Plenty of Whine For Wisconsin's Cheese.

Having gone to a Catholic school ruled by large Polish nuns during my turbulent youth, trying to understand the state of public education in America today is akin to living in a foreign country.  I just don't speak the same language.

Indeed, the selfishness surrounding the Wisconsin demonstrations by state employees surpasses the normal vocabulary of the debate:  unions, collective-bargaining, vouchers, tenure, pensions--they are all lost on me when I see an eight-year-old child toting a sign on a union picket line during a school day.  These "public" employees responsible for shoving these kids onto a political stage are a national disgrace.  For this obscenity alone, Governor Walker should terminate these malcontents with extreme prejudice.


Think Wisconsin's school children would suffer if Governor Walker fired all of the AWOL teachers? Hardly.  Test scores haven't budged in ten years despite the nearly doubling of state expenditures in real dollar terms on primary education.  Fire them.  Fire them now.  Replace them with retired military.  Maybe America's warrior class can do the job the National Federation of  Teaching Trotskyites seem incapable of:  producing a child who can compete in a global economy.

But we know no firings are going to take place.  Teacher unions are considered governmental demigods by the Democratic party.  The message this marriage of mediocrity sends to the youth of America is when things don't go your way ... drive to Illinois.  And how about the fraudulent doctor's excuses?  If a child brings a pair of nail clippers to school he is suspended and put on the government's no-fly list. But if the teacher of that child obtains a phony doctor's excuse in order not to show up for work, she is lauded as a champion of the labor movement?  Just know these Emma Goldman radicals will stand up for the union label before they stand up (and go to work) for your child every day of the week.  So parents, look for...the union label when your child dons that fast-food restaurant uniform which public education and collective bargaining have made possible.  Way to go, Norma Rae!

American doesn't need to "wait for Superman," before realizing the largest piece of  kryptonite facing educational reform is the teacher unions.  Public education  today resembles General Motors of yesteryear.  The unions have grown fat.  Managers (politicians) have gone dumb. And the consumers (taxpayers/parents) have gone fickle.  What suffers?  The American automobile (student).  And as goes GM ...so goes the country.  The result is a foreign ass-kicking of our markets by the likes of Asia and Europe.  Public education doesn't produce many engineers anymore, it produces paper-pushing-pansies, gushing for their next cost-of-living adjustment tucked into a bed of cradle-to-grave entitlements.  McMurphy has gotten his lobotomy ...  he's just waiting on Chief and the pillow!

Wisconsin taxpayers should commit to memory the seventy thousand demonstrators squatting at the state capitol the next time they open their property-tax assessment notices.  Take a good look at what your getting for your money.  Do you still entertain the fantasy that Laura Ingalls Wilder is insuring your child's proficiently literate?  Or are you starting to smell the pungency of  civil servant malingering which will guarantee your child's kowtowing to his Chinese master?  So valuable will be the art of community organizing  while he is standing on a government cheese line.

I thank God for the nuns of St.Mary's of Gostyn every day.  Whatever hardship or dissent they might have been feeling was absorbed in the dedication to their vocation.  I didn't get everything I wanted in the classroom while growing up, but I certainly got what I needed--usually a swift kick to the pants.

The teachers unions should be so lucky.