Posted on 03/02/2011 3:35:40 AM PST by Scanian
If public-school teachers spent more time teaching in classrooms and less time community-organizing in political war rooms, maybe taxpayers wouldn't feel as ripped off as they do. Before the Big Labor bosses start complaining about "teacher-bashing," let's be clear: An increasing number of rank-and-file teachers feel exactly the same way.
Retired New York teacher Vinne Cusimano, who was required to pay forced union dues in order to work, wrote me this week after receiving the March 2011 edition of his union's monthly publication. The cover of the New York State United Teachers magazine reads: "Defend What Matters! Educate. Collaborate. AGITATE." Inside the pamphlet, NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi rails against "malicious politicians" in Wisconsin and elsewhere proposing "extreme anti-union" budget cuts. He urges his members to join "advocacy" efforts to "maintain critical resources" and lectures about the need to "value education over ideology and greed."
Cusimano, who taught for four decades in the Empire State, fired back at Ianuzzi in an open letter: "As a member for over 40 years, I have never been so disappointed at the stand you are taking to call members to 'AGITATE!' We are trying to tamp down the rhetoric and you are outward[ly] inciting agitation. How dare you! You are supposed to be for the students/teachers. . . How can you support 'EDUCATE,' 'COLLABORATE' and then encourage agitation?"
More to the point, what business does Iannuzzi -- a fat-cat union official who rakes in nearly $300,000 a year (plus a $100,000 pension) while his organization's net assets are more than $117 million in the red -- have lecturing anyone else about "ideology and greed"?
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Half of the problems could be solved by a national Right to Work law—not just for teachers—but for everybody.
Half of the REST of the problem could be solved by outlawing payroll deductions for Union dues.
The remaining quarter-problem we can deal with.
The NEA and its state-level affiliates (and the hell they cause) is one of the primary reasons I did not go into teaching, though I went to school for it, went through the entire program, and received a lifetime certificate with national accreditation.
It’s a shame, because I would have been a good teacher.
And after over 20 years in corporations I am desperate to break free of the cube farm but can’t.
Over 40 years, I’m wondering what he paid in union dues?
Thanks for posting. We need stories detailing union tactics and spending and cost to tax payer.
Glad you liked it.
I hope all of us try to send out some of the articles posted here to our email lists. I try to get out 2-3 daily.
The following is from Tim Nerenz about how one of the opposing teams is training. We are being ripped off:
Anyone who has actually been to China comes back with a fuller appreciation for the true nature of the economic threat posed by that rival nation. China is not a land of coulee labor chained to benches in dingy sweatshops hunched slaving over pennies for hours on end. China is mile after mile of gleaming new factories full of new high-technology equipment, clean as a clinic, efficient as all get-out, and full of energetic, smiling, young faces proud of their productivity and their rapid climb up the income scale.
Those factories were designed by Chinese industrial architects, and built by Chinese skilled tradesmen operating Chinese-made cranes and heavy equipment. The machines and assembly lines were designed by Chinese engineers and built by Chinese craftsmen. The skilled workers who operate and maintain the machinery are Chinese, the trainers are Chinese, the inspectors are Chinese, and the management is Chinese. The capital to invest in these productive factories is Chinese, the surplus product of a 50% savings rate; the banks that finance the development and working capital are Chinese.
All those smart, proficient Chinese people are the product of Chinese schools. Children start school at 7 years of age, and complete 9 years of compulsory education – 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, 10 months per year. 60% of curriculum is devoted to math and reading (Chinese). At the end of each school year, tests must be passed to advance to the next year. Teachers must have a 2-year certificate to teach, and local boards control local schools.
Students who do not grasp lessons stand in front of the class to be tutored by the teachers and other students until they learn. Parents are required to come to school and take notes when children are ill. The expectation is that every single child will learn to be fully proficient, and they are. A University of Michigan study reported that Chinese students perceive the classroom as competitive and teacher-controlled and they are happy about it. Proficient people are happy people.
These are the **majority** of teachers who are indoctrinating the nation's children every day!
Parents do not have any influence over the teachers unions. Voters don't. Legislators don't vote in teacher elections, and the children absolutely have no say.
ONLY teachers make the unions what they are. If the unions support issues that are truly evil, ( and they do), perhaps it is because the majority of teachers teaching our nation's children are evil.
The agenda of the teachers unions is now soooo evil that it is time for the good teachers to get out. It is time for good teachers to rescue children, and to work to close down these indoctrination centers of depravity.
