Teacher Unions vs Education Vouchers, Home-Schooling, and Charter Schools
Forty years ago, a debate raged among public school teachers in New York State over the question of whether to affiliate themselves with labor unions.
The debate essentially centered on the issue of whether teaching was a profession or a trade. A compromise was reached with a semantical subterfuge when many teachers opted to continue calling their locals “federations” or “associations,” thereby retaining the illusion of professionalism, and joined the New York State United Teachers, “a union of professionals.”
Forty years ago, the American public education system produced graduates who could read, write, cipher, and think. Granted, we didn’t accomplish those goals as well as our forebears had but they didn’t have to compete with television and cultural and sexual revolutions. Still, we did a pretty damned good job–as contrasted with educators today.
Was the unionization of education the only cause in education’s transparent decline?
Not at all. Many teachers were already members of de facto unions which represented them in the same way they are represented today. Also, there are various outside influences on kids today which were present forty years ago but which hadn’t yet fully blossomed into the negative forces they are now.
And cell phones, iphones, Blackberries, smart phones, personal computers, and the Intenet didn’t exist.
Are teacher labor unions necessarily a bad thing? Again, not at all.
Teachers have greatly benefitted from the powerful clout of statewide and nationwide affiliations and school budgets have ballooned. They are not necessarily a bad thing, unless union extremism as seen in teacher participation in last spring’s riots in Wisconsin and the hardships inflicted on taxpayers by those balloons are factored in.
As a desperate response to failing public school systems often more intent on propagandizing than teaching, parents have resorted to a unique alternative, homeschooling their kids.
Teacher unions and their elected officials have fought tooth and nail against that desperation. Home-based learning effectively served as a denunciation of the inefficacy and the misguided values inculcated in public schools so what else could they do?
Education vouchers allowing parents to shop for the best elementary and secondary schools for their children represented an even greater threat to entrenched union interests and they, too, have been resisted as if they were a creation of the devil.
After all, if parents were permitted to pick and choose, they wouldn’t choose failing schools and would therefore put pressure on districts to compete by raising their level of instruction and discipline and to return to their fundamental pedagogical mission.
Both home schooling and education vouchers undermine America’s public education system and that’s not a bad thing either in light of the fact that system isn’t educating very well.
Another alternative to sending children to public schools that provide, at best, a babysitting service has sprung up in the past two decades: charter schools. If vouchers are the creation of some devil to teacher unions, charter schools must be the creation of Lucifer himself. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12206.)
Showing posts with label teacher unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teacher unions. Show all posts
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Obama's Re-Election
Obama's Re-Election
From a child’s perspective, seventeen months is a virtual eternity. From an American political perspective, it’s virtually around the corner. November 6th, 2012, when Americans will once again choose who will lead them for four long years, is little more than seventeen months down the road.
America’s choice of a leader has, literally, never been more momentous.
The economy wallows in the doldrums amost a year after Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed 2010′s “Summer of Recovery,” a recovery yet to be experienced by the 14 million jobless. Obama’s “stimulus” has chiefly stimulated government employment, a skyrocketing deficit and national debt, and impending stagflation. Americans have either lost their homes or trillions in home equity. Socialized medicine is now the law.
And, that’s only on the domestic front.
Internationally, we have lost even more, in respect from our allies, increased belligerence from our enemies, and more and more of our brave troops dying in war zones. Months ago, we took up arms under the guise of a NATO operation in the Libyan hellhole in a “kinetic action” which we were promised would involve weeks. The much-reviled terrorist prison at Guantanomo is still open.
Nevertheless, whether one is an avid supporter of Barack Hussein Obama’s re-election or one who regards that prospect as nothing less than the absolute worst eventuality since September 11th, 2001, seventeen months from now President Barack Hussein Obama will again visit Chicago’s Grant Park to announce to screaming worshippers that he had been re-elected.
It doesn’t make sense but no one ever alleged American politics made sense.
What does make sense is Obama’s successful brand of Chicago take-no-prisoners, brook-no-opposition, tell-’em-what-they-wanna-hear-then-do-whatever-you-damned-well-please technique. Couple that philosophy with endless campaigning which has now gone on for at least four years, with creation of an unprecedented national dependency and other policies designed to cement a plurality, with certain constituencies and demographic elements, Obama is a sure winner.
Compounding the challenge for Republicans next year is the fact that no viable candidate has yet emerged although that’s all but incidental in view of the Obama Machine already in full battle mode and dedicated to his re-election at all costs. In fact, too, regardless of all the other elements–although they are all interrelated–it’s those “certain constituencies and demographic elements” that will insure a Republican defeat. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4707)
From a child’s perspective, seventeen months is a virtual eternity. From an American political perspective, it’s virtually around the corner. November 6th, 2012, when Americans will once again choose who will lead them for four long years, is little more than seventeen months down the road.
