Teacher's Unions Are Bad

[crunchy_pickle (5)]

I've kind of felt this way for a long time especially where it pertains to charter schools, but to summarize my thoughts I will say this.

Teacher's unions are bad. Any agency that protects the jobs of people who work just hard enough but are responsible for the education of our future leaders is an agency that does not promote the social benefit of the whole. Without competing for jobs and being a little insecure about losing it, there is on room for teachers who really CARE about their jobs or the children they teach. If we are not assured that our public school systems do not promote the same care an attention that we would give to our own children, then what business do we have sending our children to public schools.

[Homicidalheathen]

Teachers unions can be bad.......I mean, we need something to protect such an important job......teaching our youth.

Personally I dont think they get paid enough......

But.......the union protects their jobs even when maybe that is not the best thing

There was this teacher in high school who made passes at students......they were AFRAID to fire him so they sent him to another school.

I heard it had something to do with the union, they couldn't fire him without a few students willing to go on the record.......and since it was a gay thing all the guys involved (they were all str8, the teacher was gay) and it was the 80's........none of them would come forward for fear of being picked on by other students.

I heard he finally got caught years later and was let go.

[creatureofthenyte]

yeah maybe there should be alittle more emphasis on merit as far as teachers sustaining their jobs. But you also have to consider how hard it is for them to do their jobs when some of the kids they teach, are juvenile delinquent troublemaking pains in the ass, and they have to put up with their crap. They talk to the kids' parents about it, and some parents think their lil delinquents are angels that can't do any wrong. So yeah teachers deserve alot more money for the crap they often have to deal with cuz some parents these days expect Them to raise their kids for them And teach them.

[Kit Kat P]

I have to disagree, and not just because both of my in-laws, several of my friends and several of my friends parents are all teachers. I've watched a teacher w/ no tenure get fired because he told a kid's parents that the kid was lazy; which they were. he wasn't in the union long enough,( I think it was a few days) and w/o tenure so he up a creek so to speak. What few raises teachers get it's because of the unions. I do think there needs to more ways to get rid of the bad ones, but we also lose so many of the good ones.

Also, after seeing so much burn I personally think that every 5 years they have to take a year off, but I also feel the same about social workers.

[Msterbeau]

Unions generally have a good purpose but they've enabled a lot a of bad habits that leave later generations very entitled. And that sucks.

[Destroit]

Unions are only bad because of the fact that once teachers get tenure the only way they're getting fired is if they're beating the hell out of kids or having sex with kids.

In my high school my German teacher didn't TEACH. Period. We'd walk into class and she'd say "do exercises 4 and 5 on page 98" and then she would sit at her desk and play Snoods all hour. I mean sure that game is addicting, but she really should have been teaching us a thing or two.

You can't fully blame teacher's unions, however, as a matter of fact there are two other variables that have a much higher impact on our educational system. The teachers and their unions are the least of our worries. What are these two factors? Parents and "schools of choice" or open school districts rather.

Starting with parents. Back in the day when my Boshy (who is a high school teacher) was little when a kid did something wrong the kid was always wrong. That's how it should be. All kids are little shits and you need to train them accordingly and teach them how to cope in the world and let them know they aren't always right and can't always get their way. Parents need to realize their kids are BORN as little shits. It's your job as a PARENT to correct them, hence RAISING...but apparantly we've lost that philosophy in the past 30 years and our kids now own us and run OUR lives.

What do parents do now? According to Boshy (and other teachers who work and have worked with her) they go into the school and make a big fuss like "oh how DARE you flunk my little Joey! He is an ANGEL! He does NO wrong meaning that YOU must be the bad teacher, I should talk to the superintendent and have you fired. I'm taking Joey's education ELSEWHERE!"

So in a perfect world the teacher should be able to say "your kid is a little dipshit and can't follow instructions to save his life. You really should punish him and ground him." That's what they did back in the day, albeit in a more PC manner, but that's what I'm getting at.

BUT...what does happen now? The parent makes a fuss and the TEACHER gets in trouble for doing their job. Just because of some mamsy pamsy mom who thinks their kid is some angelic genius and has never punished or scolded them a day in their lives. This happens ALL...THE...TIME. Probably daily to EVERY teacher everywhere, and 30 years ago that behavior from parents would have been unheard of. Back in the day that would have constituted a bad parent in the eyes of society, and in this modern era it's commonplace.

Kids should NEVER EVER have the upper hand (unless it's the rare instance where the teacher is actually bad...but trust me, it's more rare than you'd think), but parents now don't seem to understand that. By pampering your kid and fighting to let them "have their way" especially going against other adults they learn that A) They don't need to do anything to survive, mommy will fix it and B) School is for fools (thus rendering our educational system obsolete because parents don't care if their kids learn and if they don't care then how the fuck are the kids supposed to care?).

