April 18, 2007
ONE OF THE SIGNAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PARTIES...:
Rod Paige Warns of a 'Death Grip' by Unions (IRA STOLL, April 18, 2007, NY Sun)
President Bush's first-term education secretary, Rod Paige, is sitting in his office on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, the leather of his black cowboy boots creaking beneath the cuffs of his pinstriped suit, and talking about the "death grip," the "stranglehold," that teachers' unions have on public education in America.His new book is titled "The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education." The unions, he writes, are "arrogant" and "destructive." They defend incompetent teachers and oppose merit pay for teachers who excel. "No special interest is more destructive than the teachers' unions, as they oppose nearly every meaningful reform," he writes.
...for Republicans, public education ought to educate children. For Democrats it's a job program.
Posted by Orrin Judd at April 18, 2007 12:24 PM
If Republicans cared so much about educating other peoples' children, you'd think more of them would become teachers.
Posted by: Brandon at April 18, 2007 2:46 PMBrandon, teachers have been out of the education business lo these thirty or more years.
Posted by: erp at April 18, 2007 5:38 PMWow, I never thought I'd hear the "chickenhawk" argument in respect to teachers.
Posted by: ray at April 18, 2007 5:47 PMIf you're not part of the problem...
Posted by: oj at April 18, 2007 5:50 PMGee, I wonder what my mother would have said, while she was teaching in Phoenix's inner city schools for 30 years, when informed that she wasn't in the education business?
Oh wait, that's right, she'd have said "bull****!"
Posted by: Brandon at April 18, 2007 5:53 PMIf she was either so dishonest or so unaware as to think the primary concern of the unions is education rather than jobs then it's no wonder she taught.
Posted by: oj at April 18, 2007 7:45 PMNo offense is intended toward any one particular teacher and Brandon mère may be the exception that proves the rule, but I think it more likely that she was a good little cog in the wheel of unionism.
People who won't drink the Kool-aid don't last long in the public school system.
Posted by: erp at April 19, 2007 9:05 AMerp gets it, OJ doesn't - which shouldn't surprise anyone.
No, we're all agreed on the cogism.
Posted by: oj at April 19, 2007 4:11 PMBrandon, I think many of oj's comments are so exquisitely sarcastic, it takes a very sensitive meter to sort them out.
Posted by: erp at April 19, 2007 8:26 PM