A Sad Day For Solidarity

For any union member who is asking themselves whether or not they should support Chicago teachers, it’s time to make a large bag of popcorn and settle down to watch a few movies, The Grapes of Wrath, The Molly Maquires, Norma Rae, Matewan, Newsies, and North Country to name a few.

Every fifth grade Social Studies book tells of the struggle of the common worker for fair wages and humane working conditions. History tells of the united force of the worker coming together to demand that management and owners respect the rights of the Americans working for them.

Have we become so complacent, so docile, in our everyday lives that we have lost the ability to stand for what is right?

Chicago teachers are striking for a multitude of reasons, most of which concern better learning conditions for children, but teachers want better working conditions and better pay as well. What is wrong with that? Teachers have always been among the lowest paid professionals because they are dedicated to teaching children and rarely refuse to start each new school year regardless of the conditions under which they are asked to work.

Year after year teachers arrange and rearrange classrooms, work and rework lessons, assign and reassign work, teach and reteach concepts in the little time they’re given between pretesting, testing, and post-testing, benchmark testing, and now, since testing companies want to use our children as “test dummies” students are asked to take tests that will help create tests.

“BB” has certainly done a good job in pacifying Americans. We’re lackadaisical about who we choose to lead our country and so are uninformed about where we are heading as a people.

With all of this, the question remains, “Should every union member in the country support the Chicago Teachers?”

YES!!!

They are fighting for the right of our children to be properly educated.

They are fighting for the right of our children to be free thinkers, not factory workers.

They are fighting for the future of America!

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!

Conspiracy, But More Than A Theory

How can a large urban district continually fail to educate more than half of its students for nearly half a century?

Superintendents were hired, experts in their field, paid an enormous amount of money and their best plans were closing and renaming schools, shuffling students, and changing curriculum. Unfortunately, no matter how many times they tried this, schools still failed.

It was time to break away from the status quo, especially since right down the road from many failing public schools were successful private schools. It was not hard to convince the general public that this was the answer. Public school is a failure, schools must be private in order to succeed.

What do private schools have that public schools do not? Their budgets are much lower, they pay their teachers much less, their instructional materials are not as up-to-date. So, the reason for their success must be because there is no union. Once again, not difficult to convince the public that teacher unions are the reason public schools are failing.

Though this is a very simplistic overview of the educational insanity that exists, it is not total fantasy. We become convinced that a building or books or tests or grade levels educate children. We become convinced that teachers aren’t teaching because they’re holding out for more money. Year after year of failure has allowed us to believe the expert lie spun to explain the educational failure of our country until the truth has become conspiracy theory.

The truth is schools don’t fail children do. The truth is that we are failing to properly educate our children because it is profitable to do so. The more a district fails the more money it receives. Politicians have based their political careers on the education issue. Education is no longer about children and creating a better society. Mis-education has become the cash cow of the greedy and power hungry.

We must recognize the conspiracy and realize the truth. Education is about guiding children toward realizing their potential and using that potential to create a better world for everyone.

Join the Movement to Save Our Children!