I'm going to disagree with most of my conservative friends on this one, but I'm not blaming the teacher's unions for the expensive mess our schools have become. Secular Apostate posted the video expose shown below about the New Jersey teacher's union. They key part for me starts at 3:30 and describes a padded classroom built expressly for K-2 students who are completely out of control.
What is the bargain we are making with our teachers? To me, it sounds like this:
Us: We are not responsible for teaching our children the basics of civilized behavior. We are not responsible for giving them stable homes where they aren't exposed to violence and drug abuse. We are not responsible for giving them fathers. We will send our kids to your classroom in any condition we choose.
Teachers: You must educate them. You cannot get rid of them, no matter what they do.
After a few decades of this, what is it that you expect the teachers to do? In a sense, there is a Parents Union that has banded together to remove all responsibility from themselves. Why is it so unjust that the teachers have done the same?
10 comments:
I'm sympathetic to this view. But I still don't like teachers' unions for other reasons.
The entire point of all the social programs of the last 50 years has been to remove all personal responsibility. This is but one symptom. I could go on a rant....
This kind of relates to this essay that I recently stumbled across while looking for something else. About halfway through, he said this:
"Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it."
Well, I don't think you'll get much pushback from most conservatives on absolving the teacher's unions from responsibility for out-of-control, unsocialized students. Maybe I'm an outlier too, but I agree with you.
But I do think the unions are squarely to blame for the eternal retention of incompetent teachers, insipid curricula, and obscene compensation plans. Is a suburban Chicagoland school administrator really entitled to a $600,000/yr defined-benefit pension on the taxpayer's dime?
Are those high-pensioned Chicago school administrators members of the Teachers Union? If they are, then that is a big problem, because it's a direct conflict of interest.
The union I generally have run-ins with (the United Steelworkers) most emphatically does *not* include the engineers and administrators at the iron ore plants.
I saw this video some place else and was confused as to what point they were trying to make as I was sympathetic to these particular teachers and their plight.
And perhaps more accurately: Parent(s) Union
I'm not trying to absolve the unions of their defense of incompetence and the preposterously expensive mediocrity of our schools, I'm just suggesting that if we're going to do it as a society, why shouldn't they as well?
@ Tim: The teacher's unions, who operate under the guise of "professional organizations" (which they once were, by the way, until JFK gave public unions the right to collective bargaining) do not follow the labor unions distinction between "labor" and "management". The two national umbrella organizations under which state and local organizations operate are the National Educational Association (NEA) and the American Teachers Federation (AFT).
The NEA site specifies the active membership "...includes classroom teachers, faculty, counselors, librarians, nurses, school administrators and others with a teaching certificate who work for a public education institution."
The AFT is even more broadly based, and "...represent[s] over 1.5 million members, including: pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; and nurses and other healthcare professionals."
Hi! Nice to have found you.
Well, only a part of it is the parent's fault...which seems to be what you are saying. There are parents who haven't bothered to teach their kids basic civility,but...
Since the teachers do not enforce any kind of discipline in their classroom it kinda turns into a tossup there,and the teachers do have a bigger voice to complain,and boy do they!
Having an 11 year old, I can tell you that "parent's taking responsiblity" to a teacher means homework(that we're told can be done in half an hour) consisting of 20 math problems, 20-25 vocabulary words, and least one social studies paper to "write". Plus reading 30-45 minutes. Every day.
What are they learning in these classes that the teachers won't control???
Flicka, I suspect that they're trying to use overwork as a method of control.
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