Punish the poor for not being able to afford private schools. Punish the teachers for wanting the wages and pensions THEY NEGOTIATED FOR. Punish those who believe a public education should be a right and that teachers deserve to be paid as professionals. Punish the teachers again for daring to work with America's children, only THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB in this nation. Yes, you heard me. More important than being a cop. More important than being a firefighter. More important than serving in the military. More important than opening your own small business or running a large mega-corporation. More important than what I do. More important, likely, than what you do too. More important than being a principal or superintendent at those same schools. (Seriously for all the vitriol directed at teachers there is VIRTUALLY NONE directed at those two jobs mentioned above. Yet public educational systems can only work as well as the principals and superintendents allow them to. Still, it's all the teachers' fault.)
Yes, being a teacher is the most important job in America. Because it is the one job that truly keeps the American dream alive. What is that dream? It's not just getting rich. It's the dream of being able to achieve, to have the opportunity to do what you can conceive of. Of not being stepped on all your life because you happened to have the wrong parents. It's the dream that a poor kid with one white parent and one black parent can somehow, yes, become President of the United States.
Only some people don't really like that dream, no! They like to keep all the power and all the money for themselves. And they have legions of useful idiot allies among the ranks our nation's ignorant, who have been brainwashed for generations to believe that all government services are somehow wrong and suspect. That charter schools are a miracle cure. They're not. There will always, and should always, be a need for excellent, traditional classroom teaching. The answer is not to find a way to pay teachers even less, and take away their benefits, all in the name of new-religion frugality.
The answer is to pay teachers well, give them the benefits they've earned and deserve and find ways to help them educate better. One issue: how about making sure our nation's most poor actually have access to stuff like...books? (My wife is a public school teacher and taught in the South Bronx. Yes, there weren't enough books. And her principal spent school funds on new, expensive mahogany furniture for her office. Again, somehow the under-performance of this school is the teachers' fault. Shame on us all.)
Look, just pay the fucking teachers what they negotiated for and earned.
And stop the ignorant teacher bashing. How about blaming the huge, gaping holes in our national budgets on the real villains? Those on Wall Street who actively destroyed our economy with financial weapons of mass destruction? How about blaming those who abetted them from 2000-2008 by deregulating every market in sight and making the Securities and Exchange Commission even more toothless? There were no cops on the beat to watch our nation's financial markets. We were told they would never destroy themselves in the name of enlightened self interest, those banks. And they didn't. They got bailed out. We got destroyed.
How about blaming our broke, indebted economy on the people in the mirror? We couldn't save, we spent every dime we had and then borrowed more to spend more. Now we're broke, as a nation and, once more, it's the teachers' fault?
I have heard this quote in many ways, many times, but it is especially apt now. If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
We've tried it. And look where it got us. And, again, somehow this is all the fault of our teachers? Maybe we should start blaming the students too? Only not the ones in school now, they are children, but the ones who graduated and then lead lives of deliberate ignorance. You know: us.
This post was adapted from an earlier entry on my blog Brooklyn Baby Daddy.
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1. NYC teachers are paid more than enough? What's "enough?" I think they were chronically underpaid for years. When my wife began teaching nine years ago the starting salary was around $32,000. Now it's a bit more, low to mid $40,000s I believe, to start. (Teachers, is this right? ) This is not huge money. Most NYC teachers could make far more in the outlying suburbs. In some cases tens of thousands of dollars more for similar jobs.
2. I also was not writing about them getting more or less, but what they negotiated for fair and square. They deserve to have the agreements we made with them, as a nation, honored. If we can honor our contracts with Wall St., we can honor our contracts with them.
3. As for your points about reform, they may be spot on, I can't say. You have been in the classroom and I have not, you have a better window on this than I do. I don't know if the whole educational system stinks. I think one problem is that it is a segregated system. The kids in good communities in America tend to get good educations. (Forgive the lack of link, but I recently heard a news report that in wealthier American schools the students ranked second internationally in reading. When all American schools were in the mix the numbers were the usual dreadful ones.)
if 70 k could assure a comfortable lifestyle, i don't understand why anyone would begrudge us that much. but it is only adequate, if that, and some of you still want us to accept less. as the blog states, administrators and officials, many who are unnecessary,overpaid, incompetent and corrupt(not to mention unionized & tenaciously tenured) consistantly escape public scrutiny. These people are running our schools. INTO the ground, and perpepuating these myths, making educators scapegoats, provoking teacher-bashing with propoganda to save their jobs. For most teachers--it's about more than our job. It's about our community and its children. We care. If you do, you will think, or better yet, research, \before you attack.
“Here is a link that says it all just the way I think it needs to be said.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-serchuk/enough-with-the-fcking-te_b_830885.html
So far I have four responses like the one below.
Won't even dignify the Huffington Post with a "click"!
And this person and his wife are retired teachers (and union members) who like my other friends consider views like yours (and mine) quite beyond the reach of normal sanity. This is the world of middle class America in north central Illinois that I live in. I think we’re doomed!
and remember: we are so much less without each other.
www.perdaily.com
Sorry.
I was thinking of actors, sports stars and politicians.
If I were in Wisconsin, this is the poster I would carry: "You're a Governor? WOW! You must have had good teachers!"
Personally I've always thought their pay and benefits should go up. I've always voted on whatever tax issues were presented in my community to increase pay and benefits for education and the like.
I do get the attrition issue and it is a very real phenomenon, the best and brightest are recruited and seek the highest paying districts. I have friends who are teachers who have left the profession, becoming stay at home moms, and tutoring on the side.
I have to double check my numbers, but I swear one of the last times I was in Hawaii, it was not uncommon for a family of four to qualify for food stamps, and the parents were teachers! I believe this is before they started furlough days a few years ago.
Besides the obvious lack of logic in such a blanket statement the idea that demanding fair compensation, benefits and a reasonable work environment is to be construed as somehow shamefully self serving is ludicrous. I once had a conference with a problem student's mom who's solution to her son's problems was that I come in at 6:30 AM (an hour before I was to be at school) so that I could help him with his homework ("she didn't understand it and had no time to help anyway because she worked for a living" (implying I didn't)). When I indicated that I thought this an unreasonable request she said to me, "Oh now I see the problem. You're one of those teachers that only come for the paycheck. You care nothing for your students.” When I asked her what she went to work for she replied, “That’s different I am not a teacher.” My bitter conclusion after many of such encounters over 30 years is that the notion that teaching is some sort of selfless mission that requires people to be dedicated and sacrifice personal time and effort beyond what any other profession would require (and for less pay) is just plain bull. Teachers, like any other workers go into teaching as an occupation that they might be good at and contribute to society while they make the money necessary to pay their bills.