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    Teachers Unions Explained

    Posted by Dan from Madison on March 14th, 2011 (All posts by )

     

    This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 7:56 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

    12 Responses to “Teachers Unions Explained”

    1. Carl from Chicago Says:
      March 14th, 2011 at 8:28 pm

      Aargh.

      Pretty true.

      They probably could have cut it down a couple of minutes, though.

      Almost as good as this

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVLAvix-dX0&feature=related

    2. Dan from Madison Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 5:59 am

      Yes that one is a classic – “Luckily, your company goal doesn’t mean sh1t to me” – I love that line.

    3. Ed Darrell Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 12:52 pm

      Public schools are not failing across the country. While they don’t live up to our high standards, they remain bastions of education, bastions of democracy.

      Oh, that’s why you oppose teaching, teachers and education! An uneducated peasantry is easier to control, to terrorize, to lock away into concentation camps!

      Teacher unions don’t oppose choice — they do oppose letting carpetbaggers steal money from public schools. How about we cut a deal: If my school does better than the charter school, we get to take all them money from the charter school and future income from those teachers who taught there. Willing to cut that deal and let us compete straight up?

      My 97% minority, 80% low income students beat the pants off the local charter schools. Public teachers — not union by law — but we do better than you admit.

      How about you let me set up a competing business to yours on this deal: I get to take away a portion of your net for every customer I get? Isn’t that fair? That’s what you call “school choice.” If it’s good for teachers, why not good for your business?

      Oh, I see: You’re really not for free enterprise.

      Why didn’t you say so?

    4. Ginny Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 1:01 pm

      Living up to high standards? On what international set of criteria did you come to that remarkable conclusion? The public schools aren’t doing well if results only are examined; when the cost per student is figured in, the failure of the schools is more obvious. You may be doing well – you make an interesting assertion that you are. But that is not the norm. If you want to argue that the schools are expected not just to do some teaching that is not truly educational but some that is truly counter productive, I would agree. If you want to argue that education is not held in the same respect as it was in times past or in other countries (which may come from our relative financial comfort or from what & how it is being taught – that can be argued), you have a point. But I don’t think that’s the one you are making.

      And please do not give me that crap about who wants students to learn. Listening to the speeches in Wisconsin, it is clear that Walker wants a populace that thinks and Trumka doesn’t. The anti-intellectualism of teachers, of teachers’ colleges, and of much instruction is a fact that anyone who has seen education classes, read education dissertations, and seen education ph.d’s knows. Back when education was the only profession for intellectual women, the schools were getting people who valued ideas. Much has changed – and much of that has been in education departments that actively discourage individual and truly critical thought.

      Next, I assume, you are going to argue that communism values learning and libertarians discourage it. Give me a break.

    5. Jonathan Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 1:05 pm

      How about we cut a deal: If my school does better than the charter school, we get to take all them money from the charter school and future income from those teachers who taught there. Willing to cut that deal and let us compete straight up?

      How about we cut a deal. Parents who send their kids to private schools don’t get forced to pay double by being forced to pay private tuition AND to pay taxes to support government schools they don’t use.

      How about you let me set up a competing business to yours on this deal: I get to take away a portion of your net for every customer I get? Isn’t that fair? That’s what you call “school choice.” If it’s good for teachers, why not good for your business?

      Why not, that’s how businesses run in the real world. It’s called competition. Only an entitled government employee would fail to understand this.

    6. Dan from Madison Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 1:16 pm

      “How about you let me set up a competing business to yours on this deal: I get to take away a portion of your net for every customer I get? Isn’t that fair?” – wtf and blah hahaha!!?! Funny how the world I live in every single day of my life sounds so strange to some.

    7. Ed Darrell Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 2:09 pm

      I said earlier: How about you let me set up a competing business to yours on this deal: I get to take away a portion of your net for every customer I get? Isn’t that fair? That’s what you call “school choice.” If it’s good for teachers, why not good for your business?

