[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?