America’s choice of a leader has, literally, never been more momentous.
The economy wallows in the doldrums amost a year after Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed 2010′s “Summer of Recovery,” a recovery yet to be experienced by the 14 million jobless. Obama’s “stimulus” has chiefly stimulated government employment, a skyrocketing deficit and national debt, and impending stagflation. Americans have either lost their homes or trillions in home equity. Socialized medicine is now the law.
And, that’s only on the domestic front.
Internationally, we have lost even more, in respect from our allies, increased belligerence from our enemies, and more and more of our brave troops dying in war zones. Months ago, we took up arms under the guise of a NATO operation in the Libyan hellhole in a “kinetic action” which we were promised would involve weeks. The much-reviled terrorist prison at Guantanomo is still open.
Nevertheless, whether one is an avid supporter of Barack Hussein Obama’s re-election or one who regards that prospect as nothing less than the absolute worst eventuality since September 11th, 2001, seventeen months from now President Barack Hussein Obama will again visit Chicago’s Grant Park to announce to screaming worshippers that he had been re-elected.
It doesn’t make sense but no one ever alleged American politics made sense.
What does make sense is Obama’s successful brand of Chicago take-no-prisoners, brook-no-opposition, tell-’em-what-they-wanna-hear-then-do-whatever-you-damned-well-please technique. Couple that philosophy with endless campaigning which has now gone on for at least four years, with creation of an unprecedented national dependency and other policies designed to cement a plurality, with certain constituencies and demographic elements, Obama is a sure winner.
Compounding the challenge for Republicans next year is the fact that no viable candidate has yet emerged although that’s all but incidental in view of the Obama Machine already in full battle mode and dedicated to his re-election at all costs. In fact, too, regardless of all the other elements–although they are all interrelated–it’s those “certain constituencies and demographic elements” that will insure a Republican defeat. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4707)
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Tales of 3 Judges: Prosser, Walker, Bolton
Tales of 3 Judges: Prosser, Walker, Bolton
. . . In a nation governed not by the people or their elected representatives but more and more by an overbearing,tyrannical federal judiciary, it is likely Judge Bolton’s decision to gut Arizona’s SB 1070 and the 9th Circuit’s affirmation and that Judge Walker’s transparent bias against California’s Proposition 8 will be overlooked and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. As for Wisconsin’s Justice Prosser, SCOTUS is liable to find he stole the election.
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4160)
. . . In a nation governed not by the people or their elected representatives but more and more by an overbearing,tyrannical federal judiciary, it is likely Judge Bolton’s decision to gut Arizona’s SB 1070 and the 9th Circuit’s affirmation and that Judge Walker’s transparent bias against California’s Proposition 8 will be overlooked and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. As for Wisconsin’s Justice Prosser, SCOTUS is liable to find he stole the election.
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4160)
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Education News, None of it Good
Edcation News, None of it Good
Among other understandings, teachers of America’s elementary and high school students were always expected to set examples for their students.
Aside from the obvious of not seducing their students, public school teachers were expected to establish a certain sense of decorum, which mandate in my school district incorporated into the union contract the allowance: “Male teachers are permitted to remove their jackets in the classroom.”
Times have changed. Radically.
Teacher-student assignations have become almost commonplace, student behavior has gone far beyond tossing spitballs and chewing gum, and teacher dress codes have gone the way of high-buttoned shoes. Aside from teachers hitting on students, other behavioral modifications on the part of teachers are much less forgivable, especially when the example they are setting is one of extreme misbehavior and lawlessness.
Teachers and other public servants in Wisconsin have the same rights accorded to every American under the First Amendment to the Constitution’s prohibition against infringement on freedom of speech, interference with the right to peaceably assemble, and the right of petitioning governmental redress of grievances.
What teachers do not have the right or privilege to do is to disgrace themselves and their profession, to break laws, to interfere with government functions, or to shamelessly trash both their profession and themselves by allowing teacher and outside thugs to direct and dictate their criminal activities: http://tiny.cc/2j0b9
In Wisconsin, teachers protesting new Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attempts to clean up the fiscal mess he inherited have reached new lows in their efforts to resist limitations on collective bargaining rights.
Despite Walker’s offers of compromise, Wisconsin “educators” have abandoned their classroom responsibilities by calling in sick in droves, falsifying medical “sick notes,” committing outright slander against their duly-elected representatives, and resorting to the same bullying tactics they decry in their schools, all of which are condoned by the nation’s Bully-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama
Acting more like semi-civilized Third Worlders instead of American student role models, their protests are costing millions. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3839)
Among other understandings, teachers of America’s elementary and high school students were always expected to set examples for their students.
