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On
June 21st, the Record ran a front page AP story that really belonged on
the Opinion page, because it was a factually challenged press release
from the American Federation of Teachers.
It stated the average starting salary for teachers to be $25,735 and compared that to engineers and computer scientists earning $42,862 and $40,920. Teachers, however, will work no more than 900 hours per year compared to the average of 2,000 hours for every other occupation in the country. I will also assert that engineers and scientists endure a much more challenging learning regimen. Granted, the best teachers put in a significant number of pro-bono hours, but their union would have a cow if anyone suggested their contract should require even 1000 hours. The American Federation of Teachers article ends by providing some insight into the incestuous relationship that they enjoy with the current White House. With union support, the Clinton/Gore administration is pushing for an unprecedented amount of federal control over our public schools. They already control too much. The teachers unions have compromised their ability to teach by linking their advancement to that of the politicians they endorse and finance. Recent Supreme Court decisions regarding school choice in the educationally progressive states of Wisconsin and Ohio have reaffirmed what all public school critics have always known. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to make public education policy. Public schools were created by Horace Mann in the mid 1800s as a way for government to mold citizens to their liking. Horace Mann, the father of American public schools, was a Liberal lawmaker from the state of Massachusetts. He spent a lifetime fighting against the citizens and taxpayers to get acceptance of his radical changes to public education, which were exclusively private at the time. He structured public schools to be non-sectarian and free of charge so as to put private [religious] schools out of business. At that time in our nation's history we were experiencing a vast influx of religiously persecuted Irish and German immigrants. These immigrants were setting up their own schools for their children and some politicians didn't like the independent values they instilled. At the same time in history, Maine Congressman James Blaine proposed legislation that would prohibit federal tax dollars being used to support "private" education. His legislation failed at the federal level because of the same Constitutional conflict implicit in the recent Supreme Court decisions I mentioned earlier. Blaine and his nationalist allies were successful at the state level though and succeeded in injecting language into the Constitutions of many of the newly emerging states to preclude the use of tax dollars to support any schools other than "public" schools. Ohio and Wisconsin now have solid laws that survived all the desperate state and federal court challenges initiated by teacher unions. It's time for these unions to put partisan politics aside or face extinction as an increasing number of enlightened parents find alternatives to the costly mediocrity of public schools. -DRC
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