Teachers are undervalued, overworked, underpaid and, from the situation in Wisconsin, it seems, viewed with contempt by people who neither know nor understand what they do.
Teachers are an easy target for politicians – they all talk about “raising standards”, as though it would make sense to “lower” them. Making a teacher’s job temporary, or at least limiting their terms and reducing their benefits will likely not have the intended effect – if you want to light a fire under a teacher’s ass, you have to do it to individual teachers. Reducing – indeed eliminating – their collective bargaining rights will just stop people from becoming teachers, and does not guarantee that the quality of education will rise. If you want all your state’s kids to go homeshooled and learn the counterexamples to evolution, go right ahead. Don’t whinge when your kids’ “knowledge” is so far removed from reality that they can’t get jobs though.
“Gov. Chris Christie’s dressing down of New Jersey teachers in town-hall-style meetings, accusing them of greed, has touched a populist vein and made him a national star.”
I am a qualified teacher – albeit in the UK – I can not remember ever meeting one teacher whose motivation for entering the profession was financial. To accuse teachers of ‘greed’ is practically incomprehensible. Christie is an arsehole.
I just don’t see how limiting anyone’s rights will lead to a fairer society or, indeed, better educated kids. This is not a pedagogical dispute; it is ideological.