Bill Maher vs Teacher's Union...

[HardWorkingDem]

Tonight on Bill Maher's show he had the Breibarth jackass on and made a comment about how terrible the teacher's union is. Then, the other day Obama hammered the teacher's union.

What I want to know is....where did this evil teacher's union start?

Let's be honest here...I would bet my left arm that the lack of children learning comes more from families than it does from the evil teacher's union.

[EFerrari]

1. Maher said the union moves bad teachers around like the Catholic Church moves pedophiles.

God, he's vile. I'm so glad I don't pay to watch him any more.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. I never miss his show

and I am a huge fan. Bought tickets to go see him when he was here a few years ago.

But his comments tonight were over the top.

[EFerrari]

7. I think he's a passive aggressive prick. He could be funny if

he didn't keep accessing his inner @sshole. The way he talks about women and sex is nauseating in the way you're nauseated when you know you don't want to know any more and hope he doesn't disclose any more.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. He is definitely losing his appeal

I wonder how much longer his show will even be on.

[EFerrari]

17. He should just stay away from anything that has to do with human relationships.

That still leaves four or five topics where he could shine. lol

[marshall]

40. In the Dallas ISD they call it "passing the trash"

I think it extends into other school districts as well.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. Somebody elected maher as prophet. I haven't figured out who

it was that did it.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Yes I wanted to puke when I heard him say that

But he is just following the trend this week to bash the teachers and their unions.

[Patchuli]

4. Thank you!

"the lack of children learning comes more from families than it does from the evil teacher's union."

I am not a teacher...I am an attendance secretary/library tech but the disrespect given to us as well as our teachers by some of these kids is allowed in those kids' homes. It does not get learned at school. I still have to tell 18 year old 'children' to say please. The lack of children learning also may be due to the fact that they have an iPod in one ear and a cell phone in the other when they should be listening to their teachers. I actually had a father expect to excuse his son's absence from a class because "he was there but didn't hear roll because he was listening to his iPod. Please excuse him."

There is NO excuse for that!!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. They are ALLOWED to listen to iPods at school?!

That's ridiculous. Cell phones too.

[Patchuli]

11. Parents call them and text them in class!

It's a state law that they are allowed to have their cell phones but they are to be turned off during the school day. Some kids will text each other test answers.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. WTF?

A state law?

They don't have regular phones in that school?

I can't even imagine. I am SO glad I don't teach high school.

[Patchuli]

23. Yep. They can have them but they are to be

turned off during class. Of course, that doesn't happen. The parents call or text the kid and tell them to leave class so they can pick them up and they leave without checking out. It's an awful situation for schools. The parents undermine our authority in caring for and educating their children in doing these things. Then Bill Maher, et al. blames our teachers because these kids aren't learning.

[EFerrari]

8. If our choices are blaming teachers or blaming families,

this isn't much of a discussion. Eta: Sorry to be so crabby.

[Patchuli]

9. No, I agree that blame is not going to fix it

but maybe helpful to figure out how to overcome it and provide better education.

[Syrinx]

10. is there an equivalent to "tenure" for high school teachers

I'll say upfront that I don't know much about this issue. I don't personally know any teachers. Except for a girl I went to school with... and I haven't seen her in years... though I would like to... she's very sweet and pretty too. Too bad she's married.

I think we should be able to fire bad teachers, and pay good teachers more. Seems like common sense.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Yes most public school teachers are eligible for tenure

But there is so much misinformation about tenure it's hard to know where to start. LOL

[JDPriestly]

25. Tenure is not understood by most people.

Some facts about tenure.

Teachers are, compared to other professionals, not well paid. Tenure is job security. It is a way to get teachers to stay in the profession for the long haul in spite of the relatively low pay.

Tenured teachers in most districts can be dismissed. It's just a little more difficult because usually the district has to demonstrate that it has "cause" to dismiss them. It's a longer, more complex process, but a "bad" teacher can be fired even if tenured.

