Please tell me...

(1) that the Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers who have taken to hiding in Rockford, Illinois in an attempt to avoid a vote on the governor's proposed budget/public union slashing measures -- are not charging their rooms and expenses down there to the State taxpayers; (2) that if indeed they believe so strongly in this evasive measure that they are actually paying out of pocket (or via private donations even -- pass the hat) for their civil disobedience. (?)

Ditto all the teachers who -- in Madison -- have taken 3 straight days off, the schools closed down completely to allow their protesting and symbolic actions. Please tell me that they won't be receiving any pay for their teaching performances those days -- not straight up, nor drawn from their (comparatively generous) state employee benefits, ie/ sick and personal days.

Something just ain't right,
if taxpayers are indeed funding these "opt out for the day(s)" shenanagins, and there is no sacrifice whatsoever on behalf of those protesting.

( I also never quite understood why the professionals who receive the highest salary pay in compensation, are also the first to insist that their rooms, meals, entertainment, etc. be comped -- that they themselves don't have to pay for what they directly consume. Isn't that what the higher salary pay is for? )


Seems to me,
what these teachers especially are doing, after 3 days without classes -- the messages being sent to the aspiring students, and the families who work hard to get them to school and to take the daily work seriously -- is this:

"Stay home and read and calculate. Visit a library and challenge yourself to learn on your own. You really don't need us all that much, and look: we're kind of showing you where you -- the aspiring students -- fit into the equation. We're not really here to teach you, or care about your educations. It's about the $$$$$, and we only really need/care about you students to the extent that without you, we wouldn't have jobs with such generous perks in the first place."

( Remember when the Chicago Public Schools used to begin the school year with teacher strikes? Remember what it taught kids about the value of their educations? I worked summers for the Southtown Economist in 1987 and '88, covering the Chicago Vocational School (CVS) students sweating in classrooms without a/c in late June, making up the missed time the 19-day teachers' strike had stolen from them.* Still have the clips. This is forward progress?? )


Really, this too might be a blessing in disguise: open up the educational systems to innovative ways of teaching/learning and progressing/moving forward.

Locking students in, with a teacher with dubious motives for being there, for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week ... surely there's got to be a better way.

The teachers in Madison anyway, are showing how much they really are needed these past 3 days. Once parents, who need to work and have a place to put their school-aged children all day, have alternate-placement routines in place (other learning centers / educational experiences to compete with public schools), do you think they'll care where or how their children are educated, if indeed they are learning daily?


The Bloat is there, and I suspect Madison teachers are just volunteering us to puncture an educational system that might have worked well as agrarian societies transitioned to the 20th Century, but one which might just welcome a chance to again reform itself with all the 21st Century tricks of the trade now available to striving learners.

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*

Many parents, teachers, and politicians in Chicago recall a time when teacher strikes seemed like a regular part of budget and contract negotiations. In 1987, Chicago teachers stopped working for four weeks, throwing the school system into chaos.

Parent Joy Noven begged then-Mayor Harold Washington to resolve that labor dispute. In her plea, she said: "We have teachers who are dedicated to this system. Let them do their job. We have parents who want to do help their job and help the teachers. Let them do it. Get the kids in school. We've had enough of it."

Just a thought...