Music Educators: On the Chicago teachers strike:
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed below are solely those of Nick Errico and do not reflect the opinions of MusicEducators or #education
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I’ve been holding off on commenting on the matter because my view goes against most of my colleagues on…
I don’t think my answer would have been enough in just the answer box. This will not entirely be a rebuttal, but instead be my point of view to this post.
I agree the teacher strikes are highly unnecessary. As a Rhode Islander and a fellow blogger of Tumblr.com I have seen my fair share of teachers strikes as they happened when I was in high school. One just happened this year at one of our schools in Rhode Island:
http://www.630wpro.com/Article.asp?id=2521452&spid=38785
Now it is not to say that the strikes don’t have good intentions, but you are right. Teachers have a civic duty. The point should be that they can continue negotiations while school runs. Its 1: better for the students as they are education and they get proper orientation and the such, and 2: Teachers will actually be PAID for the days that they are working anyways. It would be a win-win in everyone’s interest.
Personally I believe that if we are doing these negotiations they should be done after school as to make things more productive if they can’t reach an agreement over the summer. If they can’t do that then they should compromise and seek a solution that would be deemed fit instead of one solution as the end all be all once they start a strike.
Now on the other end. Yes teachers get shafted. Rhode Island here has some of the worst educational school (as some here and there over the years have been closed down or taken over by the state itself). Teacher evaluations are becoming worse, and more so teacher-student evaluations of handling students. We live in a horrible economy and people need jobs.
Should it be the teachers jobs to pay for students to have materials to use at school (pens, notebooks, ect?). I believe not. These are public schools and the money comes from somewhere and it comes from the government, but more so the taxpayers. It isn’t all the teachers faults that the schools do not have enough funding.
http://www.tasb.org/legislative/resources/documents/issue_facilities.pdf
Government also plays a role in how the schools get funded. Unfortunately it is not as direct as everyone believes it should be. The funding from the government also intertwines with a lot of other problems around our nations; let alone the schools. Think about how we have our wars…money is spent there. Think about how we are shoving out “stimulus money” CREATED by the fed (thus making money worthless)…money wasted. Think about how congress has passed the laws it has wanted to while putting up puppet figures such as Obama and Romney while they are the ones with the powers to approve or deny laws….Money spent on what our founding fathers have created and has eventually become corrupted.
Just alone we have over 14 trillion dollars in national debt (or more).
Source for debt information: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/us-national-debt
This simply means that the government does not have the means right now to uphold its educational system because of the upkeep it has created among its multiple projects; not limited to the “drug war” and the “war on terrorism”.
Our teachers are not entirely at fault, but neither are they entirely right either. The situation is infinitely bigger that we can imagine and unless we can fix the source (likely dealing with the actual body of congress) or come up with a new and original solution then teachers under almost any circumstance in this day and age will be “shafted”.
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Edit: To add additional context to this after reading posts of others who have answered this I have to agree that it is the duty for the teachers to be there for their students. Education should come first before the benefits provided by the system no matter how large it may be.
I’m not the only one!
