report, like its predecessors, would not support teachers and the AFT would need to oppose it. On reading the report, Shanker concluded that it provided an opportunity for his union to begin to tackle many important issues. A supporter of pubic schools, Shanker was nonetheless realistic about the problems, particularly unacceptably low levels of student achievement.Shanker used the 1983 report as a springboard to change the conversation about and within his union and to catapult him to a prominent role in the education reform debate.

He acknowledged his members' nervousness about new directions in July 1985 when he told a large AFT gathering in Washington, DC, 'It's dangerous to let a lot of ideas out of the bag, some of which may be wrong. But there's something more dangerous and that's not having any new ideas at all at a time when the world is closing in on you.'

Shanker had many ideas. In 1985 he called for the creation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In 1988 he publicly made a case for charter schools. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Shanker was a vocal advocate for high academic standards for all students, accountability for results (and consequences for failure to achieve them), peer review (in which teachers judge the quality of their colleagues' work), and minimum competency testing of new teachers. He told his members, 'It is as much your duty to preserve public education as it is to negotiate a good contract.' He argued that preserving public schools meant improving them.During Shanker's AFT tenure, the American labor movement continued to shrink in size, but the AFT grew to an organization of more than a million members, including teachers, teacher aides, health care workers, and public employees, the last two categories of which Shanker added to the AFT's rolls during his presidency.A focus on professional issues –improved academic standards for students and improved teacher quality –became hallmarks of the union under Shanker's leadership. He never abandoned collective bargaining, continuing to believe that the system was essential to secure basic rights and employment conditions for teachers.

He broadened the interests of the union and in so doing, reshaped the organization. By the time of his death, attendance at the AFT's semiannual professional issues conference (called the QuEST conference for Quality Educational Standards in Teaching) outstripped attendance at AFT policymaking conventions.Shanker was called a radical, a liberal, and a conservative –sometimes all at the same time. Never afraid of a controversial view or an unorthodox idea, Shanker would take a position and then, if someone or something convinced him otherwise, would just as quickly reverse course. Shanker's counsel was sought by and alike, and by presidents, Ronald Reagan,. A member of the AFL-CIO Executive Committee, Shanker was founding president of Education International, a worldwide federation of teacher unions.Although Shanker accomplished much of his agenda, he was never able to secure a merger between the AFT and NEA.

Shanker argued that the dollars that the two teacher unions were spending on internecine organizational warfare could be better spent fighting the enemies of public education.When he died of bladder cancer at age sixty-nine in 1997, the president of the NEA, Bob Chase summed it up: 'American public education has lost one of its most eloquent and effective advocates. A true leader, Al Shanker was always one bold step ahead of us all.' See also: American Federation of Teachers; Teacher Unions.

BibliographyAmerican Federation of Teachers. 'The Power of Ideas: Al in His Own Words.'

The American Educator, Special Issue. Washington, DC: American Federation of Teachers.Woo, Elaine. 'Al Shanker's Last Stand.'

Times Magazine, December 1. Internet resourcesChase, Robert. 'Statement from Bob Chase, President of the, on the Death of, President of the American Federation of Teachers.' .Swedlow, Marian, and Weiner, Adam. 'Al Shanker, Image and Reality.' Citation stylesEncyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates.

Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites. Modern Language AssociationThe Chicago Manual of StyleAmerican Psychological AssociationNotes:.Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers.

Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Albert ShankerOver four decades, Albert Shanker (born 1928) rose from mathematics teacher to national educational statesman. Shanker's militant leadership of 's United Federation of Teachers in the 1960s brought him personal notoriety and won for teachers substantial improvements in compensation, working conditions, and bargaining power.

President of the 700,000-member from 1974 into the 1990s, Shanker was an effective advocate of sweeping national educational reform.Born September 24, 1928, Albert Shanker grew up in a working-class Jewish family in the borough of Queens in City. His parents, Mamie and Morris Shanker, were emigrants from Poland. Both were union members; his father a union newspaper deliveryman, and his mother a operator and member of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union. The Shanker family's deeply held political views were staunchly pro-union, following the socialism of Norman Thomas and including ardent support of Franklin Roosevelt and the.Early on, Shanker exhibited the voracious thirst for information, the love of philosophy, and the dedication to causes that characterized his life's work. As a boy he read several newspapers daily, and by the time he was a teen, he was avidly reading the humanitarian philosophyof Thomas Hook.

He idolized Franklin D. Roosevelt, Clarence Darrow, and, the leader.Shanker's social and political activism began during his undergraduate years at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champagne. Shanker picketed segregated movie theaters and restaurants and was a member of the Young People's Socialist League and chair of the Socialist Study Club.

Shanker majored in philosophy and graduated with honors. Shanker then took graduate courses in philosophy and mathematics at, receiving an M.A.

