Chicago Teachers Union Claims Motivation ‘to Reopening School is Rooted in Sexism, Racism and Misogyny’
They do not care about the kids.
The Chicago Teachers Union proved to people once again that they do not care about kids.
They only care about “social justice.”
Insanity from The Chicago Teachers Union.
They deleted this tweet: https://t.co/0Jj6EGWKhf pic.twitter.com/BQCBn2sr9o
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 6, 2020
Bull. Crap.
The cowards ended up deleting the tweet because many people called out their stupidity.
The push to reopen schools has nothing to do with sexism, racism, or misogyny. It has everything to do with losing a generation of students.
Parents are not lazy. I think a lot of parents would succeed if they spent every day in the classroom with their children. The fact is that parents do not have the resources and teachers cannot bend and mold a lesson to fit a student’s needs.
Some students learn by touching. Others learn by visuals. Some learn by trial and error. It’s harder to do that since you cannot stand by a student and help them through a lesson in the way that’s easiest for them to learn.
The Chicago Teachers Union forgot about the social aspect of school for kids. That is the most important part for kids in preschool, pre-K, and kindergarten. But even in older grades, the kids miss their friends. They need that interaction.
I mentioned in another post an article in The New York Post that made me cry. Parents of children with disabilities lamented the hardship of no school for their kids.
It is literally ruining their children who need different teachers to help with occupational, speech, and physical therapies:
“For us it’s not inconvenient, it’s devastating,” said Julia DeBlasio Olsheski, a data analyst who has a 7-year-old third grader in a specialized autism program run by the Department of Education.
“I’ve had to hold him like I am a human straitjacket just to keep him in front of the computer,” said Olsheski, who estimates her son has only received 18 of the normally 60 sessions of occupational, speech and physical therapies he usually receives by this time in the school year.
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Olsheski said her 7-year-old son has broken a number of devices and has even started hurting himself.
“He has started behaviors we have never seen before,” Olsheski said. “He is losing essential life skills that took seven years to gain and they are gone.”
I doubt your humanity if that article does not make you sad.
Experts stated in August that school closures “will also worsen racial and economic equalities.” From CNBC (emphasis mine):
For disadvantaged students, the stakes are even higher: Thirty percent of all K-12 public school students, about 15 million to 16 million children, live in homes that don’t have an internet connection or an adequate device for distant learning at home, a study by Common Sense Media and the Boston Consulting Group found.
That lack of access, coupled with inadequate help at home and a quiet place to learn, means lower-income, Black and Hispanic children may struggle, a June report from McKinsey & Company found.
The average learning loss for students is seven months if in-school instruction doesn’t resume until January 2021, the report said. However, Black students may fall behind by 10.3 months, Hispanic students by 9.2 months, and low-income students by more than a year. School closures will also probably increase high-school drop-out rates, according to McKinsey.
“We estimate that this would exacerbate existing achievement gaps by 15% to 20%,” the McKinsey report stated.
How about the loss of lifetime earnings:
Breaking it down by race, McKinsey estimated White students would earn $1,348 a year less (a 1.6% reduction) over a 40-year working life, Black students would bring in $2,186 a year less (a 3.3% reduction) and Hispanic students would earn $1,809 less (3%).
In March, (yes March!) UNESCO said that closing schools would harm girls more than boys.
Over 800,000 women have left the workforce since the lockdowns started in March to take care of children, whether young or school age.
I have a brilliant idea. End the unions. They have too much power and we know they do not care about the children or education.
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Translation: we are lazy. We expect a pay check for nothing.
Were I mayor, I’d tell them “be in your classrooms, ready to teachh on (day), or, pick up your belongings and clear out!”.
Those teachers are some of the highest paid in the country. The city is going broke and they demand more. The student population has been dropping steadily over the years.
Best thing they could do for the students is to get rid of some of them and start to give the students a choice. Many would do better in charter schools but the unions will block that…they are in it for themselves, not the students.
It’s not their job to care about the children or education. As Al Shanker supposedly said, “I’ll start representing children’s interests when they start paying union dues”.
While true, what you’re forgetting is that the union will do and the majority of its members demand.
In this case, you can bank on the fact that a bunch of teachers in Chicago are agitating to be able to get paychecks for no work.
