Chicago Teachers on Strike

[UPDATE] This post has generated a fair amount of comments, and a good deal of discussion. That's good, but it is not my intention to simply anger people. Constructive and civil dialogue is what I am after. In that vein, after consideration, my original post painted teachers with too broad of a brush.

I don't think teachers are dumb. Additionally, the vast majority of them work hard. My main point was reserved solely for the teachers who are currently on strike, and they are a minuscule fraction of the total number of teachers in the country. Also, just because something is easy to do doesn't necessarily make it easy to teach. Just because someone can add 2 + 2 doesn't mean that they can teach it to a room full of kids. I know plenty of guys who are great shooters, but they can't teach new shooters very well.

There is also a huge difference between the teachers' union and teachers. I failed to make that distinction.

A commenter made the point that teachers have to deal with unruly students too much, and consequently, cannot actually teach. Therefore, the teachers believe the proposed standardized test score benchmarks are unfairly high. I don't know what to say to that other than the best teachers I had were the ones who demanded the most. Isn't that kind of the opposite of what lowering the benchmarks is?



It looks like 25,000 teachers in Chicago are going to strike today, despite being offered a 16% pay raise over four years among other benefits. It sounds like one of the issues is how teachers are evaluated. Oh no, not evaluations based on objective criteria! That would expose bad teachers!

The interesting part is that this seems like a situation where a Democratic Chicago Mayor (Rahm Emanuel) is refusing to simply roll over to the demands of one of his core group of supporters. I guess that Emanuel is trying to balance the budget there in Chicago.

My deal with teachers probably comes across very harsh. I think teachers are great, and they serve an important role. However, from K-5, up to middle school (6th - 7th) grade it doesn't really take much brainpower to be a teacher. You're teaching primary colors, basic addition, basic reading, and generally what we consider to be fundamental common knowledge. Basically, if you're a third-grade teacher, you don't have a special set of skills that makes you different from most anyone else.

Ergo, you're replaceable. Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Kindergarten Cop"? After a little learning curve, he taught school with no training at all. He did fine, and he caught the bad guy. Two jobs at once, amirite? Arnold even did better than the previous teacher in getting the kids to respond to the fire alarm.

There are tons of unemployed people out there would can teach kids basic addition and follow a lesson plan. Accordingly, that's why teachers don't get paid that much. It's just not really a job that requires much training. If we didn't have the requirement that someone needs a "teaching certificate" to be a teacher, Emanuel could probably find a whole bunch of unemployed college graduates who would be happy to come be teachers. Bam. Two problems solved.

The other thing that chaps me is that teachers get lumped in with police officers and firefighters when most politicians talk. I always seem to hear "cops, school teachers, and firefighters". That's crap. Cops and firefighters have inherently dangerous jobs that are nothing like the job teachers do.

Firefighters run into burning buildings. Cops confront armed criminals. Teachers follow lesson plans.