Will someone please stand up to these teacher cartels? If teaching is so bad, quit. Pure and simple. But I don’t think its’ as bad as they make it to be with the kind of contracts they have because of their unions. Let’s look at he New York City teachers union. I hope you saw that 20/20 special on this "gang". They essentially pigeon held the city and extorted them into a new contract with get this:
- six hour work days
- retirement at age 55 with full benefits (pensions, medical, etc)
- cannot fire a teacher for performance short of murder or rape, and and they have a long form for that.
If they are so much "about the children", then why do they drain the resources for absurd contracts and benefits like these? Now the California Federation of Teachers are up in arms because Steve Jobs had an opinion and spoke it. Oops, cannot have a differing opinion from a teachers union. The cartel’s new initiative, guaranteed lifetime employment. Guarantee a job for life, regardless of the performance of a teacher or the economics of the state.
If teachers are so much about the children, then why aren’t they open to alternative education options such as vouchers, that create competitive education? In every other sector of life, competition has reaped rewards.
I like the Denmark approach. Instead of attaching funding to a school, attach the funding to a student. The parent or guardian can then choose where to send their child, use the funding for their child at a public or a private school, or various other choices. And guess what, in Denmark, the public school system has elevated itself and is of the highest quality, on par and exceeding private schools.
But we can’t have that here because that would require the teachers unions in this country to think outside the box, take initiatives and work normal hours like the rest of the country. So when you hear a teacher running their mouth about they are "for the children" ask them who’s children.
No, I’m sorry, but I do not pity them. Welcome to life. When I see teachers unions support trying alternative options and different educational choices, then I’ll believe that they’re interested in the child’s education. Until then, they’re just about themselves.
MacNN | Jobs to get "Rotten Apple’ award without apology The California Federation of Teachers has invited Apple CEO Steve Jobs to either attend an annual CFT convention next month or offer a public apology for his "insulting comments" to California’s teachers. Should Jobs fail to apologize or neglect to attend the conference, where he is encouraged to speak with the people who educate California’s children and hear from them what the situation is like, the CFT will create a new award specifically for Apple’s chief. "We’ll call it the Rotten Apple, for the individual who best personifies the need to think differently about public education and teacher unions," California Federation of Teachers president Mary Bergan wrote in a letter to the executive. Bergan aggressively rebuted Jobs’ statement to an educational reform conference last week, where he expressed belief that the schools have become unionized "in the worst possible way" and that the unionization with lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is "off-the-charts crazy."
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