The Union That Killed Education
If you have a child in public
school, you need to read The Worm in the Apple: How
the Teachers Unions Are Destroying American Education,
a
new book by Peter Brimelow.
Public schools are run by the
National Educational Association. They are not run by
people you can hold accountable, such as teachers,
superintendents and school boards. The NEA opposes merit
pay, charter schools, and any decision by any school
administrator that has not been determined in advance by
collective bargaining. Simply put, the NEA opposes
everything except its own power.
In Connecticut the teachers union
filed a grievance demanding pay for an extra 2 minutes a
week that the union claimed teachers worked. In
Pennsylvania a grievance was filed because coffee and
doughnuts were not provided during a teacher training
day. Jaime Escalante, a teacher whose extraordinary
success in teaching calculus to
inner-city Hispanics resulted in a
Hollywood movie, was
run out of his California school district by the
teachers union. Escalante, it seems, violated union
rules by complaining about teachers who used the
teachers` lounge as a real estate office and called in
sick to extend their weekends. A high school principal
who requested that teachers write daily objectives on
the classroom board was denounced by the union as a
“draconian zealot.”
Meanwhile, kids aren`t learning.
The vocabulary of the average American 14-year-old has
dropped from 25,000 words to 10,000. San Francisco
Examiner reporter Emily Gurnon
asked teenagers to identify the country from which
America won its independence. Among the answers:
“Japan or something, China. Somewhere out there on the
other side of the world.” “It wouldn`t be Canada, would
it?” “I don`t know; I don`t even, like, have a clue.” “I
want to say Korea. I`m tripping.”
Brimelow next introduces the
teachers. Sara Boyd, a recipient of many awards and
accolades during her teaching career experienced
difficulty passing a mathematics competency test. She
sued the state of California,
claiming the test was racially discriminatory. But
at her deposition she was unable to answer the question:
“What percent of 80 is 8?”
Teachers can`t teach because the
union won`t let them. Perhaps it is just as well. Here
are some course
listings in the education department at the
University of Massachusetts: Embracing Diversity,
Diversity and Change, Oppression and Education,
Introduction to Multicultural Education, Black Identity,
Classism, Racism, Sexism, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual
Oppression, Jewish Oppression, Oppression of the
Disabled, Erroneous Beliefs.
Schools of education have turned
teachers into agents of the
therapeutic state, a new form of government
analyzed by Paul Gottfried in his recent
book,
Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt.
Indoctrination and social reconstruction have
replaced the traditional emphasis on reading,
writing, and arithmetic.
When you can stop laughing or
crying, pay attention. Brimelow is serious. He knows the
NEA inside out. But the media does not. Brimelow has a
chapter describing how the NEA bribes the media for
favorable stories by handing out “media awards.” The
Dallas Morning News won three awards for promoting a
trip by area teachers to the state capital to lobby for
money for teachers raises. In 2000 when NEA delegates
voted to strengthen their policy against merit pay for
teachers, the Associated Press reported the opposite.
Newspapers across the country then editorialized on the
basis of the erroneous AP report.
The problem, says Brimelow, is that
the NEA is the backbone of the Democratic Party and
public education is a government monopoly. Brimelow asks
Lenin`s question, “What Is To Be Done?” and replies with
24 reforms.
One senses that Brimelow believes
reform has little hope when it is opposed by NEA
lobbying. If the NEA is to be undone, its undoing will
come from parents and teachers deserting the schools.
Homeschoolers, without benefit of
fancy facilities, science labs, and huge expenditures of
money outscore public school students.
Teachers themselves are dropping
out, demoralized by lack of professionalism, chaos, and
crumbling educational standards. As readers recently
pointed out to me, teachers are being imported from
India and other Third World countries under the H-1B
visa program to take the jobs that American teachers are
abandoning.
Brimelow uses the wrong tense when
he writes that “the teacher unions are destroying
American education.” They have destroyed it.
Paul
Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M. Stratton of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice. Click
here for Peter
Brimelow`s Forbes
Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent
epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS
SYNDICATE, INC.