Teachers who earn education degrees in college spend a period of time as a "student teacher" in a classroom under the supervision of a good teacher. They are better prepared for their jobs than members of some other professions. (Doctors, of course go through a much longer apprenticeship during residency.)

To earn tenure, a teacher has to meet certification and other standards and be rehired a certain number of years. The specific number of years they have to teach successfully before getting tenure varies from state to state. Teachers who don't measure up during their pre-tenure years don't get rehired. As a result, of course, they don't get tenure.

Teachers get pay and promotion incentives for continuing to educate themselves after their initial degree and certification. School administrators usually get paid better than classroom teachers. Personally, I think this results in some really great teachers moving "up" in order to provide a better life for their families. In the process, some of our best teachers move out of the classrooms where we need them.

Teachers in good schools work together as teams not necessarily in terms of team-teaching, but certainly in terms of other kinds of support. Good teachers are encouraged to help so-called "bad" teachers. So-called merit pay combined with no tenure will encourage competition among teachers and discourage mentoring of newer teachers by more experienced ones. Teachers should be cooperating, not competing. The interests of the students should come first, not the ambitions of the teachers. When teachers cooperate, students benefit.

Students have different learning styles and respond differently to different teaching styles. Therefore, it is really difficult to assess teachers objectively. Math was easy for me. I loved the math teacher who came in to class, wrote an assignment on the board and left us to ourselves to read the text and work out the problems. Other students were completely lost. I was happy because I had extra time and could do the extra problems. Was my math teacher a "good" teacher or a "bad" teacher? Depends on whether you were naturally "good" or "bad" at math. Had that teacher spent a lot of time diligently explaining the problems, I would have turned to day-dreaming and learned less. So, who can say?

Objective test scores say a lot about the homes that students come from. They don't say much about teachers. If your parents read you a story at night before you went to bed, if you were given books as gifts starting very early on, if people around you talked to you a lot when you were a baby and toddler, if you have the right genes, if you were a healthy, normal baby, if you have enough to eat, if your parents are sober, spend time with you and love you and each other most of the time, you most likely will get better test scores than the kid whose parents don't speak English, take drugs, drink a lot, don't give you enough to eat, etc.

I got a degree in education many years ago and taught a couple of years as a graduate assistant at a university and then music as a private music teacher for a few years. Other than that, I am not a teacher. I know these facts about teaching an tenure because my two children went to public schools all the way through school including kindergarten and the first years of grade school in public schools in Europe and the rest in Los Angeles public schools (inner city schools -- yes some of the supposedly "worst" in the city). And, by the way, my children both did extremely well and went to top universities where they were at the tops of their classes. I say that not to brag but because I believe that the problems with our schools are not caused by bad teachers but by bad parents and bad students.

There is no way to determine who is a "good" teacher and who is a "bad" teacher. Who would ever have said that Citigroup was a "bad" bank. Forget merit pay. Forget doing away with tenure.

[Syrinx]

27. huh?

There is no way to determine who is a "good" teacher and who is a "bad" teacher.

I think that is a disingenuous statement.

The CEO of the school, the principal, certainly has the ability to evaluate his subordinates. He or she has the ability to determine which teachers are effective in getting their students motivated to learn and excel. There's no guarantee that every principal is going to be honest, but a good principal surely has the ability to separate good teachers from bad.

[JDPriestly]

37. I've seen a teacher I considered to be "bad," lots of absences,

poorly prepared, etc. get rehired because she got along with the principal. The ability to ingratiate oneself with one's superior does not make one more effective in the classroom. Sometimes, as a matter of fact, the teacher who bucks the administration is more effective. Principals and administrators make judgments in part on how a teacher makes them (the principals and administrators) feel, not on how the teacher motivates the students. As teachers are different, so are principals an administrators.

[proud2BlibKansan]

29. Wow this needs to be an OP

It's absolutely spot on.

:applause:

[ProgressiveProfessor]

34. Disagree - Tenure in the public schools is not real tenure (university tenure)

What is called tenure can be handled by union contracts.

