Governor Wrecking Ball, Chris Christie, has taken on the New Jersey teachers’ union, blaming them for failing our kids, the eleven billion dollar deficit, and everything else short of mass murder.

First off, this isn’t about education. It’s about the teachers’ unions generally supporting democratic candidates. Wrecking Ball is out to break the union. Without the union, teachers would not be earning a living wage. When I started teaching back in 1972, I was making $7200 a year. Married teachers were forced to work during the summer at house painting and other menial jobs while at the same time being expected to take classes to meet licensure requirements. When I taught at a Catholic school I made less than six thousand and was expected to advise extracurricular activities for nothing. Wrecking Ball is a lawyer. You don’t even get to sit down in his waiting room without a background check to see if you’re viable financially.
There seem to be a lot of Tea bagger lawyers, despite the fact that democrats oppose tort reform (a limit on how much money you can sue incompetent doctors for).

Secondly, how in the world do you attract good teachers if you don’t pay them and not provide job security or a guaranteed pension? Conservatives have a problem with tenure, but in most places you must teach successfully for two or three years before it is granted and other teachers are generally also observed at least once a year. I just saw this thing on Finland last night on the national news. They’re ranked number one in math education because teachers are respected, and they get to choose their teachers from the top ten percent of high school graduates. Conservatives (you might as well change the name of the Republican party because that’s what we’re getting these days) also object to the three month vacation, but I know a lot of teachers who go to school until they’re forty to move up in lanes. Generally you can earn a raise for every fifteen credits you earn. How many other professions constantly train? Also, how in the world do you compare Finland with the United States, a country of 300,000 people? Furthermore, just exactly who are they testing? You can’t tell me everybody in Finland goes to college or even cares about math. If we put their AP (advanced placement) kids alongside ours, we do a whole lot better. The United States might also be the only industrial country that tries to give every student a liberal arts education, and we also tend to test everybody. Are we talking apples and oranges or what? Some teachers advocate letting kids decide whether they want to opt out for vocational learning. When I taught, kids could take something called “work study,” where they could take a job in the afternoon. They met at least one hour a day with a vocational teacher to discuss their experiences.

Then there are the parents who don’t show up for parent teacher conferences and blame the teachers when their kid fails. God help the teacher who fails one of their kids. Little Johnny and Joanie can do no wrong in their eyes.
There’s also this thing called mainstreaming. How would you like to swim the English Channel with your hands and feet tied? Well, that's mainstreaming. Here you are trying to teach your specialty, and there’s this kid in class (usually with an adult helper) who’s on an entirely different wavelength with his/her own curriculum. You’re supposed to know that curriculum as well as your own.

Teachers are also unlike other professionals in that they don’t get to pilot their own ship. There’s this exotic animal called an administrator who’s usually more fond of consultants like Madelyn Hunter and Joel Suzuki than he/she is of his own teachers' ideas. If you do happen to work for a human being, there’s always the school board, which tends to be led around by the nose by the superintendent. Future administrators must teach three years in order to qualify for a specialists’ degree and they’re out the door, developing amnesia almost as soon as they hit the street. They’re generally paid twice as much as regular teaches; Superintendents make three times as much. Certainly there’s more responsibility involved, but there sure is a lot of delegation going on, and a lot of times it’s one of the teachers who’s the one being delegated. I know this principal who taught for twenty years before assuming the position. Her teachers love her. Ideally, though, I think a principal should teach at least one class, so as not to lose touch with reality.

Year-round school would definitely help, but it probably won’t happen. Teachers would expect to be paid. Republicans, who love their bonuses and their paid vacations, would also expect their kids to go along on their yearly trip to Orlando.

Dave Schwinghammer's published novel, SOLDIER'S GAP, is available at Amazon.com.