Let me give two extreme comparisons:
Would good people work in Nazi concentration camps because, once in a while, they could sneak in crumb of bread to the prisoners?
Would good people offer to be hired as overseers of slaves because he would be kinder on the slaves than someone else?
The answer to the above is, NO! Instead, “good” people would rescue the prisoners or slaves and work mightily to shut these horrible institutions down. Good people would be building underground railroads and working for the resistance.
Modern government schools have **always** been a collectivist, socialist-funded, and government owned entity. They have **always** been a school board ( AKA: comrade committee or voter mob) managed institution. This is bad enough. Simply by attending children become comfortable with having the government take money from their neighbor for a social need and want, and become conditioned to having voter mobs rule their lives.
Today, though, the teacher unions, college departments of education, and textbook education-industrial complex is pushing an agenda even far more evil that those listed in the above paragraph. Today, it is GODLESSNESS, abortion, secularist worldview, moral relativism, abortion, sex out of marriage, GBLT clubs, homosexuality, tolerance of depraved and cruel cultures, destruction of American values, denigration and mocking of Christians, and the corruption of American history, etc.
It is time for “good” teachers to RESCUE children from these pits of depravity! It is time for good teachers to get out and to work for the complete shut down of government schooling. It is time for good teachers to provide alternative educational settings.
Two more things:
**Any Christian teacher who attempts to sneak in a little crumb of Christian philosophy into his or her GODLESS school is teaching an important and lifelong lesson. They are teaching their students that Christians are SNEAKY!
**Do you remember the 2000 Democrat Party convention? Do you remember the abortion buttons proudly displayed on the the lapels and hats? Do you remember the wild cheering as Clinton, the rapist, made his way through the bowels of the convention center?
Government teachers were the single largest occupation represented at that convention. In California they were the majority of delegates. This is the evil that these teachers clapped, cheered, and enthusiastically supported.
These are the people who sported buttons supporting the shoving of scissors into the skulls of infants who are millimeters away from their first breath, scrambling their brains, and sucking the gelatinous mass into surgical suction jars.
These **ARE** the people teaching our nation's children!
Gee! I wonder. Do they serve cookies and milk with that? Are
“good” teachers helping with the serving trays and napkins?
If the private market controlled education we would see better and even more efficient results.
My homeschoolers worked on formal studies ( at the kitchen table) about **2** hours a day, 5 days a week, for about 11 months of the year. The rest of the time they **played** and worked on their hobbies.
By age 13, 12, and 13, they were in college. Two finished B.S. degrees in math by the age of 18. One earned a masters in math by 20. The oldest was equally successful in his full-time work and in a few months will finish a masters in accounting at an age typical for students in the U.S.
My children are NOT unusual for homeschoolers.
Please read my post #9.
You did the right thing. If you had gone into government teaching you would have been shoveling the tender minds and souls of children into the blazing fires of Moloch.
My daughter works in VA school system (right to work state) and she got this email:
State Budget Finished!
VEA won a big battle for your pension. While state workers will have to contribute 5% to their pension educators and local government employees will not. That means you have the pension plan you have now with no changes.
With the Senate’s help there will be 75 million more than the Governor’s introduced bill for K-12 Public Education.
The conferees have agreed to pay back 30 million more to the pension fund they used last year to balance the budget. There are still many more payments to come but this is a start.
There is 50% more money for Hold harmless to school divisions for salary differential.
I want to thank everyone who helped the Loby Cadre and VEA by making calls or e-mailing your legislators. While the budget may not be perfect it is much better than what we started with.
__________
My daughter was disgusted and wondered how the Union can email everyone on the School System’s email list? Free advertising?
It’s currently about $1400/yr in NYC. No. 4: If you want to teach and enjoy working with children there’s no reason not to. I spent a number of years in corporate American as well. My thought is a as a conservative there’s no reason to not join the union, dues are deducted from your pay check regardless. I would rather have fun with the socialists and annoy them. In 2008 when the union was organizing bus trips to battleground states for Obama I attempted to join their bus trip so I could campaign for McCain :) Never got a return phone call but I could tell the woman I spoke with on the phone was visibly upset.
Our dues are over $100/month also. Actually, if the NEA wasn't so crazy socialist, the dues and union wouldn't even be an issue. NEA Today drives me nuts.
NEA claims they only spend $15 out of the close to $1400 for political purposes. We have signed off to recover the $15 but just try to get more, ha.
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