I disagree about the low pay and "tenure" being an answer to it. Being a professional has nothing to do with salary, and its a specious attempt to assert that all degrees have the same worth. A PhD in Philosophy is not the same as a PhD in Physics.

[JDPriestly]

38. Compare the average salaries of teachers to the average salaries

of CPAs, medical doctors, dentists and lawyers. Social workers may be paid at about the same rate as teachers, but generally professionals earn at least twice what the average teacher with comparable experience earns. Doctors and PhDs spend more time getting their education and training, but lawyers spend about the same times as teachers. Lawyers' work is riskier (in terms of job loss) and average pay is much better. That does not mean that all teachers earn less than all lawyers. I am talking about average pay.

[AZ Criminal JD]

41. I notice you didn't give us any pay statistics.

You just declared they are "not well paid". In urban areas most teachers are very well paid.

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Maher is a self-identified libertarian. n/t

[Syrinx]

19. so am I

There's a big difference between "libertarian" and "Libertarian."

[kentuck]

16. The teachers union is Obama's Sister Souljah...

I would ask, what would we happen if we take the union teachers out of the poor neighborhoods? Would the schools be better? What or who would replace them? The union has little to do with the state of the schools in these neighborhoods. It is the outmoded theory that every neighborhood pays for its own schools. We cannot give any Federal aid. It would be against the rules. The union argument is a straw man, with apologies to Barack Obama and Bill Maher...

[Syrinx]

20. good point

Schools should be paid for from state or federal funds. Or at least in some way that levels funding. Right here in Alabama we have some of the very worst schools in the country, and also some of the very best. It all depends on the neighborhood. And that isn't right.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

32. We have that in CA. It did little to address the disparities in the schools

[JDPriestly]

18. Without the teachers' union, teachers would have a less effective

political presence. Teachers would earn less. The profession would suffer incredibly. Anyone who claims to be progressive but opposes the teachers' union needs to reconsider claiming to be progressive. Employees/workers need unions to voice their demands for them because individuals in the workplace, under our laws, have no power. Without the union movement, the workplace would be even more of a hell than it is for most people, and it is bad enough already.

Without unions, teachers would be at the mercy of the arbitrary decisions of ambitious principals, school administrators and politicians.

[Political Heretic]

21. The Teachers Union has been an acceptable whipping boy for politician who dont want to be "too left"

It makes me fucking furious.

[billyoc]

22. Maher is a libertarian douchebag.

Let's hear the Maher apologists who say he's only a libertarian because he wants drugs and hookers explain this Ayn Rand sycophantry.

[FrenchieCat]

24. You say..."the other day Obama hammered the teacher's union."

Could you provide me with the text of those quotes in which Obama did this?

Thanks.

[JDPriestly]

26. Frenchie, what a beautiful baby girl.

[FrenchieCat]

31. Thank you! She's a young lady now! (sigh....)

[JDPriestly]

36. They grow up so fast. I have two -- wonderful young women,

almost as old as I was when the oldest of them was born. Time goes so fast when you are busy with children.

[HardWorkingDem]

35. You'll probably complain about the source, but this one comes from the Politico...

This link is the quickest one I could find. I saw his soundbites on the news the other day...


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19824.html

But back to my original point - at some point it seems the union for teachers has become the rallying cry for the things many people can't do much about. Rather than pull out this union as the boogie man, I'd like to see the examples of teachers that people keep talking about that should be fired but are retained because of the "powerful" teacher's union.

[Maru Kitteh]

28. Bill hates kids. Women, only slightly less.

Except for Ann Coulter. He likes her very much.

[EFerrari]

30. I forgot about that. He does seem to hate children. n/t

[PM Martin]

33. Anyone who licks the rear end of

Hugh Hefner :puke: is friend of women anywhere!

[Deja Q]

39. Do they all listen to Steve Jobs' prattle and take it as some form of religious texting?!