Teacher Unions, Teacher Activism: Is anyone actually teaching?

December 29, 2005

On Wednesday we pointed out that while there's no "War on Public Education" there are a few areas which need serious reform. Pointed criticism of these areas leads some to believe that people are just "bashing" public education, which simply isn't true.

Today we have a few words on Teacher Unions and Political Activism. (In future articles we'll address Teacher Certification, Mediocrity, Opposition to Competition, Opposition to Home Schooling, Lack of Discipline and Safety, Zero Tolerance Run Amok, and Lack of Accountability.)

Teacher Unions: A major problem with public education today is the behavior of teacher unions. One problem is that they block the door to progress: if it doesn't "serve their membership" in the form of less work for more pay, they're not interested. Teachers often complain that they aren't respected, yet they happily join unions whose leadership is all too willing to conduct labor-union thuggery, the most common of which is extortion (in the form of labor strikes). Writes one conservative teacher, "Want to be treated like professionals? At least act the part."

America is a nation of diversity, where freedom of choice is cherished. Unless of course you choose not to join the teacher union, which will quickly make you a pariah, to say nothing of what will happen if you choose to go to work when the union decides to picket. (Who are those grown ups in that school? Those are "scabs." And those short people? Oh, those are students.) This is to say nothing of the fact that in some school districts, one must join the union to be hired to teach. Freedom of choice, indeed.

America is also a nation of entrepreneurs, where one has the potential to be rewarded in proportion to one's efforts. Except with public school teachers, where tenured deadwood teachers make more than crackerjack, dedicated first year teachers. More effort and even better results from individual teachers is not compensated, in fact "merit pay" is disparaged by the teacher unions, for it doesn't fit in with the whole "solidarity" theme. "Workers of the world..." yadda yadda.

Political Activism: Closely related to the issue of unions is activism by public school teachers, either in the classroom in the form of left-wing indoctrination, or by actually hauling students to show up in force at some noonday demonstration at City Hall (on a school day, natch). Teachers have an obligation to teach, not to indoctrinate a captive audience.

Students have no choice to be their pupils, but teachers definitely have a choice to not publicize their own political views. When we were in elementary school, there was a teacher who, on the day after a Presidential election, was asked who she voted for. After all, it was a moot point, since the election was a done deal. But she simply declined to answer. What a class act.

Another good example is Thomas Sowell's recounting his time teaching economics. Early in his life, the story goes, he viewed himself as a radical Marxist. But as he grew, both in terms of academics as well as maturity, he realized that Marxism was not the right path, and he became a supporter of the free market. Later in his academic career he was teaching an economics course which contained a significant unit on Marxism, which he taught "by the book." One student approached him later and asked Sowell what his personal views of Marxism were, and he recalls that that was the highest praise anyone could have given him.

No one is denying that teachers have opinions of their own. No one is trying to suppress teachers' free speech, despite claims to the contrary. For the sake of the students, just teach, okay?

Activism by Unions: The unhealthy activity of unions and activism by teachers in their classrooms are bad enough, what's worse is the activism by the teacher unions. Unions are analogous to government agencies supported by tax dollars. Taxpayers don't have a choice whether or not to pay taxes, which opens the door to abuse by government, for it can spend freely, regardless of the will of the people. As it is with unions.

Presumably, unions collect a percentage of teacher wages as dues, and then spend that money fighting for teacher rights and negotiating teacher contracts. So why do teacher unions spend obscene amounts of money in the political realm, almost all of it in support of Democratic candidates or left-wing causes?

Since when did becoming a teacher make one march in lockstep with the Democratic Party? Teacher union members make up more delegates to the Democratic National Convention than any other group, even though there are conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans who serve as public school teachers. (They just have learned to bite their collective tongues.)

A visit to the websites of the NEA and AFT make it clear where they stand on a number of non-academic issues. For example, the NEA has opinions about Social Security (they oppose letting people invest their own money, rather it should remain in the hands of the government--which coincidentally is exactly the same approach favored by Democrats) and Wal-Mart (which apparently is working to dismantle public schools). Meanwhile the AFT chimes in on health-care workers (apparently Congress is considering making them more vulnerable to tuberculosis and anthrax) and CAFTA (they oppose free trade with Central America).

Sure there is probably some tenuous connection with public school teacher union members and all of those topics, but that in no way excuses the unions from spending forcibly-aquired dues monies in the attempt to guide policy which has little to do with educating kids.

But does the union even care what political positions their members hold? Well if it gives you any clue, California recently held a special election to vote on a series of initiaitives, one of which was Proposition 75. It simply would require public employee unions to get members' consent if they plan on spending dues monies on political action. Sounds very democratic (lowercase d), simply let the members agree or disagree. The teacher unions spent heavily--no irony here, the money they spent to defeat Prop. 75 came from the very members whom they had no intention of asking permission for anything--and the Proposition was defeated. Again, the union gives a one-finger salute to any members who hold opposing views.

Sometimes unions don't just spend heavily to defeat a proposition, but work hard to not even get the item on the ballot. Just this month Paul Jacob reports that the Oklahoma Education Association (a branch of the NEA) is fighting hard to prevent an initiative from even being presented to the voters. What could this controversial initiative be? It's simply a plan to cap government spending. Why would the OEA be opposed to that? Well, being that they represent public school teachers, they don't want any limit at all for public spending.

And what is the union doing to prevent the initiative from appearing on the ballot? By encouraging people to lie that they're being harassed by signature gatherers. In one case, a person saw a someone collecting signatures in front of a store, so he reported to the store manager that the initiative supporter had "cussed him out." Store security ran the guy off. Nothing like striking a blow for democracy.


Again, there is no war on public education. But there is a war against classroom indoctrination and teacher union thuggery.