Now...this is where the second culprit comes in, and why in turn charter schools are just as bad a public, if not worse. The open districts or "schools of choice". Before this became a trend, since it brings in more money to the schools, parents didn't have a choice of where they could send their kids to school. Really, in a sense, that was good. I'll explain why:

Open schools have turned public schools into businesses. Now that bad mom who should be yelling at her kid instead of the teachers has a choice to say "well fuck you, I'm taking my tax dollars elsewhere". Before, this was not an option and those types of threats meant nothing to schools, which in turn, meant they could do their jobs without fear of losing government funding. NOW schools must literally ASS KISS just to keep any kids. They have to pass kids no matter what, even when they shouldn't, and they have to ALWAYS agree with parents in fear the parents will take their kids elsewhere. They've been forced to dumb down their curriculum, so the kids are learning elementary school subject material in their senior year of high school because if they don't it's "boo hoo hoo too hard" and the parents get pissed at the district. How DARE they say their kid isn't perfect? Parents don't realize: SCHOOL IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY. YOU MUST WORK TO GET ANYWHERE IN LIFE, WHY SHOULD SCHOOL BE DIFFERENT?

See where this presents a problem? It's not the unions (that plays a minor part), it's moreover the parents and open schools, IMO.

My mom taught at a charter school (which is worse than public schools because they have NO regulations on what must be taughts, whereas public schools have the bare minimums at least). She was a math teacher who taught MIDDLE SCHOOL math...to seniors. Why? She had parent after parent after freaking shitty parent complain saying that 12th grade math was too hard for their kids and they weren't passing. True story.

It's easy to blame the government and teachers unions for things when really the blame should fall on us. Americans REALLY need to grow a pair and realize that we, and our kids, aren't perfect and that's fine.

I will agree, they should have unions set up differently and regulated more closely, but to me it's the least of our worries in public education. It's like standing there looking at one minor little sapling of a tree...not realizing you're standing in the middle of a huge forest.

[TygerLili]

I don't agree. My mom is a teacher, as are most of her friends, so I grew up surrounded by teachers, and most of them work very hard for not nearly enough compensation or respect. Sure, there are always going to be a few bad apples in the bunch, and sadly it's the crazy ones who have babies with their students or flip out and bring weapons into their classrooms that we hear about, but they really are in the overwhelming minority.

Based on my experience substitute teaching, public schools have to spend the majority of their time and resources dealing with the problem students. It was mostly babysitting, and some days it seemed like a third of the class would have to be sent to in school suspension or the principal's office before I could even attempt to teach a lesson. It was frightening the number of average 8th graders who would just stare blankly at me if I asked them what 6x7 is, or had to pull out cheat sheets. This is a sad thing, but you can't put all the blame for that on the teachers. A good percentage of that blame falls on the administrators, and government, as well as the parents and the students themselves.

As Chernobyl pointed out, there are far too many parents who will blindly defend their children for behaving like little monsters, expecting the teachers to raise their children and faulting them for failing to do so properly. Kids, in turn, don't take responsibility for their own actions because they're following the example that mommy and daddy are setting of blaming someone else for their own shortcomings.

My own experience with school administrators, principals, superintendents, etc., which I admit may be a little skewed, has shown the overwhelming majority of them to be the ones who care more about keeping and advancing their own jobs and looking good to their superiors than they do about the welfare of the students. I went to a school with terrible administrators, who were too busy trying to cover up their extra-marital affairs and involvement in murder trials and preach intolerance of anyone who didn't have "good Christian values" to do much in the way of helping the students. I realize this is not an accurate representation of all school administrators, but nonetheless, the majority of them I've met were, first and foremost, power-hungry.

I'm not saying that teachers are blameless as far as the many flaws in our education system are concerned, but most of them are honest, hardworking people, doing an often thankless, and at times dangerous, job, and they deserve some protection.

[Troy Spiral (13)]

I try to look at things without giving my personal experience so much emphasis that i confuse it with a concept as a whole on a large scale. I might have had a family born with some particular disease, but that doesn't mean my personal experience is expandable to say "everyone's family has this disease" just as an example.

Also try not to confuse specific examples of a given idea to mean that ALL iterations of that idea are going to be bad. If a given tax in a given area ended up causing a problem, that doesn't mean that every tax in every area is bad, again just an example.

"Supporting non-performing teachers for the sake of supporting teachers or groups of teachers that are poor and are doing a poor job" i think was the real motivation there, which i think we can all agree with. Just because some unions do that, unfortunately, doesn't mean the whole teachers union concept is always bad.

There's nothing inherently wrong with a union, maybe specific unions have flaws but to extrapolate that out and say "Teachers Unions Are Bad" is making the assumption that they will always be run poorly and have bad ideals, goals and memberships.