Do you have links for this, Vancomycin? I have seen this before, but I *cannot* seem to find any sources. The only link I could find this morning was from Prep Scholar, and their link showed that GRE scores for prospective education grad students were dead average. I can’t find the material for the other points.
NM. Used a different search engine.
Teachers are agitating for Non-Essential status. They don’t want to be confused with grocery store clerks, truck drivers or other essential workers.
Then the least they could do is be honest about it.
Which is exactly why even FDR opposed public employee unions. The public as a whole is held hostage to negotiations which in this case is a powerful tool.
The NEA leadership are Marxist’s,that speaks volumes.
“It’s not their job to care about the children or education.”
But they do frequently tell us that’s a big part of what they are all about. Sort of a “clown nose on, clown nose off” game.
Well, of course they tell us that. Any zealous advocate does that. Sometimes it’s even true, when the children’s interest just happens to align with the teachers’.
COVID infects few children and causes fewer of them to be ill. Children do not spread the virus. Most teachers are young to middle-aged and are healthy. Their risk of serious illness from COVID is very low.
With that in mind, all children who are healthy should be in class, and all teachers who are healthy should be teaching in class. The children and teachers who are at high risk (chronic illness, immune problems, etc.) can be put together in remote learning.
This would solve 90% of the problem, and allow a number of parents to get back to work.
Anecdote: I have a brother-in-law who is a special-needs teacher for severely-troubled children at a regional public school. It’s heart-breaking to hear how COVID policies have prevented him from doing the work he needs to do to reach these kids.
Observation: it’s interesting that the people who scream ‘racism! sexism! misogeny!’ all the time apparently don’t see the disparate impact of keeping all the children out of school. Of course it’s the poor children who will suffer most. They always do.
Agreed.
“Old times there are definitely NOT forgotten.”
It’s the historically-racist Dems who don’t want “certain folk” to become educated, lest they forget their “proper place” in society and begin to get so uppity that they deign to believe they can think for themselves and determine their own lot in life. That just cannot be allowed to happen.
Horrors!
Ah, at this point, is there further proof needed that those in education are the dumbest of the dumb? With an exception here or there, does this profession even attract the best and brightest?
Nope.
Education majors in colleges in general (not all education majors are like this):
1) Have the lowest college/university entry exam scores
2) Have the lowest high school gpas to be admitted to college
3) Are transfers from *other* majors where they were struggling (I’ve personally witnessed this on multiple occasions).
I’m not saying that teachers have an easy job, just that it doesn’t attract the best and brightest (what can be done to fix that is a completely separate discussion from the current state).
In my school days, I had some great teachers. they seemed to care. Not that many today don’t Frankly I could never stand the job. Between crazed parents and government interference they go crazy. Time to let the schools get back to doing what they were designed for…to teach. Today the schools are nothing more than day care intended to raise the kids while the parents are off doing something else.
While I generally agree with your comment. How dumb do you have to be to work 180 days a year with summers off day shift Monday thru Friday and have potential to be paid 100k + per year? And the benefits are golden.
Two things….
First, I have a BSEE, a masters in math, and a PhD in oceanography. I also taught math for the last six years of my career, in an inner city school with 80% hispanic and the rest black. Had about 20 white students over my six years. For commenters who proclaim all teachers are dumb, piss off. You have no clue.
Second, in the environment I taught in, around a third spoke no english. Poverty keeps people moving constantly. In my case there was a merry goround that kids rode, in and out of Puerto Rico. Many were illiterate in both English and Spanish. The only hope for these kids is to sit side by side with English speakers in a classroom to get tutored by their peers. That’s the way it is. Remote learning for these kids is an utter travesty.
‘To be tutored by their peers.’ So/ teacher here too. I hated teaching in the government schools, so got a job in computers. Then homeschooled our son K-10 (graduated in 10th). I have tutored 1:1 for the last ten years, and it is the only way I will teach.
Our son went to a ‘progressive’ school in 4th tho. I asked the Principal what they did with ‘gifted kids’ – he said, “We don’t use that term. If a child is strong in a subject, they tutor their peers.” This puts the burden on the bright kids, frankly, and is reprehensible to me. Immersion, yes, that will teach them English. But to have a peer ‘tutor’ a slow kid – no way! It’s leftie ‘vision’ imho.
One more thing. I worked with teachers who took actions to help their kids that would get them fired in a heart beat if they got caught. Every day!
So if you think teachers don’t care you need to back off. You are clueless.
