Dear Teachers: We don’t Hate You, We Love You!
As an involved parent of two young kids in the public school system I talk to many other parents. The universal sentiment is that teachers are overworked and underpaid. But it is also nearly universal that they feel unions are making things impossible for our beloved teachers. Right or wrong, that is the sentiment.
We spend half our state budget on education and I think we can all agree that the results are lackluster at best. Parents want to try new things to see how we can improve but are blocked or severely hindered at every turn. Try getting a Charter School started when there are no union teachers. It’s doable but unnecessarily difficult.
Although nearly every teacher I’ve encountered over the last 6 years of involvement has been of the hard working, dedicated ilk there have been plenty of useless wastes of space. Most of them have been around for a long time and will be the last to go if a budget shortfall occurs while great teachers will be out looking for a different profession. We parents don’t like that.
A very small number of teachers have no business being around kids and districts have tried to fire them but end up spending millions in the effort while paying the teacher’s salary for years on end. When we hear about budget shortfalls we wonder why this waste occurs.
When we watch the recent happenings in Wisconsin and how some teachers lie about being sick to be able to march in demonstrations, collecting sick pay (is that stealing?), we desperately pray that our kids aren’t being taught that the end justifies the means. And what “end” is being justified? The continuance of failing methods? Most teachers did not participate but in our view those that did should have been fired. The unions celebrate those who lied, shirked their responsibilities and claimed to represent the good teachers who really do have the children’s best interest at heart.
Dear teachers, we love you and we appreciate you. We know you’re stuck with a massive task and few tools with which to accomplish that task. We want to help!
This isn’t about you. The unions structure things so that *you* are the collateral damage and something about that needs to change.
I’m a simple man with simple thoughts and an education not beyond high school. It pains me to see smarter people with critical thinking skills misinterpret our motivations and miss the obvious source of problems: The unions.
As an aside: Despite what you might derive from the note above, I’m quite pro-union for the employee’s sake. I am rather opposed to unions losing their way and favoring paths that are meant to strengthen their own power for its own sake. I feel like that’s where we’ve landed WRT education.