Kryptonite For Teachers' Unions

Trump and DeVos

The most contentious confirmation of Trump’s cabinet nominees was for the relatively innocuous Secretary of Education. Why? National Review columnist Kevin Williamson suggests it’s because the Democrat Party power is the lowest since the Civil War; because teachers’ unions are its biggest source of funds; and because nominee Betsy DeVos supports voucher programs to reform American education. Democrats are famously “pro-choice” when it comes to mothers aborting their children, but definitely anti-choice when it comes to where their children go to school. Unless those mothers happen to be rich, their children must go to the local public school no matter how bad it may be. They have no choice, and teachers’ unions want to keep it that way.

If DeVos is successful, she will stimulate widespread school-choice programs at the state and/or national levels which are kryptonite for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Union monopoly would be as broken as Humpty Dumpty. The Democrat Party would see both its funding and its stranglehold on academia decline precipitously.

When Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) challenged Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader, he said: “[Democrats are] at the point now where we are not even a national party… We have some support on the coast, but we lost the support of Middle America.” Democrats are also losing the support of many middle and lower-middle class urban blacks who vigorously support school choice programs, and constitute a vitally important Democrat voting block. The party is so anemic after eight years of Obama, it could very well pass away. That’s why DeVos is such a threat.

“There’s nothing new in education,” said Ellen May, dean of the graduate school of education I attended in the seventies and that contrasted strongly with what I was constantly hearing as a young teacher elsewhere. In seminars, in-service training sessions, and in the classes I had to attend in both undergrad and graduate school, all I heard were people saying how excited they were to be starting a new program for teaching this or that.

Throughout my thirty-six year career, “new” things would come and go so often it was impossible to keep count. You’d hear from “excited” teachers at the beginning, but you’d never from the disappointed ones when the “new” programs’ rosy prognostications didn’t materialize. Instead, teachers would get “so excited” about the next “new” thing, but the only new things I saw during my nearly four decades in education were words — jargon, newspeak, nomenclature. Academics were constantly changing terminology. Teachers weren’t teachers anymore. They were “educators.” There were no more classrooms, just “learning environments.” There were no more tests, only “assessments,” and so on. But did anything really change? Only the bureaucracy: it grew and grew.

Schools had always been local. Teachers were accountable to the children they taught, to their parents, and to local school boards. Then, state governments intervened concerning things like how long the school day and school year should be, what subjects must be taught at what levels, etc. Then the federal government got involved, and has been increasing its control ever since President Carter established the US Department of Education. And who controls that? Teachers’ unions do, especially the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. They also control most state government education departments as well as state colleges and universities where teachers must attend indoctrination sessions, I mean classes, in the “new” educational methods in order to receive state certification — a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one. Very few of the classes I was forced to sit through as a graduate and undergraduate actually helped me to teach. I had to unlearn most of it to be a good teacher.

Democrat critics say DeVos has no educational experience. She has worked for decades, however, so more children could have the educational opportunities she had coming from a wealthy family. She knows good schools from bad ones, and good teachers from bad ones. But, then, we all do. We’ve all had good teachers and bad and most of us have gone to good and bad schools as well. “Educators” insist they alone can make those distinctions but voters are wising up and trusting their own instincts.

Collins and Murkowski

Not a single Democrat senator is expected to support DeVos. Two Republicans have declared against her as well: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maine’s own Susan Collins. Both get thousands from teachers’ unions. The Senate voted 50 to 50 this week, with Vice President Pence  breaking the tie. Betsy DeVos is now Secretary DeVos, and real educational reform can commence but the controversy isn’t over. Teachers’ unions and Democrats will escalate their attacks as she gets going. They have to. They know that if they don’t stop DeVos, they’ll die.

Pro-Choice Teacher

Education has gotten much too complicated. It was my life’s profession and I loved to teach, but I began to resent modern education after about twenty years. I stayed in for another sixteen while my frustration increasingly supplanted my enjoyment until I finally retired four years ago. Lately however, I’m learning how uncomplicated it can be. Since last September I’ve been teaching a US History course to ten home-schooled, high-school-aged kids in Auburn, Maine. I was recruited by one of the parents and it’s a one-year gig. I have nine classes left at this writing.

It’s a long commute — a hundred mile ’round trip every Tuesday morning, but that’s the only downside for me. Early on, we agreed on curriculum, compensation, texts, format, and venue. There are no unnecessary meetings or paperwork. There are no discipline problems. There are no politically correct strictures — not that I ever worried about those, but I don’t have to defend myself if I should be even mildly critical of any secular-sacred taboos. There are no appalled progressives to be outrageously outraged. My students are bright, cheerful, respectful, and they nearly always do their homework. Best of all? Government is not involved, except that students learn about government by studying the Constitution. We discuss how it’s obeyed and disobeyed by our president. We discuss how Congress has so far allowed him to tromp all over it, citing specific sections of Articles I and II.

We’ve been covering World War II lately and last week I gave them a lesson on the Holocaust. We had little time for discussion since I ended the two-hour class with a description of how Nazis progressed from eugenic euthanasia in the thirties, to mass shootings by Einsatzgruppen death squads in Poland, to systematized death camps using cyanide gas “showers” and ovens. They were quite solemn as they filed out and I’m sure they will have discussed the lesson with parents. Next Tuesday I’ll ask for their reflections after it’s had time to ferment in their minds and hearts. They’re all conservative Christians and so are their parents. So am I. We will relate this example of the Nazi culture of death with other manifestations in today’s world, including mass abortions by Planned Parenthood in the United States, and Radical Muslim slaughter of Christians in Africa and the Middle East.