Sure there are azzholes in the bunch, but the situation in these schools is unimaginably more complex than, ‘teacher bad and stupid’.
Paul,
I am sure there are dedicated and effective teachers in our public schools. I attended public schools. I had great teachers, almost everyone of whom had an MA or MS in their teaching field; not in education. Some, like you held legitimate PHD while a large number were ABD.
This was in a small community with a single district and no alternative parochial or private school as competition. These teachers were the parents of the kids in the system so they had a very personal interest in ensuring a quality education product was delivered.
I would note that this community was roughly 60/40 white/black so racial and economic class were not an issue. The entire community was ‘bought in’ to making sure the school system succeeded.
I am doubtful that this could be replicated in a large urban school system. In fact, testing shows it is not currently working outside of the charter schools or parochial schools. These schools succeed because the kids, the parents, the teachers and the administration are ‘bought in’ to the success of the school.
“I worked with teachers who took actions to help their kids that would get them fired in a heart beat if they got caught.”
Which begs the question: how did we arrive at a situation where helping students became a firing offense? I saw similar instances during my time in public education where teachers went far out of their way to help out. I taught at a high school that was not the worst in Texas but was definitely a low-performing gang-infested school. One of my most rewarding moments came when a tiny, pregnant 15-year-old Hispanic girl who had flirted with quitting school came back to take her geometry final (she passed, and I was so proud of her!). To make it happen we accidentally on purpose did not submit her final grade for the course (against the school district’s policy) until after she took the final. Had we followed the school district’s official policy the student would have had to repeat the course, and likely she would have dropped out of school entirely instead of earning the math credit.
Teachers are generally fine, although many drink the leftist Kool Aid. The unions are utterly in the tank for the Dems.
I know teachers can be committed; I taught in public schools in the inner city, charter schools and now parochial school for dirt pay.
It is for the kids. We just have to get the politics out of the schools.
Seems like we hit a nerve.
In my personal experience, the ratio of incompetent/malicious/criminal public school teachers to basically capable teachers runs about 80/20.
In my personal experience, having worked in the DC Government and Federal Government for about 11 years (not in schools) the same ratio applied.
Maybe it’s time for governors to declare education an essential service (similar to idiot newsome’s declaration that entertainment is a necessary service). If union represented teachers refuse to teach, fire them and bring on others who will teach our kids. Reagan broke patco back in the 80’s. Our kids need to be back in school. They are the least at risk and they need an education.
Now the only thing they learn is about teachers who don’t want to teach them.
An even better solution would be for politicians to decide that education is no more defensible as a government-provided service than pizza delivery. It certainly is not constitutionally justified.
One avenue I haven’t seen any reporting on is the state constitution.
Many states have been held by various courts to have public education as a ‘right’ of the student or a duty of the state.
These court rulings have held that the mere expenditure of funds isn’t enough. The states and some county/municipal school systems have been required to reduce class size, offer certain extracurricular or enrichment programs, provide tutoring, provide bilingual instruction ECT.
So the obvious question becomes if all of those items were held to be mandatory by the state’s constitution prior to the Rona why are those things not mandatory now?
If I were running a parochial school or charter or other alternative to the normal education warehouse system prevalent in many public schools, I would be expanding my operations to meet increasing demand from displaced students. I would also be suing on their behalf to force the state and local education regime to kick loose funding.
Put the public education regime on the record as stating that none of those supposedly mandatory programs are required. They can’t very well argue that Johnny can’t read unless the taxpayers fund elaborate programs for decades then during Rona argue that distance learning is an acceptable substitute.
Either the programs are vital or they are not.
My wife teaches in a parochial school. You have to understand the local and state officials are leaning on them rather seriously to keep them from either expanding or offering full in-school learning. Because of social distancing mandates, the school can only operate at half in-school capacity. So the students switch off, one day in class, one day virtual class. The local officials have sked for seating charts for each class, and seat assignments in the lunch room so, if there is a COVID infection, they can trace all close contacts. Students have to stay at least 6 feet away from each other, even at lunch, and local health authorities send in people for snap inspections. The students must remain masked at all times, except when eating. The students may not turn on the cameras on their computers at home, so my wife cannot see them. She has never see the faces of the new students at the school. Failure rates are up some 300% – 400%. There are no athletics, drama, band, dances, or student clubs or activities, all prohibited by local and state authorities. The students rarely speak to each other. The new kids at the school are completely isolated and have no friends. To think a private school can just open its doors and carry on as before COVID is simply not accurate. The education unions are desperate to make the private schools fail, and have allies in both state and local bureaucracies. Despite this, when before COVID the school adequately filled its seat, it now has a massive waiting list as parents are desperate to get some semblance or normalcy back to their lives and those of their children. But again, a private school can’t just open up and carry on as before. They know they have targets on their backs from the teachers’ unions and their allies.
