Am I the only person who’s not a teacher or a union member who thinks that the recent mass-firing of teachers in Rhode Island is seriously fucked up?
I mean, look, sure teacher’s unions act selfishly and look out for their own. That’s hardly big news. In fact, it’s plain old capitalism in action. Economic players always look out for Number One. It’s how the system works.
So sometimes, therefore, for the sake of the students they teach and/or the taxpayers that pay their salaries, it’s a good thing to stick up to teachers’ unions. (Sometimes. The bureaucracies that employ teachers are hardly paragons of perfection, either. This is something that the union-bashers seem to keep forgetting.)
But fire everyone, just because the teachers collectively have done a bad job at that school? That’s just plain stupid, because there’s a lesson in that to teachers.
That lesson is: avoid schools that are having trouble. Even if you, personally, are trying your best, you’re still jeopardizing your career because you can be subject to collective punishment. Stick with the schools in affluent areas that teach the children of the privileged instead.
And Obama actually supports this idiocy, presumably because it somehow shows support for being tough on teachers’ unions. Apparently his blind hatred of public-sector unions is so great that it blinds him to the downsides of this measure.
And notice how the superintendent that fired the teachers didn’t “fire himself” by resigning his position. The scope of the collective punishment all magically ends the moment it threatens his own job. Of course it does. Accountability always starts with someone else, doesn’t it?
My prediction turns out to have been false. The Democrats actually decided to stick to their principles instead of cave on health care.
I’m both stunned (that liberals acted other than anticipated) and pleased (despite how awful the bill is, it is discernibly less awful than the status quo). This is one of those occasions where I am much more pleased to have been wrong than I would have been to be right.
Probably the most ridiculous response to it all is the one from the Republicans, threatening a complete lack of cooperation. Yeah, right, as if that’s any big difference to what was already the status quo.
That there hasn’t been much of a bounce in the polls as a result frankly surprises me some, but there hasn’t been a dip, either. At the least, refusing to act according to the stereotype of being weak-willed appeasers with no firm moral principles can only help the Democrats.
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