      Jonathan said:

      Why not, that’s how businesses run in the real world. It’s called competition. Only an entitled government employee would fail to understand this.

      No, your business doesn’t work like that at all. You don’t open your books to your competitor. No one encourages someone to open a shop across the street from yours on the promise that, when they’re open, they get to take some of your net. You still get your net.

      Many teachers have been business people, and we understand exactly what competition is. But it’s clear that you don’t know what charter schools are, how they work, nor much of anything else about education.

      You show me the checks you’ve cut to your competition to get them going, I’ll take your work for it. But until you show those checks, you’re just blowing wind.

      And you know you don’t have the checks.

    8. Dan from Madison Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 2:30 pm

      Ed – I will let the kids in the Chicago, LA, DC and scads of other crap dead end public schools (aka day care) know of your awesome research and that their schools kick major league ass! I am sure they will be thrilled to know that they couldn’t possibly be in a better school. And I am sure their parents will be thrilled as well. Whistle past the graveyard much? Sheesh.

    9. Ed Darrell Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 2:45 pm

      I suppose you agree with the video’s implication that the reason you don’t understand economics is because you were taught so little of it in school?

      Funny. That’s the choice of the legislators and state education boards, not to teach more economics. It’s certainly not the choice of any teacher union. Can we blame the people who make that choice? Why should they not be held accountable?

    10. Ed Darrell Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 2:54 pm

      If you find any better performing school in Chicago, LA, or DC, than the public schools, the great odds are that they do not accept most students who must be accepted by public schools, including students with any learning handicap, or homeless students, or students with any discipline “problems” on their records.

      If you find a school that performs better than the average public school who DOES accept those students, odds are it’s a public school-related institution, like those run by Geoffrey Canada. Canada’s success is run in large part by the supplemental money and additional programs for success the program operates — programs which Gov. Walker has promised to kill in Wisconsin, programs facing complete evisceration by Congress.

      Dan, I notice you didn’t mention Baltimore, Philadelphia, nor Milwaukee. Is that because in the actual tests run there — at taxpayer and teacher expense — the results didn’t pan out?

      Here’s where we know you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about: “crap dead end public schools (aka day care).”

      I’d ask when the last time was that you spent any significant time in a school, but you’ve already concluded the American experiment is dead, and you’re just trying to choke it off to bring on the aftermath, whatever it is.

      Go back to thinking you’re doing your part by paying taxes, and leave the tax levying and educating up to people who know how things work, will you?

    11. Dan from Madison Says:
      March 15th, 2011 at 3:24 pm

      Spoken like a good union steward, Ed. It is really time for new talking points though as these go back to the seventies and are as old and tired as the crappy chants the teachers were shouting during their wildcat strike down on the square. For the children, of course.

    12. Camarath Says:
      March 16th, 2011 at 9:35 am

      I will never forgive public schools for wasting of my time and their treatment of me as a resource rather than a student. I endured through the entire mind numbing, anoxic course of public school but I got my brother out and on to more important hoop jumping. The self importance of public school teachers and administrators makes me sick to remember as do the laws which cripple the advancement of students for the benefit of the public schools. I dearly wish there had been some avenue open for me to advance to anything approaching a challenge within the public school system but there was not.

      I am fervently the enemy of centralized mandatory education. I do no believe anyone receives an appropriate education in such a system schools. High achievers are hobbled by the curriculum. Low achievers are hobbled by a system that rewards good teacher by allowing them to teach high achievers and warehouses trouble makers and those who are unwilling to learn in their class rooms. I think that forcing education on the unwilling yields greater negative results than positive ones.

      I also resent being forced into a situation, by the law, in which I was stripped on my basic rights. I fail to see how a choice between criminal penalty and giving up my rights as a citizen could possibly be considered voluntary. Public schools are a prison ostensibly run for the benefit of the inmates but serving their own bureaucratic needs above all else.

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