Robin,
The vested interests of our public education system have always been opposed to competition. The warehouse model they offer, staffed by less than able employees whether by inclination or system design, can not compete in an open competition.
The alternatives of parochial, charter and private schools would utterly destroy the current system if given the same opportunities in terms of funding.
It is past time to make clear the very distinct difference between support for public funding of education and funding public schools. That is a very large difference. Most people agree with allowing funding to follow the student at K12 in the same way it does for higher education.
The true believers in public education could choose to condemn their own children to a substandard education while the rest of us utilized choice. Of course, in many districts the teachers and administration already send their own children to schools outside the public education system. Why is that?
Moreover why shouldn’t our political leaders who deny any sort of level funding for school choice be required to send their own children to the local public school. No President in my lifetime has sent their kids to DC public school. Maybe that indicates a problem with the ability of the DC public school system to deliver a quality product.
Jimmy Carter sent his daughter, Amy, to DC public schools, sacrificing the best interests of his daughter in a rather cheep political theatric. Saturday Night Live, when it was occasionally funny, had a skit of Amy in a DC public school with her sitting in class flanked on each side by stern and armed Secret Service agents. As Amy takes a test, the agents standing by her desk begin to look around the room at other kids’ papers and start giving her answers. When one kid who is being cheated off or complains and points out the Secret Service agents are cheating for Amy, they attack the kid and beat him up so that he stops complaining and the other kids get the picture. Comedy then, now a metaphor for how it actually works now for the “elite” in DC.
The irony is that public education is one of the most reliable sources of Communist indoctrination (and it all done with YOUR money!). Lenin once said, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope and hire us to use it on them.”
If a significant portion of students who moved to home schooling or private education stay there it will cost the Communists the cannon fodder public education has historically provided.
People working a job that initial real danger know how to mitigate it. YOU don’t see cops or fire fighters complaining about these issues. Time to PATCO these losers.
Chicago PD has been without a contract for three years. The teachers got a nice increase last time around when they went out on strike. They should have been terminated. No shortage to replace them.
PATCO was far more highly skilled. Why did Reagan attack maybe the highest skilled of all unions and leave SEIU or its predecessor alone?
Public employee unions should be illegal.
BTW, the pigboats in the picture have more to fear from their own obesity than from getting Covid from a student.
Teaching is not just a job. It’s a vocation. Doing it well all but requires sacrifices and the good character to bear them.
The unfortunate paradox of vocations is that providing deserving compensation attracts more individuals whose character is not always suitable for vocational work.
That’s why you cannot improve an educational system by just throwing more money at it.
Quite right.
I’d say it’s more like this. To teach academic skills and find the diamonds in the rough in the city schools, it helps to be academically talented oneself. How can you stimulate a spark that you don’t have yourself?
And that’s what’s missing in much of today’s public education. We can improve somewhat by reorganizing and advancing students by what they’ve mastered, not how old they are. Then it will be clear which classes need different teaching skills or maybe at the top end should be relocated to nearby colleges.
Two classes of graduating public school students have gone through the Marxist Common Core indoctrination from P-12. Most students could not meet the standardized testing but were pushed through anyway. Blue State governors waived merit based pay for teachers tied to testing of Common Core funding, and they received their step-pay scale plus merit raises. They even eliminated 2020 testing.
But those Blue States are still requiring taxpayers to pay up and even increasing school taxes even though they are not performing or functioning normal duties. Some teachers had the audacity to go to their family camp and remote in their instruction which is now standardized collective Marxism.
They have disqualified their old mantra, “It’s for the children, dontchano”.
Somewhere there are crates of unused small, medium, large and extra large CTU t-shirts.
Teacher unions are a threat to the livelihoods of kids. They do not have the kids’ best interests at heart. Not at all. All they care about is how to steal more and more of your money, and do less than bare minimum at the same time….. followed by them praising themselves as if they’re heroes.