Aside from the obvious of not seducing their students, public school teachers were expected to establish a certain sense of decorum, which mandate in my school district incorporated into the union contract the allowance: “Male teachers are permitted to remove their jackets in the classroom.”
Times have changed. Radically.
Teacher-student assignations have become almost commonplace, student behavior has gone far beyond tossing spitballs and chewing gum, and teacher dress codes have gone the way of high-buttoned shoes. Aside from teachers hitting on students, other behavioral modifications on the part of teachers are much less forgivable, especially when the example they are setting is one of extreme misbehavior and lawlessness.
Teachers and other public servants in Wisconsin have the same rights accorded to every American under the First Amendment to the Constitution’s prohibition against infringement on freedom of speech, interference with the right to peaceably assemble, and the right of petitioning governmental redress of grievances.
What teachers do not have the right or privilege to do is to disgrace themselves and their profession, to break laws, to interfere with government functions, or to shamelessly trash both their profession and themselves by allowing teacher and outside thugs to direct and dictate their criminal activities: http://tiny.cc/2j0b9
In Wisconsin, teachers protesting new Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attempts to clean up the fiscal mess he inherited have reached new lows in their efforts to resist limitations on collective bargaining rights.
Despite Walker’s offers of compromise, Wisconsin “educators” have abandoned their classroom responsibilities by calling in sick in droves, falsifying medical “sick notes,” committing outright slander against their duly-elected representatives, and resorting to the same bullying tactics they decry in their schools, all of which are condoned by the nation’s Bully-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama
Acting more like semi-civilized Third Worlders instead of American student role models, their protests are costing millions. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3839)
Sunday, February 27, 2011
FDR and Union Tyranny
FDR and Union Tyranny
As a former, retired, teacher union member whose father was a member of a company union, I don’t in the least feel hypocritical in opposing the actions of Wisconsin teachers. Bottom line is, they’re wrong, in the extreme.
When I began as a public school English teacher in the early 70′s in suburban Long Island, I had no intention of joining either the local or state unions. Even then, the state union was decidedly liberal and, in fact, there was a movement afoot to expunge the word, “union,” in favor of “association” in order to preserve a sense of teacher professionalism.
“Union” won out in that debate, not that it mattered since the umbrella organization, the National Education Association, the NEA, which partners with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT, is a de facto union, with 3.2 million members.
In any event, during my first year I refused on principle to join the local but succumbed in my second after repeated interruptions of my class by an importuning union rep. As it turned out, I subsequently learned that the district administration, in conjunction with the union, frowned on those who didn’t join and if I hadn’t signed on I may not have had a job my third year.
With that as preface and introduction to the current education crisis in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere, it’s been more than disquieting to discover that I was at least in partial agreement with the greatest liberal icon in the history of liberal icons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Not that FDR was opposed to unions or collective bargaining–far from it–but he knew the inherent dangers of public employees negotiating with governments via union representatives.
As he said, ”All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations:” http://tiny.cc/pnwwf
Apparently, today’s public employee unions never got that message as to the “insurmountable limitations” and the impossibility of such situations. Nor can they seem to grasp FDR’s reminder that, in collective bargaining with governments, “The employer is the whole people,” meaning that, seated on the other side of the negotiating table, are not representatives of some greedy corporation but the American public.
Extrapolating from Roosevelt’s words, when public employee unions demonstrate and agitate and demand, they are demonstrating and agitating against “the whole people” and their demands are not being made against a mayor, governor, or president but rather against every taxpayer.
President Ronald Reagan . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3744)
As a former, retired, teacher union member whose father was a member of a company union, I don’t in the least feel hypocritical in opposing the actions of Wisconsin teachers. Bottom line is, they’re wrong, in the extreme.
When I began as a public school English teacher in the early 70′s in suburban Long Island, I had no intention of joining either the local or state unions. Even then, the state union was decidedly liberal and, in fact, there was a movement afoot to expunge the word, “union,” in favor of “association” in order to preserve a sense of teacher professionalism.
“Union” won out in that debate, not that it mattered since the umbrella organization, the National Education Association, the NEA, which partners with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT, is a de facto union, with 3.2 million members.
In any event, during my first year I refused on principle to join the local but succumbed in my second after repeated interruptions of my class by an importuning union rep. As it turned out, I subsequently learned that the district administration, in conjunction with the union, frowned on those who didn’t join and if I hadn’t signed on I may not have had a job my third year.