What we enjoy is the ultimate local control of education. Americans formed our first schools that way at every level. Many provided excellent educations, even in humble venues with small budgets. The quality of education is determined not by money spent or fancy buildings, but by the commitment of parents and teachers with high standards working together. The parents I work for hire professionals for subjects they don’t feel qualified to teach themselves. Last year they hired a physics teacher, for example. This year they hired me for US History.

Most Maine towns spend well in excess of $10,000 per child, per year on government schools. If I had my druthers, I’d initiate pro-choice voucher initiatives in every municipality in the country. Parents could send their children to government schools if they chose, or they could send their kids to private schools using $10,000 vouchers. Running this idea past others over the years, people ask: “What about rural areas like ours? There aren’t many private schools within commuting distance to choose from.”

“That’s true,” I say, then point out that there weren’t many daycare centers around here thirty years ago either, but now there are. First came the demand, then came the supply. The same thing would happen with schools, which would be as good as the parents and teachers working together demanded.

“But what about quality control?” people ask. I point out that quality control of our very expensive government schools is sorely lacking now, but they still have plenty of students and plenty of money, only because parents have no choice but to send them. If we had a pro-choice movement in education, government schools would be forced to improve because of the competition vouchers would provide.

With my druthers, I’d abolish the Department of Education in Washington — except for one solitary function: They would exist only to produce and maintain a battery of tests at each grade level to measure minimum competency in reading, math, writing, and history. And notice I said, “maintain.” They would not administer the tests, only maintain them, updated from year to year. The tests would be voluntary. If municipal officials questioned whether their money was being spent properly, they could require students and/or schools they’re funding to take the tests. Further funding for either schools or vouchers could be contingent on the results.

No other government involvement is necessary. There would continue to be good schools and mediocre schools, but they would be a reflection only of parents in local communities who chose to send their children to them.

Walker Would School Them All

I was a teacher. Still am, some say. Two comments last week from web sites on which my column runs claimed that I was educating them — and if they say so, then it’s true. What I wrote informed them about something or helped them see something in another light. For that, I’m glad. Some teachers say they're educators, but I always thought of myself as a teacher.

Was I in the education business? No, because education is not a business, not in the public schools in which I spent 34 years. If it were, it would be more effective, but it’s a union-controlled institution with the inherent inertia too many such institutions possess. Businesses have to remain competitive but government institutions do not. Neither do they have to be accountable, because they’re not elected; they’re funded by taxpayers in an indirect way. Educational institutions like public schools and colleges suffer from the same inertia objects do as observed by Isaac Newton: they have a tendency to remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. They need to be shaken up if they’re ever going to change.

What might accomplish that? Competition, that’s what — in the form of vouchers. If parents could have a choice about where they sent their children to school, including the choice of private and religious schools, and get just half of what public schools would spend to teach a child year to year, it would revolutionize education at the elementary and secondary level.

Many are coming to believe lately that a college education has been way oversold. Parents with a child living in their basement after graduation, saddled with tens of thousands in student loan debt, and no way to pay it because he has no job, are doubting its value. So are the graduates themselves. What is a college degree worth? Depends on that the major was. If it was engineering, medicine, or one of the other hard sciences, it might be worth something. If it was in something like art history? Gender studies? They’re unproductive. There’s no market, unless it’s to teach in the gender studies or the art history department at Liberal U.

When I decided to become a teacher, I had to go back to college after I had dropped out for two years to do things that were more interesting. After I went back it took me another year and a half for a BS, then two more years for an M. Ed. Did those degrees prepare me to teach? Not really, no. For the BS (aptly named, that) I had to do six weeks of student teaching. That prepared me, but none of the education courses I took along with it did, and I took dozens. The states of Maine and Massachusetts required that I get those degrees to license me, but I’d have been better off learning more about the subjects I taught. I became a better teacher after years of doing it, not studying to do it.

Wisconsin teachers called in sick to protest Walker

As conservative Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s presidential poll numbers have climbed, liberal media drones have zeroed in on his having dropped out of Marquette University in his senior year to accept a job. “What?” they exclaimed. “He doesn’t have a college degree? And he’s running for president? Is he smart enough to be president?” He got elected governor in 2010. He fought off government unions, the media, and the entire Democrat political machine in a 2012 recall election, then was officially reelected in 2014 — and all that while actually governing effectively in a very liberal state.

Our media elite, however, still question his intelligence because he’s a conservative and a Christian. To them, believing in Jesus Christ is akin to believing in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny, so he must be a moron. One asked Walker if he believed in evolution. They think anyone who professes belief in Christianity is convinced the earth was created 6000 years ago. In one week, they’ve put more effort into scrutinizing Scott Walker’s college records than they’ve put into President Obama’s over the past eight years. Why, for instance, did Obama seal his college records? What is he hiding? Liberal media elitists don’t want to know.

To be a teacher, one must first have learned, and learning should never stop during any teacher’s lifetime. There are many paths to knowledge and college is only one — probably not the best one either if Obama’s tenure as president is any guide.

At least two of our best presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, did not have college degrees. Neither does Bill Gates, so don’t worry about Scott Walker. If he’s elected president, he’ll do just fine, especially compared to the community organizer he will have succeeded.