Teachers: Unions Are Cheapening Our Profession
by Kyle OlsonSomewhere back in our school days, we all had a special teacher who made learning fun or who pushed us into achieving more than we thought possible. If you were lucky, you had several teachers like that.
But we’ve all had that certain teacher who liked to show videos on Friday while he sat in the back of the room grading papers, or reading Sports section of the newspaper. He was more concerned with getting on early start on his weekend than he was about what (or if) the students were learning.
The majority of public school teachers are dedicated and hard working. But a certain percentage of teachers are just going through the motions, putting in their time until their pension kicks in.
Watch ‘Unions vs. Good Teachers’ – Episode 3 – “Kids Aren’t Cars”
Even though experience tells us otherwise, teacher unions want schools to treat teachers as interchangeable and indistinguishable. The unions want the marginal teachers to be paid the same as the good teachers. How does that make any sense?
Consider a survey by the Association of American Educators, an organization for teachers that actually has the interest of children at heart. It found only 32% of teachers felt they should be judged based on the number of years they’ve been in the system. Likewise, contrary to what unions would have us believe, AAE found 81% of teachers disagreed with the notion that “tenure is necessary for an educator to properly perform his or her job effectively.”
The collectivist mindset is killing our public schools and the spirit of hard-working teachers. There are myriad examples where the union has to “rein in” an eager teacher who willingly works beyond her contractual duties.
And what happens if a teacher dares to not join the union? One Indiana teacher was kicked off a school committee because she refused to join up. A Michigan teacher withheld her dues to protest the union’s radical leadership. The Michigan Education Association dragged her to court, and made her pay up.
Unions operate by treating workers as interchangeable cogs in the machine. Unions value job protection over accountability and narrowly-defined work responsibilities over individual initiative and innovation.
Does that sound like a formula for great public schools?
By protecting the worst, unions are hampering the best. Many teachers want reform. They want accountability and performance pay. They want their lazy colleagues to be shown the door. What true professional wouldn’t want these things?
Still, the union runs public education in most states. The teacher unions have presided over the decline of public education in America, and many of the good teachers know it.
Watch “Kids Aren’t Cars” Episode 3: Unions vs. Good Teachers, and learn what must be done to save education from the teacher unions.
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53 Comments
to paraphrase Dennis Prager….
The bigger the Union, the smaller the student
The unions are cheapening the students too. All unions should be investigated for corruption, and the union leaders held accountable.
If you want to improve the education our kids get then just get rid of the Dept of Education!
I dont get it why all the unions today? We all know they are corrupt to the core where the members interest is like 10th on their 'to do' list so why do people continue to join?
The days of working for the benefit and fair treatment of the worker have been long gone how can anyone participate in this day and age. I dont want to hear "oh you have to join" no you dont, there is no gun to your head and if you are forced lawyer up. The fact that folks are forced is a pure sign of how evil they are at this point.
Is it wishful thinking to think we will see actual unbiased reporting/ news on this network? They need to get rid of Katie Kouric while they are at it…
STOP playing the radicals game and start playing your game through http://www.savingtherepublic.com
This is the most vital issue facing America today. Budget deficits, public debt, war on terrorism, all pale in comparison to the education of the next generation.
The next generation will take over this country. That's a fact. And if they aren't properly educated, we are all royally screwed. Which means the entire world is royally screwed.
We may not like what the next generation does with their education, but we at least owe them an education.
"Teachers unions are cheapening our profession!" "The understatement of the week".
I guess, then, we are royally screwed…..
I know several teachers and former teachers (my wife was a HS teacher at one time) and most of them say in private that they hate the unions and what they've done to the teaching profession. They also hate the curriculum developed and dictated by the DoEd and would like to get back to teaching what they know is needed and wanted. But, if they buck the system they are ostracized by their peers and pressured by the unions to conform. The only way we will ever get our public schools back to being effective in teaching our kids is if we can break the stranglehold of the unions and DoEd. And as long as liberals dominate in DC and State governments, the chances of that happening are about as good as the chances that Obama will finally let people see his college transcripts and birth certificate.
How does that make any sense?
It does when otherwise there will be complaints of "racism."
And the system is deliberately dumbing down the population – so says a former Reagan appointee: http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.h...
Bonus material: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jQT7_rVxAE
The unionization of public school teachers is one of one of the two major cancers that are destroying our country from within (the other being our ridiculous tort system and the leech-like trial lawyers who feed off it).
They are also the topics least addressed by TV journalists, including Fox News – only Stossel has really sunk his teeth into them.
Collective bargaining and tenure for the teaching "industry" has to stop. Public service unions in general are destructive, but a public service union that functions as full time propaganda organ of the DNC is as Anti-American as you can get. Many students leave high school completely brainwashed by progs on all the major issues of the day, but without the tools to learn the facts for themselves and to apply logic and reason to these debates.
As some liberals like Guggenheim have recognized, this tactic is a snake eating its tail, but when the meal is finished we all lose.