With that as preface and introduction to the current education crisis in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere, it’s been more than disquieting to discover that I was at least in partial agreement with the greatest liberal icon in the history of liberal icons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Not that FDR was opposed to unions or collective bargaining–far from it–but he knew the inherent dangers of public employees negotiating with governments via union representatives.
As he said, ”All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations:” http://tiny.cc/pnwwf
Apparently, today’s public employee unions never got that message as to the “insurmountable limitations” and the impossibility of such situations. Nor can they seem to grasp FDR’s reminder that, in collective bargaining with governments, “The employer is the whole people,” meaning that, seated on the other side of the negotiating table, are not representatives of some greedy corporation but the American public.
Extrapolating from Roosevelt’s words, when public employee unions demonstrate and agitate and demand, they are demonstrating and agitating against “the whole people” and their demands are not being made against a mayor, governor, or president but rather against every taxpayer.
President Ronald Reagan . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3744)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Madness in Madison
Madness in Madison
It’s not quite at the level of the madness in the Mideast nor tantamount to the madness of King George but what’s happening in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Badger State is getting close.
The newly-elected Republican governor of the home of the cheeseheads, Scott Walker, has proposed changes in teachers’ collective bargaining rights which, based on union interpretations, would reduce Wisconsin’s teachers to the level of vassals of the state. A more reasonable view of Walker’s plan is that it would save Wisconsin from its fiscal insanity and a declaration of bankruptcy.
With New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie as a model, Walker has also dared to take on the powerful teacher union and impose common sense constraints which would accomplish nothing more than getting public employee and teacher salary and benefits more in line with private sector pay and bennies.
Time was, many decades ago now, people entered government service and the teaching profession with full knowledge that they would be compensated less monetarily in return for greater job security.
Times change.
Today, thanks to the power of unions, workers in the public sector have been thriving even as their privately-employed counterparts have faced cutbacks, dismissals, reduction in pay scales, and elimination of health and other benefits. It was equitable in the past that teachers, et al. were able to trade off pay for job security. Now that they have far surpassed the private sector in monetary compensation, earning up to triple private salaries while still retaining employment security and almost unlimited benefits, it’s equitable that they help level the playing field.
The new governor’s practical and hardly revolutionary proposals have been met with outrage and lies by the unions yet they merely provide . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3661)
It’s not quite at the level of the madness in the Mideast nor tantamount to the madness of King George but what’s happening in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Badger State is getting close.
The newly-elected Republican governor of the home of the cheeseheads, Scott Walker, has proposed changes in teachers’ collective bargaining rights which, based on union interpretations, would reduce Wisconsin’s teachers to the level of vassals of the state. A more reasonable view of Walker’s plan is that it would save Wisconsin from its fiscal insanity and a declaration of bankruptcy.
With New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie as a model, Walker has also dared to take on the powerful teacher union and impose common sense constraints which would accomplish nothing more than getting public employee and teacher salary and benefits more in line with private sector pay and bennies.
Time was, many decades ago now, people entered government service and the teaching profession with full knowledge that they would be compensated less monetarily in return for greater job security.
Times change.
Today, thanks to the power of unions, workers in the public sector have been thriving even as their privately-employed counterparts have faced cutbacks, dismissals, reduction in pay scales, and elimination of health and other benefits. It was equitable in the past that teachers, et al. were able to trade off pay for job security. Now that they have far surpassed the private sector in monetary compensation, earning up to triple private salaries while still retaining employment security and almost unlimited benefits, it’s equitable that they help level the playing field.
The new governor’s practical and hardly revolutionary proposals have been met with outrage and lies by the unions yet they merely provide . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3661)
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Teachers Caught in Flagrante Dilecto
Teachers Caught in Flagrante Delicto
In a brief article on the latest female teacher who, allegedly, seduced at least 5 Ohio football-player students, Tammy on IOwnthe World.com posed the question, “Honest to God, how do these freaks get hired in the first place?” Well, honest to God, Tammy, wake up and get a whiff of what America’s public schools are like today! The hirers are usually no better than the hirees.
See IOwntheWorld’s teacher slut gallery here: http://tiny.cc/0iunq
Thirty-two year old phys ed-health teacher/athletic trainer Stacy Schuler, allegedly, taught and trained some footballers in much more than was mandated in the 3,048 student Mason High School, Cincinnati, curriculum and has been indicted on 19 felony counts of sexual battery as well as three misedemanor charges of serving alcohol to minors. Facing sentences totaling over a century if convicted of all charges, Schuler has resigned.
