Here, I’ve been quiet for a few days on these issues. I like to have more facts before forming opinions. Others don’t feel so constricted, though, and one of the key lessons of life we must learn over and over is that too often we must act without knowing all the facts we’d wish to know.
Borrowed art: A Broken Pencil for Bach, drawing by Ryan Houck
This is one of those times. In Michigan, the governor has been presented bills which he has signed which take away rights of teachers to stand up for themselves, part of a long-standing GOP war on education and teachers. He has other bills intended to legalize carrying guns in schools, which he has not yet signed. In several states, legislatures gear up for sessions starting early next year, with pre-filed bills to put the screws to teachers, cut back education spending, take money from public schools and give it to private groups under a pretext of improving education (I say pretext because all research indicates the public schools perform better, but I digress). In Congress, the GOP demands cuts to health care, mental health care, education, roads, aid to any workers, employed, under-employed or unemployed, and especially in payments to people in poverty or otherwise in economic distress (“no pain to others, no GOP gain”).
Highlighting the intentional sloth the GOP insists on in government, Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy hammered one of our nation’s largest cities and most important regions for technology, manufacturing, business, finance and news, and the GOP opposes federal aid to speed up recovery; and in Newtown, Connecticut, a man with learning difficulties and/or behavioral issues broke into an elementary school over-armed with human-killling automatic and semi-automatic weapons legally purchased and legally owned, with which he had legally trained, and murdered 26 people, including 20 children.
My few random thoughts:
- The unions demonized in Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin, saved children’s lives in Newtown. (Yes, teachers; cops and firefighters, too.)
- The teachers who “don’t deserve the pay they get,” according to many speakers in the public fora, laid down their lives in Newtown.
- Teachers who ask for parental support, chaperones for a trip to the art gallery, a working copier, a full set of books for the students, a working grading machine, enough pencils so every kid can write, a working projector and ten minutes to set it up — and too often don’t get any of that, let alone ten minutes for a body break — now are asked by the crazy gun lobby to arm themselves and take on other beneficiaries of crazy gun lobbyists in the halls of the schools.
- “Waiting for Superman” was a film about how teachers are animals, teachers unions are monsters. Turns out Superman was already teaching first grade, in Newtown, but is demonized by the filmmakers as someone or something else.
- Maybe we should rethink who are the monsters, who is Superman, and who deserves our support. Superman’s already in our schools — what are we waiting for? Somehow I doubt that Superman’s merely showing up will be enough to resolve the issues and “fix” our schools.
What are your thoughts?
More, and related material:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 