Degree and completing the coursework, but not the dissertation, required for a Ph.D. In philosophy. Classroom Work to Union OrganizerShanker's graduate work ended in 1952, when he took a one-year leave of absence from his graduate program and accepted a temporary position teaching mathematics at an East Harlem School. He taught mathematics in New York City public schools from 1952 to 1959, making $42 a week in take-home pay and experiencing firsthand the poor treatment of teachers, the ineffectiveness of traditional teaching methods, and the conflict and frustration that dominated inner-city classrooms. During this time he joined the New York Teachers Guild and devoted increasing time and energy to union work.Shanker became a full-time union organizer for New York City's United Federation of Teachers (Local No. 2 of the ) in 1959.

His ascent within the union was swift. By 1964 he was president, a position he held until 1985. During the 1960s, Shanker received national attention and considerable criticism for his aggressive union leadership and skillful negotiation of pay increases for New York City teachers. In 1967, and again in 1968, he served jail sentences for leading illegal teachers' strikes. The 1968 strike closed down almost all New York City schools for 36 days. The stimulus for the strike was teacher transfers out of ghetto schools during school decentralization experiments. The strike exacerbated racial tensions in ghetto schools, although the real issue was protecting teachers' rights from excessive local control.During the 1960s Shanker was also active in the movement.

He was a charter member of the (CORE). He participated in several major civil rights marches and the sit-ins in Selma and Montgomery. He led a delegation of teachers to protest King's murder.

All of this notwithstanding, Shanker's positions on minority hiring quotas and busing in the early 1970s were criticized by some Black leaders. Shanker promoted the development of magnet schools rather than busing to achieve racial balance. He opposed quota hiring of minority teachers, believing such quotas to be essentially discriminatory, and instead supported educational programs within his union to qualify Blacks and other minorities for teaching positions.As a result of his controversial views and his militant union leadership, Shanker was considered something of a loose cannon through the 1960s and early 1970s. This image was captured by 's 1973 movie Sleeper, in which the main character wakes up in the year 2173 and is told that the had been destroyed because one hundred years ago a man called Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead.'

Union President and ReformerBeginning in the early 1970s and with his 1974 election as president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Shanker's image mellowed, and he became a nationally respected proponent of educational reform. This change was attributed in part to Shanker's paid weekly column in the New York Times, Where We Stand.'

This AFT-sponsored commentary on educational issues ran in the New York Times and 60 other papers nationwide beginning in 1970. In this column, Shanker anticipated, analyzed, and advocated major changes in education. Through this forum and his role as national president of the American Federation of Teachers, Shanker's focus broadened from improving teachers' working conditions to improving the performance of the educational system as a whole through sweeping restructuring and reform. In Shanker's view, essential elements of such reform are increased teacher competence, responsibility, and accountability: elements that are a significant departure from traditional union views.Foremost among the changes Shanker promoted and facilitated in the 1980s were the creation of a national examination for beginning teachers, the utilization of a team approach to school organization and management, and pedagogy that emphasized cooperative learning and highlyparticipative instruction rather than classrooms dominated by teacher talk. Shanker was a strong advocate of increased use of computer technology, not only to provide individualized instruction for students, but also to create a national database and communication network for the dissemination of the best available instructional materials and techniques.Shanker's educational reform efforts largely paralleled the changes occurring in American industry as a result of quality and productivity problems. Shanker frequently cited the relatively poor academic performance of American students as evidence of the necessity for change in our educational system.

At the heart of Shanker's reform recommendations was the exploration of organizational structures and management systems that empower teachers to generate improvements and controls, as well as the provision of a broad range of incentives to motivate teachers, schools, and school systems to make the needed improvements.Shanker's influence towards these ends was considerable and extended far beyond the 700,000-member American Federation of Teachers. His leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and his successful influence on national opinion regarding educational issues were credited with pushing the two million-member (NEA) from resistance to active support of school reform in the 1980s, just as his success with in the 1960s is thought to have stimulated NEA affiliates to negotiate contracts and call strikes. In 1985 Shanker's initiative sparked the formation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which in the early 1990s was working toward the implementation of a national examination system for beginning teachers.Shanker's influence extended to corporate and government leadership as well. Beginning in the mid-1980s he was a member of the prestigious Committee for Economic Development, an alliance of national corporate leaders that was working to improve schools. He served on national committees such as, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy and on President Bush's Educational Policy Advisory Committee. Shanker's long held views and ideas on national standards were the foundation for educational reforms outlined by President William Clinton during the State of the Union Address in 1997.

After the address, Clinton called Shanker and said to him we should have listened to your sooner.' Sara Mosle described Shanker as the most important American educator in half a century.' Further ReadingThe best source on Shanker's views and work in education is his Sunday New York Timescolumn, Where We Stand,' starting in 1970.

Sara Mosle, (March 17, 1997), provides information on his life, contributions to education and union activity. Citation stylesEncyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style.

Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites. Modern Language AssociationThe Chicago Manual of StyleAmerican Psychological AssociationNotes:.Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content.

However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations.

Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.