We need to mount ballot initiatives in all 50 states to outlaw teachers' unions.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_war_on...
Union teacher qualification: "Didn't die over the summer." LOL!!!!
Tenure prevents literacy.
The teachers also share a great deal of the blame:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/news_... http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/the_war_on... http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/do_america...
And a great summary of the teachers' aptitude: "For two generations now, public school systems have been bottom-fishing. Most grade and high school teachers come from the dregs of any class of baccalaureates. And many of these underachievers are credentialed with "education" degrees, an admission that such teachers have little or no substantive knowledge. And many of those weak teachers are now principals or administrators. In short, K through 12 has become an affirmative action program for unionized nitwits. Such swamps are not easily drained, and the muck is now generational."
(from :http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/10/the_urban_plantation_1.html)
"Look for the union label!" was once a rallying cry. Many of America's kids are going to be labeled as ill-prepared for the 21st century because they were placed in classrooms with teachers who do not give their best efforts for their students.
Unions have outlived their usefulness. It's time for them to be disbanded. We can't get rid of inferior teachers and teachers who are teaching ouside of the curriculum, (indoctrinating) as long as Unions are there.
BAN UNIONS – SAVE AMERICA AND AMERICAN INDUSTRY!
DINGY REID OPENS HIS ORAL SEWER…
http://theantiliberalzone.blogspot.com/2011/02/ar...
THE ANTI LIBERAL ZONE
Teacher Unions have presided over an epic educational and cultural failure. Failure to educate has led to a cultural implosion in the inner city. By union rules there is no way to improve this disaster of their making. What is the value proposition of the Teacher Union that would command any conscious school district to come to the table except the threat of a complete walkout and the loss of the babysitting that government school provides? Suffering a walkout, then re-hiring outside the union shackles might be worth the loss of an educational semester to start the process of lifting the captives off the Plantation.
Thanks.
The unions would also like to treat schools and pupils as interchangeable and indistinguishable. It's in the nature of a union, a collectivist organization, to want to efface differences so it can "sell" its "wares" without regard to variations among them. That way, all complaints, layoffs, dismissals, promotions, demotions, arguments over benefits, and so forth become identical; there's no need to consider details or context.
Collectivism in labor is every bit as pernicious as collectivism in any other venue.
Jeez, make me feel bad for liking the teacher who played a movie on Friday.
Maybe I don't want to be all I can be every single day.
I did go back to my high school about ten years after graduating and sat in the classroom of one of my old teachers. I had to leave in about 15 minutes due to the disrespect and BS the kids dished out to the guy I was once afraid of. I thought if I didn't leave, I'd bash some young punks skull in. It was that bad.
A-VOID, THE UNION LA-BEL, IF YOU WANT YOUR KID TO READ…
Anecdotal evidence: this Judo instructor (6th degree black belt) that I know spent over thirty years as a teacher in a public high school. He spent much of his career teaching earth science and astronomy and ended his career teaching remedial math (he shared a number of "horror stories" about his experiences in this class). After his daughter came home from her public school second grade class uttering obscenities that (her parents claim) she picked up at school, he pulled both of his kids out of public school and for a while sent them to a parochial school before homeschooling them himself. Both kids now attend a Catholic high school; his son will graduate this spring. I encounter more and more people of varied racial and cultural backgrounds who have pulled their kids out of public schools because their kids were barely literate and functionally innumerate.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Or, as one teachers' union president put it "I'll start worrying about the students when they start paying dues."
While I agree with most of your post, I don't agree with all of it. I don't have an education degree. I have an English degree with minors in history and secondary education. I took all of the same courses as any English student not pursuing a teaching certificate. In fact, I tested out of a full-time semester's worth of college credits, PLUS I had to take a slew of credits over the graduation requirement in order to obtain my desired major and minors. And I graduated with honors. So no, not all teachers are academic losers.
Hmmm…
"The collectivist mindset is killing our public schools…"
The collectivist mindset is created by our "public" "schools".
I am not a fan of G. Beck's radio show, but it was that or more about the crap pop culture aspects of the SB as I drove across Indiana yesterday… And he refreshed many memories about the biggest, most notoriously evil and powerful "union" of all:
The UNION of Soviet SOCIALIST "Republics"
And make no mistake… That was a Union Made "government"…
A caller to Rush this afternoon was upset that several school districts now have a mandatory program for teaching primary and secondary students about Arabic "culture" and having them learn the language…
Upset because it was mandatory…
It was part of a "grant" from the FedGuv and she was only upset because it was mandatory…
"Public" education is public enemy #1. It cannot be "reformed". This is "democracy" in action… That is why the founders gave us a Republic instead. We have failed – and have little time to correct the course before we are permanently disfigured as a nation…
That's too bad. I'm sure it was tough for the teacher, who was once allowed to control his classroom…
The next generation, like all previous generations is getting a better education than their parents, and their parents like all previous parents think they are going to royally screw up.