All the fuss and bother about Ms. Schuler’s volunteering to teach her young studs extracurricular physical ins and outs is somewhat bewildering since her off-campus sexcapades have been replicated in America’s public schools from time immemorial and in the past few decades have become almost commonplace. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3631)
In a brief article on the latest female teacher who, allegedly, seduced at least 5 Ohio football-player students, Tammy on IOwnthe World.com posed the question, “Honest to God, how do these freaks get hired in the first place?” Well, honest to God, Tammy, wake up and get a whiff of what America’s public schools are like today! The hirers are usually no better than the hirees.
See IOwntheWorld’s teacher slut gallery here: http://tiny.cc/0iunq
Thirty-two year old phys ed-health teacher/athletic trainer Stacy Schuler, allegedly, taught and trained some footballers in much more than was mandated in the 3,048 student Mason High School, Cincinnati, curriculum and has been indicted on 19 felony counts of sexual battery as well as three misedemanor charges of serving alcohol to minors. Facing sentences totaling over a century if convicted of all charges, Schuler has resigned.
All the fuss and bother about Ms. Schuler’s volunteering to teach her young studs extracurricular physical ins and outs is somewhat bewildering since her off-campus sexcapades have been replicated in America’s public schools from time immemorial and in the past few decades have become almost commonplace. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3631)
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Two Rebellious Republican Governors
Two Rebellious Republican Governors
Politicians are known to be many things among which is having an ingrained tendency to be, well, political in the diplomatic sense, not speaking their minds, not going out of their way to be overly honest by possibly offending people and certainly not insulting their constituents. It’s what makes them politicians.
It’s also what makes them phonies.
Therefore, when a pol departs from that norm and dumps the typical script in favor of straightforward, honest frankness, it’s refreshing.
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day 2011, newly-elected Republican Governor Paul LePage of Maine added just such a touch of refreshment when he announced in Sanford, ME to the displeasure of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People why he wouldn’t be attending the upcoming MLK festivities.
The governor, born into an impoverished, French-speaking Lewiston family of 18 kids who is a self-made man, said, “They are a special interest. End of story . . . and I’m not going to be held hostage by special interests.” He added when asked if this was part of a pattern, “Tell ‘em to kiss my butt. If they want to play the race card, come to dinner and my [adopted, black Jamaican] son will talk to them.”
Not attending MLK festivities? The NAACP a special interest playing the race card? Telling them to kiss his butt if they didn’t like it? What is this guy, anyway, an honest man or a politician?
The answer is obvious and his honesty should have been just as obvious since he didn’t pull any punches as a candidate, either. Then he had said that if he were elected governor, headlines would read, “Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.“ He later said he regretted his choice of words but stood behind their intent: http://tiny.cc/7j7ld
Another new Republican governor, Chris Christie of New Jersey, hasn’t yet taken on the president with such blunt language but give it time. What he has taken on during his brief, one-year tenure in Jersey is Obama’s most highly-favored groups, public service and especially teacher unions, whose benefits, salaries, and pensions are in process of bankrupting over half the states in America. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3428)
Politicians are known to be many things among which is having an ingrained tendency to be, well, political in the diplomatic sense, not speaking their minds, not going out of their way to be overly honest by possibly offending people and certainly not insulting their constituents. It’s what makes them politicians.
It’s also what makes them phonies.
Therefore, when a pol departs from that norm and dumps the typical script in favor of straightforward, honest frankness, it’s refreshing.
On the eve of Martin Luther King Day 2011, newly-elected Republican Governor Paul LePage of Maine added just such a touch of refreshment when he announced in Sanford, ME to the displeasure of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People why he wouldn’t be attending the upcoming MLK festivities.
The governor, born into an impoverished, French-speaking Lewiston family of 18 kids who is a self-made man, said, “They are a special interest. End of story . . . and I’m not going to be held hostage by special interests.” He added when asked if this was part of a pattern, “Tell ‘em to kiss my butt. If they want to play the race card, come to dinner and my [adopted, black Jamaican] son will talk to them.”
Not attending MLK festivities? The NAACP a special interest playing the race card? Telling them to kiss his butt if they didn’t like it? What is this guy, anyway, an honest man or a politician?
The answer is obvious and his honesty should have been just as obvious since he didn’t pull any punches as a candidate, either. Then he had said that if he were elected governor, headlines would read, “Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell.“ He later said he regretted his choice of words but stood behind their intent: http://tiny.cc/7j7ld
Another new Republican governor, Chris Christie of New Jersey, hasn’t yet taken on the president with such blunt language but give it time. What he has taken on during his brief, one-year tenure in Jersey is Obama’s most highly-favored groups, public service and especially teacher unions, whose benefits, salaries, and pensions are in process of bankrupting over half the states in America. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3428)
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