Imagine what these Chicago union teachers “teach” when not AWOL. The benefit, if any, to the students would be getting out of the line of fire on their streets.
Chicago Public Schools this fall recorded one of the sharpest single-year enrollment declines since the district’s student population began a steady downturn 16 years ago.
The 361,314 students counted on the 20th day of classes this fall represents a reduction of 10,000 students from last school year.
That’s a slightly smaller drop than two years ago, when enrollment plummeted by about 11,000 students from the preceding year. The numbers continue a long-standing trend that began in 2003, when total enrollment stood at 434,000.
Many of them should be laid off. they don’t need them with the year drop in student’
s enrolled.
If the public school is virtual, or even less than full time in person, parents should be able to opt out of attendance AND TAX.
That will scare the bejeezus out of the school folks, because then the empty nesters will also opt out of the tax.
They just throw around the r-word (racism) freely. It’s racist to have in-person school. But it’s also racist to close the schools. I guess Robin DeAngelo and Ibram Kendi are right, we’re racist no matter what we do. So F it, why care about any of their racial problems? They cried wolf many times too often.
Look no further, if you’ve ever wondered what’s wrong with our schools and public education.
This union action and the obstructionist Marxist membership says it all.
Home school & school choice vouchers are the only way to go.
Nothing has done more to destroy public k-12 education than teacher unions–they are the protectors of the dumbest.
It’s always sexism, racism, or misogyny. Same song and dance. And since the local political structure has been long bought by the public unions and other liberal groups they just pay lip service to the cries of the public demanding they actually do their jobs.
It’s not about teachers, it’s about teacher unions. Some individual teachers are dedicated, and put the children’s interest ahead of their own. Not most, but a significant minority. But their union has a fiduciary duty not to do that. The union’s one and only duty is to advance its members’ interests, and sometimes that means acting against that of the children.
It’s the same as lawyers; you may be a nice person, and your lawyer may also be a nice person, but you are paying him to be a bastard on your behalf. While he’s on the clock he has no right to be nice to your opponent at your expense.
“It’s for the Kids”. A well over used public statement made by union leader and teacher reps sitting at the bargaining table in negotiations on a renewable bargaining agreement between the teachers union and the school district’s appointed reps.
I’ve been retired for near 12 years, but during my tenure it was my experience and having had an office next to the not so private conference room where I could overhear the negotiators at the table, and it was an eye opener. After 25 + years in support services, I can assure you, the things on the table were for anything and everything BUT the “kids”. No matter what was being said outside of that room, at the table, it came down to benefits and salaries. The first time I was exposed to negotiations taking place had been in progress for two years before they got to “done”, with the current year rolled in for a three year contract which in the end they received 98% of what they wanted with retro paid for the previous two years. and pay adjustment in the current third year. With the end of this contract, two years later, negotiations were again reopened on the upcoming expiring contract. This contract’s starting point was what would be new salary schedules and benefits in the next year, for the first of a new three year teacher’s contract. The growth of wages over nine years of contractual contracts was on average 3.5% to 4.5% per year annually. The growth in benefits paid by the school on their behalf, increased their annual salary on average 32% over gross pay. This was over 20 years ago and do not believe it’s any different.
Yes, that is all exactly as anyone would expect. Saying that they’re acting in the children’s interest is a negotiating posture, not a serious statement of the truth. It’s designed to get them leverage by getting the parents on board. And there’s an implied threat that it’s in the children’s interest because they’d be harmed by a strike. “Don’t make us harm the hostage.”
Judging from their union’s position, to be fair, these kids aren’t missing much.
Los Angeles Unified School District – teachers’ union, that is – announced they would not go back to work until the police were defunded. How’s that for NOT for the kids? And our local Pasadena Unified ‘will do whatever LA Unified does.’ We are closed to the end of the year. The unions are Marxists. Public Health union is the same – our PHD person is a Latina activist, makes $450K, and SHE is the one who ‘suggests’ mandates. The Mayor does whatever she says.
I think this whole thing is a union power grab/ nationally.
I plan on going on a bender tonight, after e-mailing my boss a message declaring that his expectations of me coming into work tomorrow are rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny. I may or may not also throw in cultural appropriation, police brutality, and capitalist privilege, depending on whether I have any creme de menthe left in the house.
2020 can’t be over fast enough.