Earlier this week, I joined a discussion on Facebook about the protests in Wisconsin. The thread was started by an educator whom I both like and respect. We also have strikingly different opinions about the events taking place in Madison and the role of unions in the teaching profession. The educator and most of the comments bemoaned the fact that collective bargaining was being eroded in the country and that the nature of teacher unions were being negatively affected. I took an opposite position, here:
Ah, life in the Progressive bubble, where visions of "the struggle" are set in the glorious past, like insects in amber. There was a time when unions were critical to making education a profession, with decent wages and protections for teachers. Now? Not so much. Now, outfits like SEIU and the NEA literally spend hundreds of millions of $'s to help elect the very people on the local, state, and national levels with whom they'll then "negotiate" contracts. And what has this incestuous relationship produced? New York. A broke state that spends about $17,500/student of taxpayers hard earned dollars and graduates 23% of their students. Where 100's of incompetent (or worse) teachers sit in "rubber rooms" at full pay, sometimes for years doing nothing because they can't be fired. Once upon a time, being a union lawyer to protect teacher's hard earned rights was a noble calling. Now, it's more about protecting a rich, bloated bureaucracy that, from my vantage point could not care less about partnering to help create vibrant teaching and learning environments for decent wages. Sorry, Madison, it ain't "all about the kids" any more.
I was told by this educator that his students looked at his page and that he did not want them to see such “hateful”, “demeaning”, and “degrading” comments posted. He was particularly concerned lest his students see the first sentence of my comment. WOW!
Wry and acerbic? Sure. Politically incorrect? Guilty as charged. "Insensitive"? Oh, alright. Hateful, demeaning and degrading? Not even close. Two things are striking about the response to my comment. First, if we have become so hyper-sensitive in our national discourse about important issues that if the use of a metaphor, even one laden with sardonic, amber-filled, irony, rises to the level of “hateful” and “demeaning”, then we have lost something crucial in our free ability to debate an issue. Secondly, looking over the 30 odd comments some rose, by the implied definition, to “hateful”, etc etc, and there were no admonishments for those. Of course, those strong opinions agreed with the premise of the prevailing POV, so I suppose that those comments were acceptable for the students to see without a filter. I respect this educator’s desire to protect his students and, as such, apologized in the comments, but feel that a response is called for, nonetheless. To that end, I am not responding in the comment string. In this age of hyper-sensitivity when someone is accused of one or another “-ism”, discussion is automatically shut off, and that’s a shame.
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