Since we rank 24-25th in Math and Science, we should actively pursue teachers who are performing better from the 23 and 24 Countries that outrank us.
" I encounter more and more people of varied racial and cultural backgrounds who have pulled their kids out of public schools because their kids were barely literate and functionally innumerate."
But this anecdote isn't an example of that. In this case the kids were pulled out for uttering obcenities that they had picked up at school.
I agree with you that most if not all parents believe their children are going to screw up. I have enough evidence in my own home.
But what's happening with education is out of this world. I've tutored my daughter, my nieces and a nephew, and what the public education system is teaching them is unbelievable.
My niece was failing trigonometry, so I sat her down for a few sessions. One of the first things I did was draw out the Sine, Cosine and Tangent graphs. She was in 11th grade in highschool and had no idea what they were. How on earth do you teach trig without graphs?
My nephew was filing algebra so I had a few sessions with him. I showed him how to lay out the the progression of the work so you can get partial credit, even if the answer was wrong. He told me his teacher didn't want to see the work, just the answer.
We are in deep kimshi here.
Not saying they are. However, I know that at my college, the students who got an "education" degree, got it by default because they couldn't cut it in any other area. Plus, as the article points out, if a teacher has an "education" degree, they don't have expertise in any particular area. I'd rather have science taught by someobe with a BA in science, etc.
The point is that more and more people of varied racial and cultural backgrounds are pulling their kids out of public schools because they come home displaying antisocial behaviors such as uttering obscenities as well as failing to learn to read, write, and handle math. These parents are choosing to get more actively involved in their kids' education.
I do find it preposterous that a PhD in, say, physics can teach the subject at a university but is prohibited from teaching it to 10th graders.
The only proud members of the Teachers Union are the ones who do not know anything about their profession and only got in on the Affirmative Action Program.
Perhaps, but I'm guessing most of those countries don't allow students to behave the way they do in U.S. schools, and they probably don't have to deal with the ones who don't want to be there anyway. People from those countries might run screaming from your average U.S. classroom.
Just so you know, I'm not blaming the terrible state of public schools solely on the students and parents, but they do play a part. More involved parents typically means better behaved and educated children (even if we have to end up teaching the lessons ourselves sometimes because of the lousy job the teachers are doing.)
The parents who see school as a daycare are a problem. The children who seriously disruptive in class are a problem. (I'm not talking about the normal things that kids do here. I'm talking about the really bad ones.) The teachers who don't do their job are a huge problem.
Word. My daughter's middle-school science teacher is a Fulbright Scholar and has a Ph.D. She had to go get a teaching certificate just to walk in the door.
"Somewhere back in our school days, we all had a special teacher who made learning fun or who pushed us into achieving more than we thought possible. If you were lucky, you had several teachers like that."
I'm beginning to wonder if that's a true statement any more? Or are we still saying it because we know or hope our kid has one like that? Or we don't want to offend the few remaining good teachers.
At Hillsdale College to get a education degree you have to also major in a subject–a double major at Hillsdale is not easy! (They've phased out the ed degree)
My daughters' professors at Hillsdale like to joke that they couldn't teach in the public schools because they're not certified –of course they're almost all Ph.D.s
Victor Davis Hansen told my daughter's class that the only preparation he received for teaching at the college level was the class list the day he walked into the classroom.
My friends want to believe that only certified teachers can teach! But they have no concerns about sending off their kids to college where certification isn't required! Being a Ph.D doesn't qualify you to teach but thankfully, Hillsdale knows how to hire people who like their subjects, like teaching and care about the students!
Are you serious?
Amen bro. These are indoctrination centers and one of the reasons home schooling is at record levels, and one of the reasons the gov't is trying to end home schooling.
Guess "admin" didn't like my comment. Let me know if you got it in replies. If not, I may try to write it again. I usually save them if there is any questionable content. Guess I have to reconsider the "rules" again…
Yep.
Hillsdale College is a real gem. I'll be happy to send my daughter there someday.
Most math teachers nowadays aren't math teachers. It's sad…
Public Employee Teacher Unions, are a cancer on the face of America!
weak
"The collectivist mindset is killing our public schools and the spirit of hard-working teachers."
it also prevents millions of people who might otherwise be interested in teaching from ever entering the field. and i'm one of them.
Seems that the teachers aren't doing a very good job by the looks of this video below:
Do you want to know why the United States is in trouble and Barack Obama is the President of the United States? Look right here:
http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fJuNgBkloFE
Seems that the teachers aren't doing a very good job by the looks of this video below:
Do you want to know why the United States is in trouble and Barack Obama is the President of the United States? Look right here:
http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fJuNgBkloFE
Seems that the teachers aren't doing a very good job by the looks of this video below:
Do you want to know why the United States is in trouble and Barack Obama is the President of the United States? Look right here:
http://www.safeshare.tv/v/fJuNgBkloFE
If schools could fire the incompetent, which is what is required, it would no longer be tenure.
that is what I mean by modify
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