I mean we should hate teachers, right?

I've been following the news and I think i finally figured out why.

First let me say that I am somewhat an authority on teachers and teaching.  I have been a formal student of teachers for, calculating calculating, about 21+ years.  I've also been a teacher myself for about 5 years in 3 different countries (formally) and many more informally (camps, teen tours, etc.).  I'm also marrying one.

And with all this experience, i definitely see where the vitriol against teachers come from.  They are pretty expendable.

Let's start with salaries.  Some of these teachers make almost 50K a year!!! That's a huge drain on our economy and think of all the unemployed that would love that money.  It's most surprising to me that the CEO's of large corporations (especially the one's the government bailed out) aren't quitting there jobs with paltry multi-million dollar bonuses in order to get into the lucrative field of teaching.  Cause those salaries.  Those huge huge money-grubbing teachers.  All of them in it for the money.  That's why they all go to their summer homes when they are getting paid over the break for doing nothing.  Cept going to conferences to keep their credentials.  And planning for the year to come.  And trying to find new ways to engage our children in order for them to have the chance to be successful and hopefully make mega-bucks (like their teachers).

hey! teacher! leave our budget alone!

And you can tell that the teachers are taking the lions share of everything because whenever you ask school aged children what they want to be they ALWAYS say "school-teacher, principal, administrator." Whatever happened to "sport star, actor, fashionista."  I guess those jobs just hold little acclaim these days (i mean, considering James Franco's excitement about being one, it does seem pretty banal.)

f you teachers

In Japan, not only is the pay better, but more importantly, teachers are actually respected by society.  They are treated with respect.  In their communities.  It's as if they understand that these teachers are the other adults responsible for their children for almost a majority of the time.  Responsible for not only their well being, but for providing their kids with the information they will need to create opportunities for themselves in the future.  They see the circle.  We see other people's problems.

As far as I can tell, the government has continuously been talking about improving the educational system in this country and reducing the deficit.  Never would i have thought that the conclusion to this dilemma would be to try to break teachers' unions and cut their pay.  This really illustrates how badly we need to improve our educational system.

So.  Sarcasm aside (and you should be drenched in it by now), it makes me sad.  We, as a country, end up wasting obscene amounts of energy around problems with, at least partially, obvious answers.  In Wisconsin, the "governor" should have moved forward with the pay cuts (even if i disagree with them in general) that were agreed upon by both sides and cut this bullshit fight about dissolving the teachers union.  I mean, dissolving unions?  What are we, taking a time-machine back to Newsies?  Scab teachers filling in for the striking work force.  It's anachronistic (gre word).  We are really headed backwards through time to re-fight moral transgressions gone by.

And even without moving into the unbelievably obviously choice of reducing the defense budget, can we please shut the fuck up about how cushy teachers have it.   I mean, it's incredibly insulting.  And this isn't even a debate about college professors (who make significantly more).  We are talking about the glorification of elementary, middle, and high school teacher's jobs in order to use their non-minimum wage salaries as political leverage and take focus away from the incredibly bloated salaries of d-bags who have hoodwinked the economic system and are trying to bleed as much money out of their corrupt system while they can.  Am I the only one seeing this?!?  Did you want to be like your middle school math teacher?  how about high school Spanish?  The envy of your eyes i'm sure.

Taken another way, the whole situation is really win win, because even if the government gets it's way and breaks the will of our teachers, what could possibly happen.  Finally, with no unions, we can bend the school system to our whims.  Fire some teachers, make others quit.  We'll save a ton of money and be well on our way to a balanced budget!!!

And thankfully, only our children will suffer.