It’s MY money — a teacher’s response to deceptive union ads

[proud2BlibKansan]

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (@GovWalker) recently tweeted a video advertisement produced by Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (here’s background on the front group from SourceWatch). This ad featured very selective edits of a speech by retired NEA general counsel Bob Chanin.

“It’s not because we care about children… it’s because we have power,” Chanin said. “We have power because there are 3.2 million people who are willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in dues.” Chanin was discussing the reasons why the right-wing typically despises NEA.

Taken out of context, these quotes give the false impression that NEA exists not for strengthening public education but rather for its own power-grabbing and profit. I heard this speech live in person; and I know first-hand how inaccurately the commercial portrays Chanin’s message. The casual viewer may not be so privileged.

The ad concludes with a call to action: “Tell Obama you’ve had enough. Call on him to support government union reform.” Herein lies the rest of this deceitful message: that NEA is a “government” union. The ad implies NEA is funded by the government and thus consumes hundreds of millions taxpayer’s dollars.

But NEA is not a “government” union, funded by tax dollars. NEA is a teacher’s union, funded by teacher’s dollars. This ad is typical of the kind of dishonesty being leveled against teachers and other public-sector workers across the nation.

The ad promotes a fallacy that money earned by public-sector employees REMAINS public money after the employees are paid. If one believes this, it follows that the public should control how public-sector employees spend their money.

But this is a lie.

more . . . http://www.edvoices.com/blog/2011/03/18/teacher-responds-union-ads/

[jemelanson]

1. This goes right along with the old saying that says

Those who can do, those who can't teach.

Which shows how some in the private sector view those who teach. That if they had the right "stuff" they would be out in the "real" world working instead of in the class room, grade school, high school, college, universities, teaching. Some in the "real" world have no respect for teachers, professors, or those who take the time to teach or train those who will follow their footsteps in those jobs in the "real" world.


That goes back to something I heard said my a family member to someone else in a family discussion when I was a child. It went something like this "women (girls) only go to college to get a MRS degree." yes that was back in the 1950's. However, many still hold these some type of views.

Many in the teaching profession are women, as most nurses are women, so these type of professions are again under attach because they are professions usually pursued by women. So they have to be devalued and demeaned. Just the same way that being a Mother has been devalued by these same types.

This is a part of the them/us hierarchy. We are better than them, we have more value than. This can be used to divide the people by skin color, by language, by country of origin, by gender, by religion, or any of the other ways that people have used to define the them and us.

Rant off again. sorry this stuff just makes me so very angry I vent here.

[proud2BlibKansan]

2. Thank you

[JDPriestly]

3. I have been reading Matt Taibbi's book Griftopia.

It describes in detail the functioning of the sub-prime mortgage market, the derivatives market and the purchases of the assets of the American government by investors including Sovereign Wealth Funds and other foreign investors.

As I was reading, I asked myself, what would happen if we really ran our schools and other government agencies like Wall Street runs businesses. Teachers would place bets on what grades their students would get and would get paid on how closely the students' performance aligned with the teachers' bets. Of course, teachers would be able to bet for and against their students and would be able to buy insurance to make sure they didn't lose money if their bets were wrong.

That's how Wall Street -- the business world -- is functioning.

Of course, the experience of Wall Street, of the business world is irrelevant in the classroom. A child either learns or does not. There is no way to hedge on a child's future. And of course our children are the future of our nation.

Teachers are experts on teaching. They should run the schools. They can consult with parents, but in the end, parents should trust the teachers. Businessmen and kooks like Scott Walker should stay out of education.

[AdHocSolver]

6. Those who can do, those who can't, go into management.

From many years of observation, the numbers of managers who were incompetent and/or stupid FAR outnumbers any similarly evaluated group of teachers.

It is quite easy for corporations to cover up their "mistakes" by using creative accounting, and by intimidating their employees to not divulge the screw ups.

In theory, a competent manager would understand the work that he or she was hired to manage. In practice, a large majority of the bosses I worked under had no clue about the work that they were supervising, or at best, had a vague understanding of the work, but not enough to make good decisions about what should be done or how it should be done.

It was especially noticeable in Information Technology (IT) and software development. IT managers had business degrees and maybe one semester of programming simple exercises in BASIC. Computer science? What is that?

At a weekly meeting at one job, I brought up a problem with memory usage that was causing problems in an important program. The manager told me to shut up because "he didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about."

This state of affairs is typical.

So we have "managers" like Arne Duncan and a host of business types criticizing teachers even though these critics haven't a clue as to what is involved in "good" teaching...and it isn't testing.

[Hannah Bell]

4. kr

[Snoutport]

5. i was confused by your headline...too late to edit it to "anti-union ads"?

You always make great posts!

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. Thank you

Sorry about the confusing headline. I copied directly from the link.

[w4rma]

8. Editors seem to do that. Bluring the headlines so that one doesn't know who is being attacked

until one actually reads the article, in depth. So, most bozos make false assumptions about what is happening based on their pre-dispositions.