I don't represent the children. I represent the teachers.

I saw in the news yesterday that the nonprofit Center for Union Facts is holding a contest to find the ten worst teachers in America. It's accepting nominations now, and once it chooses the top (bottom?) ten it'll offer them $10,000 to quit. (I bet the hard part won't be getting enough submissions, it'll be narrowing the field down to ten.) The Center's point in doing this is to expose how hard unions make it to fire teachers, even the really terrible ones that ought to have been tossed out on their behinds a long time ago. Here's the link to an article discussing it: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2008/Mar/13/ln/hawaii803130335.html.

I think the best part, though, is the soundbite from the president of the American Federation of Teachers: he called Berman, the Center's executive director, an "ethically challenged attack dog," and then went on to say "Berman has a record of using hidden funders to attack groups that contribute a great deal to society . . . now he is coming after teachers at a time when most Americans support education and want to make improving education a top national priority."

So... instead of a cogent argument or well-reasoned comment, he starts calling names: always a sound tactic for left-wingers when they know they can't win. He knows the Center is right, he knows there are oodles of bad teachers out there that his job is to prevent getting fired... and anyone who has a problem with that is an "attack dog." Lovely. And even better, he acts as though it's impossible that someone could want better teachers and also support education. Because obviously, it's an either or proposition: if you want to improve education, you can't possibly criticize teachers unions, can you? Hmm. That doesn't sound right somehow. Teachers are supposed to be the educators... if you had better teachers, wouldn't you have better education, too? It seems like common sense, but what does common sense matter to the head of a teacher's union. As long as he gets to keep his job (by making sure bad teachers keep their jobs) he could care less what happens to the kids those teachers are supposed to be educating.

The title of today's post is a quote by Al Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers.

P.S. If you'd like to know more about how bad teachers unions are for kids, government schools, and education, take a look at this site: http://www.teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm.